Mother Earth still Whispers

    My son carved eight Mother Earth Icons in yellow cedar which he and his wife set around their float home and employed as fertility symbols: cute, intimate, loving, longing, welcoming.  

     Soon, he and his wife were celebrating the long waited pregnancy.  He gave those icons to friends, one to me.
     Six week after their daughter was born, David climbed to repair a friend's roof-top solar collector, to charge another friends' boat battery.  The rope securing the 'permanent ladder' failed.  Surprise, strong, agile, safety conscious David fell three stories and hit his head on a big beach rock below.  He didn't die instantly, a friend on a beach walk found him and just held him.  His wife and a friend carried him by small boat to the nearest hospital.  They all knew he was gone though his strong body still lived.
     We will all fall, fall in some way or other and meet our end.  David fell while helping friends, friends were so important to him.  I believe helping friends is a good way to end, being with and for friends is a good way to live.  I and his friends miss him so much.  We all should be so fortunate to fall while helping friends!

     In my shock, grief, anger and depression following my sons loss and following the B.C. organ donation fiasco, I samples a variety of bereavement activities, including carving soapstone Mother Earth icons.  I employed one icon to mark his ashes which we scattered around an ancient cedar tree near his 'Floating House', along the Canadian B.C. coast.

     Soapstone is made of windblown dust from glaciers grinding rocks against mountain. Dust carried by  streams, to settle into beds of lake sediment, which time fuses into seams of soapstone, later broken into rocks by earth forces and road building.  People pick up these soft sedimentary rocks, carve them making more dust to blow in the wind who knows, maybe to return to sedimentary rock.

     Carving is a soothing and meditative activity. I carved many imperfect Mother Earth icons and found myself healing.  
     Now I see the milk engorged, ever pregnant, faceless Mother Earth is also an inspiration to adapt, to continue the purposes of nurturing life. 
     Big fat Mother Earth is too encumbered to attend to all her needs, she also needs care and nurture from partner, family and community. She is strong and giving but also fragile; one fall can send her back to dust.

     I found carving Mother Earth figures eroded some of my grief as I started to listen to her quiet messages about dust, ashes, life, friends, form, adaptation and nurture.
     Many imperfect, faceless pregnant women standing together become a potent spectacle for me. I placed my  sculptures in a semi-circle facing an incense holding soapstone rock. In dim light the spectacle suggests a stone gge campfire. A little candle burns quickly and then sets flame to the incense cone. The burning cone absorbs some candle wax and the flame goes high for a few minutes, then out, but continues to smoke. The soapstone base insulates against flame and heat.

     Perhaps the Mother Earth Icon from our Stone Age heritage is just an ancient fertility symbol from our prehistoric past that I simply used to meditate.  But my experience is she whispered to me about faceless ongoing, timeless, parent and social purposes.  

     A little like the Velveteen Rabbit, Mother Earth represents the beauty of the well used, worn, tested, loved and loving.  Mother Earth is timeless, wise, giving parent, Venus is the apprentice.
     Find a piece of soapstone, set it on a shelf to wait as as a potential healing activity.  Perhaps you will carve  something you can hear whisper.