Tis’ the season where the question abounds…”what do you want for Christmas?”  It’s a terrible question, insinuating that a certain day of the year entitles me to a gift I don’t need, but desire, in this world where alluring stuff abounds,  But, I am shifting my loathing of the season by embracing the opportunity to tell my loved ones how much they mean to me, and how much I value their own sacred paths in the world.  This shifts the question to…”What do you need that will make more beautiful the fallow winter ahead so that your spring can be abundant?” It expresses love through helping.  For example, one gift my children will get this Solstice are ‘replenishment cards’.  These will be cards outlining replenishing adventures in nature we will engage in as they rest their wary, overworked college student bodies. I’ve also shifted the dread I feel over the holidays by shifting the notion of it as a time of consumption to a time of support.  I can choose to support small, local artisans and farmers with my purchases, investing in a reparative and restorative economy rather than an extractive one.  I realize, so much of our grief, dread and sorrow can be ameliorated by shifts, just as a pivot can shift a dancer to a new direction. It reminds me of how I have shifted my eating in the last few years.

For years, eating was a nuisance, or the only time I slowed down…because I had to fork down calories to keep going way past the point of exhaustion.  Eating also involved a practice I loathe, supporting dysfunctional corporate big ag systems.  But when I shifted this dysfunctional practice and limited myself to eating what I grow, I was able to shift my perspective on eating as daily celebration.  I further investigated the wanting of food vs. the needing of it.  I have come to realize that at least half the time I think I am hungry, I am actually thirsty, and what I really need is water.  My body misunderstands the signal and thinks I am hungry, when I am not.  What I really want is fresh, clean water.

The other day during my mental health practice (walking), I realized humans do that very same thing.  We think we want more stuff, when what we really need is clean water, clean soil, and clean air.  This misunderstanding of ourselves drives disease and poor health.  It’s a mistake we pay for with lost wellbeing.  We think we need more stuff, and more money to get more stuff, when actually we need a protected, less chemically damaged planet.

The Motherline is braided around the work of restoration and repair for our culture.  That means nurturing a sustainable economy that protects the planet rather than pillaging it.  To do that we believe in celebrating and supporting pathways toward true meaning and fulfillment in life, which most readily comes through arts practice and nature connection.  We believe that all flourishing is mutual, and nourishing a landscape where all have most of their basic needs met will mean a future for this fragile and glorious planet upon which all of us depend.  We can’t even complain about Christmas consumerism without it!  We can’t fight injustices without it!  It follows that protecting earth is the single most important endeavor we are destined to engage.  

YOU are welcome on the line.  You can dance with us, volunteer with us, donate the funds that sustain our work, or engage with our efforts online.  But even if you don’t join the line, we invite you to shift old patterns of thoughts and actions that consume, destroy, and weaken, and replace them with thought patterns and actions that restore, repair and strengthen.  Because we are the action.