Order of the Sacred Earth by Matthew Fox Skylar Wilson & Jennifer Berit Listug

Author:Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson & Jennifer Berit Listug
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing Company
Published: 2018-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE ORDER OF THE SACRED EARTH

jennifer listug

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.”

W.H. Murray, author of above quote, was a daring Scottish mountaineer who travelled to India in the mid-19th century, and climbed the Himalayas. He is describing here the palpable power that radiates, simply from making a commitment when facing what seems to be an impossible obstacle. He discovered on his adventure that it was his committing to go, purchasing his boat passage, that signified the powerful beginning to the rest of the journey. Yes, there were still supplies to gather, gear to pack, seas to sail, and mountains to climb. There was all of the work and the fun and the challenge and the wonder inevitable in travel, and yet all of these elements fell into place with ease and grace once he had committed, simply committed to listen to his heart and go. When one makes that sort of commitment, Murray continues, “all sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would come have come his way.”

What an epic and impossible task it must have seemed, reaching the peaks of the Himalayan mountains, when envisioned from the comfortable safety of his humble living room in Scotland. And yet, he asserts, with his commitment, Providence—which is to say, the generous support of God or Nature, or the Higher Self—opened the world up for him in exactly the way that was necessary to complete his mission.

This is the value of commitment. This is the value of taking a vow.

The Order of the Sacred Earth is a community of people, self-selected, who have committed, taken a vow, to honor the Earth as a conscious being, and celebrate all life as sacred.

We now have a much bigger task ahead of us than climbing the Himalayas. If that mountain range seemed challenging to Murray, the mountain of crises we have co-created over the ages seems to me at times, well, insurmountable. Matthew and Skylar have done a thorough job explaining in detail the contours of our postmodern problem mountain: climate change, and the denial of it (and most recently in the United States, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement), outdated educational institutions, bigotry and hate toward one another. Looking through the lens of all the world’s problems one would see no end to human, animal, and earthly suffering. Fortunately, there are many other lenses we can look through too—the lenses of love, compassion, activism, beauty, and wonder, to name a few.

I am, though, reminded of the imminent flooding of the coming spring in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range where I live.

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