My Little Golden Book of Phobias

Dear ones,

I have been working to figure out how/what the hell am I doing with chaplaincy, whatever that might be. 

I have thought I'd be helping traumatized healthcare workers who have witnessed terrible things at their jobs. Where is the respite for us???

But.

As I go through this journey I have discovered that I am being pulled toward my non-human friends. All of the Earth. Her trees and frogs and birds and rocks and waterfalls and more trees. Diane and I did a hike called Lake 22 up by Granite Falls, north of Seattle. 

It was spectacular. And hard. The old growth trees were the largest old growth I've even seen in the PNW.  Trail ended at a snow fed alpine lake. We scrambled over rocks and sweated and ate our peanut butter sandwiches. There were so many trees, so many beautiful trees. I told Diane I wanted to do my chaplaincy right there, among those old women. 

Haven't we always loved the Earth? As children we discovered the smells and sounds and creatures as we lay on our stomachs watching the most minute bugs and snails and the occasional garter snake. I would crawl under the bushes in my yard and construct tiny houses for the fairies who lived there. I climbed trees just to sit there and look out at the world. 

I told my teacher that I felt loving the Earth was somehow less important than ministering to humans. She gently reminded me that we are not separate from all of life, that we are inextricably bound to Her body, fed from Her body, one day to return to her body. 

Well, of course. 

So how do I enter into an intimacy with the Earth herself? I know and I don't know. 

She is our mother and we are all her children. How could I have forgotten? 

I'm being called home.  Home.