Sink your feet into my mud, my green grass, be at home under my trees and the shifting sky.
Coalescing energy many billions of centuries ago formed this mass of soil and stone, water and metal, fire and air we call home.
I, your Earth am not a stone carving created in ancient times, unchanging through the centuries in a permanent state of being.
I am in constant movement, yet I am steadfast. I evolve and yet I endure.
I and all living beings shift and flow, change and morph. From the subatomic particles of your body to moving flocks of birds to the tectonic plates underpinning our continents, the earthworms beneath the soil, the sea in constant motion, the tides, waves of sand and water, all manner of mammals, insects, birds, reptiles…I and all my creatures are in constant motion, a constant ebb and flow.
Nothing is static here. Some structures and landscapes seem permanent. Their life cycles can be measured in eons. Mountains thrust upward and erode to gentle hills, continents drift, rivers change course, seacoasts shift and change, waters rise and fall, glaciers grind stones to dust.
Other changes might happen in a heartbeat, a season, a day or night, the growth of new cells in your body, the sloughing of old cells, tiny spring leaves greening, maturing, turning red or gold, falling to earth, decaying.
Do you think the stones are unchanging? Observe one for a thousand years of freeze and thaw cycles, rushing water, high winds, fire and ice, burrowing roots. Watch your dense and heavy stone break into smaller stones, then gravel then sand… Stay for another thousand years and watch the sand become sandstone, then watch it erode away once again.
You too are in a constant state of transformation from embryo to fetus to newborn, to baby, toddler, child, adolescent… , then after a span of years to elderly great grandparent.
Ask Grandmother Cottonwood 