WE ARE EARTH
When We Are Born We Become Earth – When We Die We Become Earth
The Sacred Continuum of Birth and Death
Birth and death are not opposites but thresholds within a living continuum. Each breath, heartbeat, and cell echoes the rhythms of Earth itself. To be born is to emerge from the womb of Earth, to embody her minerals, waters, and ancestral memories. To die is to return those borrowed elements, dissolving into the soil, air, and cosmos. Life is not owned; it is gifted by the Earth, held in reciprocity, and entrusted to human care.
Remembering the Garden We Carry
Across cultures, mythic gardens—Eden, Shambhala, Shangri-La, Tamoanchan—speak of primordial interconnectedness. These archetypes remind that humanity is not separate from the more-than-human world but an expression of it. The Garden is not a lost paradise but an ever-present reality carried in memory, body, and breath. Tending this inner and outer Garden requires relational practices of respect, reciprocity, and responsibility toward all beings.
Indigenous Wisdom as Planetary Pedagogy
Indigenous teachings affirm that every being is a relative, every element a teacher. Principles such as the Three R’s—Respect, Reciprocity, Responsibility—invite a re-learning of right relationship. This is not abstract philosophy but lived practice: honoring water as sacred, listening to the wisdom of plants, engaging rituals of gratitude, and embracing the relational web of existence. Education grounded in such values becomes a path of planetary peace.
A Call to Re-Learn Right Relationship
At this evolutionary threshold, humanity stands before a choice: to perpetuate destruction or to embody kinship. Falling in love with the world again—through reverence for plants, animals, rivers, and skies—becomes both moral courage and spiritual responsibility. The path forward is not dominance over the Earth but participation in her sacred cycles of renewal. To remember that being human means becoming Earth in birth and returning to Earth in death is to embody a pedagogy of kinship and sacred planetary activism.
From heart to heart,
Dr. Regina U. Hess
Birthing an Ancient Future – Multidisciplinary Council of Peace-Builders
