The Earth Shrine

In a land, far, far away, mountain tops glisten with snow in winter. In spring, the valleys shine bright green under the sun. Summer brings golden yellow light from the grasses of the wide open plains. In Fall, the lakes, ponds and rivers are alive with creatures as they prepare for the coming cold.

The cities here are marked with monuments to ancestors old and new, and some buildings are as old as the trees of the outlying forests.

Here, in this ancient landscape, war rages. The sounds of battle cries are absent, because the weapons of war are modern and explosive. Their destructive power is evident to all who inhabit this country, so the men solemly walk their loved ones to railway stations, where trains carry them away to distant lands of safety. They don't know if they will see them again, and after waving goodbye, their heads hang low as they wander back towards a fight that they never asked for.

Explosions rock the villages, towns and cities as atoms are blasted apart by forces created by the destructive intent of rage that was the only response known to the primordial fears of humanity. Rage against the fear of lack; the fear of not belonging; the fear of guilt that there might be something wrong with us...that we forgot that we are each a flame of the same light which shines from all stars in the heavens; rage against fear itself.

On the other side of the world from this conflict, there is a girl called Isabella. She has the spirit of adventure in her heart and awe still shines from her breast plate. Every time she comes across one of the creations of the cosmos, the awe shines brighter and a grin spreads across her sweet face. She sees everything as a miracle. After all, everything is a miracle. "It's all so different," she exclaims to her mum. "But it's all made of the same stuff. Rainbows and unicorn breath."

That's not yet scientifically proven. But that's how Isabella sees it.. For she sees deeper than most, but doesn't yet have the sterile words of a scientist to describe what she sees.

And what she sees is all light, first and foremost. Isabella and Cheetah, her cat, spent all their time diving into new adventures, exploring places, wide and deep, large and small. Everything was a chance to explore something new. And she and Cheetah knew that each thing they explored had layer upon layer of mystery to be wondered at (According to Isabella, Cheetah was a very clever cat - a genius with a ton of snuggles, she would say).

It's all light. Each wave and particle, spiraling within and without, into frequency, vibration and form. Electrons and quarks orbit a tiny sun, the nucleus of atoms, which make love to other atoms to form molecules and then larger and more complex bits and pieces out of which an expression of life emerges, perfect and beautiful in itself. Plants flowers, trees, all rooted in soil teeming with bacterial life. This is nourished by the old ones, the minerals, rock, stone, sand, clay and gems that have witnessed the passage of time for eons, watching mountains rise and fall, oceans form and dry, continents drift and canyons gape wide open.

And then the fast moving ones - many legged beasties, four legged ones, two legged ones, those that slither and slide, and those that soar in boundless skies.

Nothing escaped Isabella's attention. It all received the same affectionate embrace from her either her arms or her heart mind. This world she found herself in, was perfect, she would tell herself. It couldn't be more beautiful.

But, one day, she sees through the rectangular screen in her parent's living room, something she didn't understand. The cities of that far away land were covered in smoke. Flashes of light and deafening sound were popping out of the cityscape and bits of stone and other objects she couldn't identify were flying everywhere.

"It's war," her dad told her when she asked. "This country is attacking that one."

"But why?" She asked.

"There are many reasons!" And he tried to explain all the why's of the war so she could understand. The words that stuck with her included power, money, resources, corruption, influence and fear.

That last one had a particular affect on her - Fear.

In all her 6 years, she had never felt fear. She was too busy with awe. But she felt it now.

She went to bed that night feeling very disturbed. How could people want to destroy the things of this world, let alone hurt each other. Each body was this perfect miracle....a complex bundle of particles, knitted together to create a thinking, feeling landscape of hills and valleys, rivers and oceans, wrapped in skin and able to walk, run and swim through the larger landscapes of rock and soil and appreciate color and sound, scent and taste and touch, and even imagine things not real, letting the images grow and morph into new creations of beauty and life.

Why would anyone want to destroy that?

Her dreams that night were harsh and scary and she rocked in her sleep, and sweated and strained against the scenes that the weavers of dreams sent through the nighttime doorways of slumber.

When she woke, she was angry. This was another new emotion. One that frightened her, but the fright was too covered by the anger to have much of a say.

She felt like fighting the aggressors and beating them at their own game. She wanted to rent and rail against the bombs and explosions and send them back to the senders. She punched her pillows and kicked her chair, she growled and groaned and nearly screamed with anguish. She even nearly kicked Cheetah, and when that happened, she suddenly stopped. And sobbed. Falling to her knees in despair. She felt a bundle of things, all constricting her little body, so that her breath was short, her stomach was aching, her chest struggling to rise to accommodate her huge heart.

She was at a loss, not knowing what to do. Helpless. Powerless. Desolate. Forlorn.

She'd always felt good in the woods behind her home, so she wandered out of the house, down the garden path and under the thick canopy of old trees that had stood like sentries to her sanctuary for as long as she could remember.

She sat under an old oak, her head bowed, her chin on her hands, her hands on her raised knees.

"I don't want to turn into one of them that destroys stuff. It's a....a..." (she remembered a word from a book of her dad's, that she'd asked about. He'd told her what it meant, but she hadn't understood at the time. Until now).

"It's a desecration of life, that's what it is!"

"What can be done with a desecration of life?"

It's not commonly known what happens in the more than human world when a human asks a question. But the sages and wise ones of old knew. They knew that when someone asks a question, their body becomes a receiver - like a radio receiver, it picks up signals from far and wide.

Alongside that, a portal opens, and every entity whose purpose in the universe is related to that question asked, comes flying through the newly opened gateway and gathers around the questioner. Their time has come and they walk with glee by the side of the questioner, guiding, coaxing, cheering, planting seeds of possibility in belly, heart and mind.

"What can be done with a desecration of life?" Isabella asked again.

At that moment, her eyes narrow and focus, to see something on the forest floor. A simple mushroom. She is transfixed by it and starts to see and hear the explosions and bangs of the war she witnessed on the TV screen. Over to the left, she sees another mushroom, and more explosions there. Then another and more bangs.

She knew through her own exploration of mushrooms, that what you see of a mushroom above ground, is just the fruit. The main body and roots are beyond sight, and they stretch far and connect with every other rooted being in the vicinity, creating a network that stretches well beyond the horizon.

"This ain't the root." Isabella exclaimed. "This is just the fruit. This war we see is just what's on the surface. And it's happening everywhere...all the time. But the cause is much deeper. It's in each of us. Our roots connect to everyone else's and we feed each other with these fears." (she'd remembered her nightmares and the feelings of fear and the subsequent anger that morning).

"It ain't going away just by fighting those who are fighting! Because the war's in me. I'm fighting my pillow, I'm fighting my chair. Heck, I nearly fought Cheetah and he's my buddy. Why would I fight them?"

Unbeknownst to Isabella, the invisible beings were all gathered around her in a circle, listening intently and smiling. At this last question, one quietly gets up, softly pads over to Isabella, leans over, and whispers something in her ear.

Isabella looks up, eyes open wide, and her jaw drops.

"I'm fighting that feeling. I'm fighting the fear. I don't like it. I don't like feeling helpless, nor feeling that I don't have enough, nor that I don't belong. I gotta belong somewhere. What would that be like if I didn't belong with mum and dad, or even here in the woods....or the world. That would be cold, and lonely. I'd be forgotten. I'd be nothing."

In that moment, she saw where the rage was coming from, and why it was coming, and how it could want to destroy all the miracles ever created.

Another of the invisible beings gets up from the circle around her, walks over and touches Isabella with an energetic finger on the center of her chest.

Isabella's eyes widen again and she asks herself again:

"What can be done with the desecration of life? We make it more beautiful!

How can I make this more beautiful?

Deep within Isabella, a wise old woman sits under a huge stone slab, supported by three pillars of stone. A fawn lies quietly at her side, and sage smoke drifts lazily upward, hitting the stone slab and making its way to the sides where it merges with the dawn sky. The woman draws a circle in the air with her outstretched palm, leaving golden light in its wake and a perfect hole in space.

A flood of sparks of light come showering through the hole and settles like candle flames in their hundreds in a circle around the stone shelter. One settles on the woman's shoulder next to her ear and then floats down to the center of her belly.

"It's like those places in cemeteries, where people make shrines to the dead," Isabella suddenly says, placing a hand on her tummy. "They bring flowers and things to make the place where they put their friend in the ground look more beautiful. They make it a shrine. I can't go all the way over there, where the war is to bring flowers. But I could make a shrine under this tree, and make this more beautiful."

She stops for a moment in deep thought.

"And each time I come to the shrine, I can ask how I make it more beautiful. Then I'll sit here and be with the war in me. I don't want to fight those things. So I'll sit in a beautiful place, and invite the fear and the anger and the hopelessness to come and sit with me.

And then we'll talk.

And then we'll go on adventures together, like I do with Cheetah." She looks across at Cheetah, who yawns a big yawn and rubs his head against Isabella's elbow.

"That's what I'll do!"

She grins, gets up, and with renewed vigor, sets about her task of making that little part of the world more beautiful. It takes her the whole day and by the time her mother is calling her in for dinner, the sun is going down, and Cheetah is hungry.

As they walk back home from the woods, the glow of ten thousand little souls of unseen beings brightens for a while, and an old woman in an ancient stone sanctuary, smiles a little smile, on her wizened face.

It's not known whether Isabella's work to beautify the world, both inside and outside her, changed the course of the war. But she did what she said she'd do, and spent many days and weeks and months tending the shrine under the old Oak tree and tending to humanity's wounds within. And whenever she felt the need to fight something, she knew something in her was needing a little tending, so she'd walk out to the shrine, offer it a cup of tea, and chat until the stars blanketed the sky.