Sunday Reflections with Mystics: Our Earthiness as a Blessing

by April Bender

Sunday Reflections with Mystics is an effort to collectively honor our ancestors and those wisdom-bearers that have come before us to help illuminate the way. I thought it would be lovely to carve out one day a week in which to reflect on their wise words and counsel around a particular theme or topic. Please enjoy this interlude by allowing the following words and resonance to wash over, inspire, and uplift you. 

Topic: Our Earthiness as a Blessing

Holy persons draw to themselves all that is earthly. . . .

The earth is at the same time mother,

She is mother of all that is natural,

mother of all that is human.

She is the mother of all,

for contained in her

are the seeds of all.
 -Hildegarde of Bingen-

Our sensuality is grounded in Nature,

in Compassion and in Grace.

In our sensuality, God is.

God is the means 

whereby our Substance

and our Sensuality

are kept together

so as never to be apart.
-Julian of Norwich-

The Soul loves the body.
-Meister Eckhart-

You cannot devalue the body and value the soul - or value anything else.

The isolation of the body sets into direct conflict everything else in Creation.

Nothing could be more absurd than to despise the body and yet yearn for its resurrection.
-Wendell Berry-

Do not disdain your body.

For the soul is just as safe in its body 

as in the Kingdom of Heaven.
-Mechtild of Magdeburg-

Sex is the manifestation of the driving life force energy of the universe.

Sexuality is an expression of the moving force that underlies everything and gives it life.
-Starhawk-

Just to be is a blessing

just to live is holy.
-Abraham Heschel-

Blessing included that which we call material as well as the spiritual.

But first and foremost, blessing is life, health, and fertility for the people,

their cattle, their fields. . . . Blessing is the basic power of life itself.
-Sigmund Mowinckel-

The doctrine of original sin is not found in any of the writings of the Old Testament. 

It is certainly not in chapters one to three of Genesis.
-Herbert Haag-

Should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day/

Whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.
-John Muir-

I know well that heaven and earth and all creation are great, 

generous and beautiful and good. . . .God's goodness fills all his creatures

and all his blessed works full, and endlessly overflows in them. . . .God is everything

which is good, as I see it, and the goodness which everything has is God.
-Julian of Norwich-

Wishing you a wonderful day and many blessings in the week ahead!