Anam Cara

And the Earth Knew Absence

The memory of the earth shrouds our thoughts with depth and mystery. In each individual, the earth breaks its silence. In human gesture, its primal stillness becomes fluent. Because we are so driven by thought we often forget our origin. We are seldom sensitive and patient enough to recognize in the mirror of thought the shadow of clay. The mind echoed back the earth’s deepest dreams and longing, yet its original break from the earth must remain the earth’s deepest experience of absence and loss.

In us, the earth experiences absence. Certain moments in nature seem to crystallize this loneliness. Often at night, when you hear the wind mourning around the house, it seems to be an elegy for us, its vanished children. Among animals the experience of loss often comes to poignant expression. When the calves were weaned from the cows on our farm, the mothers would cry all night the long wail of grief for their lost calves. Nature is elemental longing. The ancient stories of a culture frequently offer insights into absence and how it crosses all boundaries between the elements, the animal and the human.