Lucinda Marshall

She changes everything she touches

And everything she touches changes.

© Starhawk

When I was a child, I had a book about  a little girl whose grandmother gave her a word, I don’t recall the name of the book, but just the point that the  gifting of words was enormously powerful.

Last week I asked for suggestions for “a word to describe the rising up of a matri-  (meaning honoring both women and  Mother Earth) energy force for peace.”  I received numerous suggestions, all quite inspiring.  The two that resonate with me are matridynamic which was offered by Loretta Kemsley and gaia-archy which was shared by Susan Hawthorne.  They are both very potent words.  Gaia-archy feels like a good descriptor of a framework, but matridynamic at least to me sounds more like an  organic, growing, changing  process that reflects what is needed.

There is little doubt that we have reached the time where there must be not only a turning away as Phil Ochs once put it, but also a very major change in paradigm.  In this country it is now painfully obvious that every aspect of our well-being has been sold to the highest  bidder and that those we have chosen to run our nation are, with few exceptions, corrupted to the core.  Globally, the climate change that our plunder of the earth has wrought is making itself painfully apparent time and time again, with floods, droughts, water and food shortages, melting glaciers and disappearing species.  There is no turning back now, only a question of how we go forward.

For this we need a  changed way of being with ourselves and with the earth, a new way of going forward, a visionary shift that is well described by the word matridynamic.

Many thanks to all that participated in this dialog and especially to Loretta for such a magnificent word.