Earth's Texting - Blackberries and the Blackberry

I haven't quite shaken the fact that the Oxford Jr. Dictionary's latest edition is now minus

10,000 words many related to nature. Most disconcerting is that many of the deleted words are associated with the feminine and Mother Earth while many added are related to technology and celebrity

I haven't gotten over this and suspect I won't, but speaking of celebrity I have gotten back to life as I know and love it since Oprah's people didn't call last week. I made a blackberry cobbler. Actually I made two from berries a friend gave me and am now contemplating making blackberry wine.

While the cobblers cooked, curiosity prompted me to go on-line where I found that the gadget Blackberry was added to the dictionary while the fruit blackberry was, yes, dropped. How many children or adults for that matter risk thinking a blackberry is the rectangular thing with which you text not realizing these juicy orbs are texts from Mother Nature growing wild in rural areas this time of year as well as being grown by local farmers. (See localtable.net for Middle TN farmers with berries.)

When I was in college, I'd return home to pick blackberries with my grandfather, the one to whom it was hard to be close. Years later he still reminded me of the summer day we picked and picked. We filled our bag or thought we were until we realized we were leaving a berry trail as our bag had a hole in the bottom that was gradually getting larger. These experiences in nature activate our sensory selves in ways 'picking' a Blackberry in the store cannot.

For centuries here on Planet Earth, it seems we're challenged when it comes to holding the concept of both. We separate things and one another into good/bad, doing/being, thinking/feeling, city/rural, North/South, right/wrong, masculine/feminine or in this case Blackberry vs. blackberry.

I envision a world where we have both the blackberry and Blackberry. Both connect and nourish us, one to Nature through food and one to others through friendship. Both provide experiences of creating a bridge between our outer world and our insides, offering the possibility for greater love and awareness of life. Both offer text messages from loved ones and friends as well as Mother Earth.

We are surrounded by text messages from Mother Earth in the trees and bricks that become our homes, the gravel or asphalt that becomes our driveways, the potatoes that become our fries, the birds that sing, the rains that fall. I could go on and on.

Earth is texting. Are you listening? Imagine the Shift in our daily lives and around the world, if we began to text back with feelings of gratitude and appreciation to Nature and Earth for this beautiful place we call home.

-Dawn! Still the Good News Muse, 16 July 2010
Contact email: dawn@imaginetheshift.com

As for that blackberry wine, well that's another story......