We Belong

We often speak of the earth as something we own, or something we must manage. This short meditation invites a simpler, older truth: that we belong to it. Not as owners, nor as visitors, but as part of the living whole.

Read it slowly, or listen to it, and let it settle.

Settle where you are.
Let your feet rest on the floor, or on the ground beneath you.
Notice your breath. Don’t change it, just notice it.

The air you are breathing has passed through forests and draws from the oceans.
It has been breathed before, by creatures and people long gone.
For a moment it is yours. Then you give it back.

Feel the weight of your body, held by the earth.
You don’t have to hold yourself up. You are being held.

Everything you are made of was here long before you.
The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the water in your every cell.
You are stardust, gathered up for a while into a person.
One day it will return.

So rest in this simple truth.
I don’t own the earth. I belong to it.
Breathe in. Let that settle.

People have known this for thousands of years.
The first peoples of many lands have lived by it:
we don’t own the land, the land holds us.
The rivers, our relatives. The mountains, our ancestors.
The ground holding those who came before, and receiving those who will come after.
Let yourself remember what they never forgot.

Breathe out. Let go of the need to own, to control, to possess.
What we own, we can use up.
What we belong to, we care for, because its wellbeing is our own.

This is what it means to be a custodian.
Not standing apart, looking after something on someone else’s behalf,
but caring … as family cares.
Not a weight placed on you from outside. Simply who you are.
Breathe in. Feel how that loosens something.

You don’t have to invent your purpose. Your place is here.
Your purpose is to be a good part of the whole:
to tend, to repair, to leave things a little better than you found them.
It begins with the ground beneath your feet. The people beside you.
The next small thing you choose to do.
Breathe out.

We are not passengers on this planet, and we are not its landlords.
We are its children, and in time, its ancestors.

I don’t own the earth. I belong to it.

And belonging asks something of me.

Stay here for a few more breaths.
When you’re ready, gently return.