Recipe for Life

Life
Care for Life – love, mothering
We are part of Nature
We are good like Nature
We are Interconnected
Deep Mind
Great Mother

This is a recipe of values to build our future life on, to ride the waves of climate change, and flourish in healthy ways.

Values are like roots, that feed the plant that grows from them. We need radical change, that goes down to the roots; not top dressing. Radix means root. Values are the basic ingredients of our recipe. We go back to the roots of how our society operates: basic assumptions we never question; we don’t even know they’re there. 

‘Value’ comes from Latin Valere, to be healthy, strong and worthy. Values are our strengths. Life-giving values make usfeel healthy strong and worthy. Our future will be tough. If we build our life on values that nourish us from our roots, we’ll have a better chance of surviving emotionally. We will be happier.

values may seem dry. the idea won’t change the world much. we need to feel the values. When I think of life, I light up with the joy of being alive. When I think of love, my heart gets warm and soppy. When I think of community, I remember how I felt when I lived in community. We must love Mother Nature, to want to care for her, just as we love and care for our child.

these values are based on the ways of Mother Nature. If we live by her values, we can make nature strong and healthy too. Mother Nature creates life and cares for it. we are part of nature, and nature is good, so all of us are good by nature, however badly we may behave. Mother Nature lives in ecosystems, everything’s interconnected. 

Our mind and heart are also part of nature, not only our physical life. Great Mother is the spiritual sense we get in nature, that makes everything worth doing, or beautiful or inspiring. She also evokes the mothering power of nature. 

We can use these life-giving values as a guide, to create a healthy culture. we can apply them for inner and outer happiness. they work together; for the life of the heart, for how to bring up children, or design our communities. We can shape new institutions according to those principles. people fighting against gas companies are fighting for life.  

We could build a very different world from our present one, based on life and connection, not selfish interests and money above Mother Nature. Imagine a life where we value life, and being alive, as a precious treasure. does that make you happy? How does it feel to love life? to care for life? What is life? my life and the life of birds? what is the life of our hearts a well as life of body, food, babies and nature. 

I call this Mother Nature-archy: based on the laws of nature. It could also be called matriarchy: not the opposite of patriarchy, it’s an egalitarian culture based on Mother Nature’s mothering.

please experiment and take it further, in your own life. we can meditate on values and be creative with them, keep asking, what will care for life?