May 2026 - Indoor Gathering
05/10/2026
May Message: She Who Holds Us All | Honoring Our Original Mother
✧ Listen to the gathering recording here.
GATHERING MESSAGE
✧ We gathered at Atria Hall on Mother's Day to honor She Who Holds Us All. To remember that before any building, any temple, any prayer, any name for the Divine - She was here. The Earth. The Original Mother. Breathing through root and river, holding everything that has ever lived and died and been born again.
We opened by holding all forms of mothering in our circle. The mothers who carried us and the ones we have lost. The tender relationships and the ones that left a wound. The dog mom, the mentor, the older sibling who grew up too fast so someone smaller wouldn't have to. The caregiver, the chosen family, the one who mothered without ever being given that name. The one who loved and lost, carrying someone with them who is no longer here to be carried. The one who longed to be a mother and couldn't. The one who is learning, slowly and imperfectly, to mother themselves. We held all of it, as best we could.
We then grounded ourselves in an opening meditation that moved us out of the thinking mind and into the felt sense of belonging - to this body, to this floor, to the living earth beneath the floor. We were invited to feel that we are not visitors on this earth. We are OF her, and we have never left her body.
Before entering the teachings, we paused to learn about the Divine Feminine, as written in the book, The Prophetess by Chelan Harkin. And we named something important. For the last few centuries, we have been taught that the sacred lives somewhere else. Above us. Outside us. Beyond the body and beyond the earth. That the spiritual life is a movement of ascent, of transcendence, of leaving the material world behind. And that teaching, however well-intentioned, is only one part of the picture. There is a whole other part of us that remembers that the Divine is also within us, rooted in our bodies, and in the earth..
Divine Feminine wisdom is not something new but something ancient that was always here. The sacred is not only above. It is within. In the body. In the soil. In the breath. In the living world that holds us. This is what the mystics called immanence — the sacred as near, as present, as the very ground of our being. This is what we returned to this morning.
We drew on the wisdom of the earth-based traditions, each of them honoring the earth as sacred mother:
From the Celtic tradition, we entered the teaching of dúchas (doo-KHUS) - their word for belonging, but also for nature itself. The same word for both, because in the Celtic understanding, they are the same truth. We belong to the land the way a river belongs to its watershed. The Celtic peoples practiced this belonging through daily, reciprocal acts of relationship with the living land. They spoke to the land, greeting the morning by acknowledging the earth, the sky, the water, and the fire as living presences - not as symbols, but as kin. They made offerings: milk poured at the roots of a tree, grain left at the threshold, small gifts returned to the land in acknowledgment that what we receive, we must give back. They marked the earth's seasons as sacred, organizing their entire calendar around the cycles of the living land. And they understood that certain places were thin - springs, hilltops, the edges of lakes, ancient trees - where the boundary between the human world and the living sacred was most permeable. This was not spirituality to them. It was a complete way of living in relationship with the mother beneath their feet.
From Sami wisdom, we received the teaching of siida (SEE-ee-dah) - the sacred community of all living beings who share a territory. In the Sami worldview, the reindeer, the lichen, the river, the wind, and the people are not separate categories. They are all members of the same living household. At the center of this household is Mádder-áhkká (MAHT-ter-AHK-kah) - the Ancestral Mother, the Guardian of all living things, the one from whom all life is born and to whom all life returns. The Sami word for nature, luondôlahka (LWOON-doo-lah-ka), does not mean nature as something outside or separate, but more like the way things are - the inherent order of the living world, what was here before us and will remain after us, what we are woven into, whether we remember it or not.
"The land is not something we walk upon. She is the one who holds us. She has been holding us since before we knew we needed holding." — Sami elder teaching
From divine feminine wisdom, we received the teaching that the earth's body and the body of the sacred are not two things. Hildegard of Bingen wrote of viriditas - the greening power of the divine - as a force pulsing through every living thing. Not a God above creation, but a sacred presence within it. In the leaf. In the root. In the body. Julian of Norwich encountered the sacred not as a distant lord but as a tender mother - a love that kindles our understanding, nurtures us from the deepest ground, and never withdraws.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist and writer, brings this ancient knowing into our own time through what she calls the grammar of animacy - the practice of speaking of the earth and all living beings not as "it" but as a living presence deserving the same respect we give to a person. She writes:
“When we change that one word, everything changes.
We do not harm what we recognize as kin.”
Science is now catching up to what these traditions have always known - trees communicate through underground fungal networks, sharing nutrients and warning each other of danger. Plants emit signals that shift in the presence of human care. The earth is not silent. She has been speaking. We are only now, slowly, learning to hear.
We then moved into our embodied practice | Roots, Breath & Earth Listening | A three-part practice drawn for cultivating a living relationship with Mother Earth. We felt the weight of our bodies, pressed our feet into the floor, and let awareness descend into the living earth below. We followed the breath as a thread of belonging, receiving what the trees had exhaled and returning what we had received. And in stillness, we simply listened - not with the ears, but with the body - to the presence that has been here far longer than any of our questions.
We held a ritual release. Each person wrote on dissolvable paper something they had been carrying - a grief, a longing, something without a name - and one by one, brought it to a bowl of water on the altar. We watched it dissolve. We watched the water receive what we do not have to carry alone.
We closed with the reminder that honoring the Original Mother is not a once-a-year observance. It is a practice of daily return - to the body, to the ground, to the living world that holds us with a love older than memory.
"May we walk upon this earth as her beloved children. May we feel her holding us with every step. May we return, again and again, to the original belonging."
A NOTE FOR MOTHER'S DAY
Today, we did our best to hold all the forms of mothering in our hearts. The mothers who carried us in their bodies. The mothers who chose us. The mothers we have lost and the ones still with us. The ones whose mothering was tender and the ones whose mothering was complicated. We held the longing for mothering in those for whom that relationship has been a wound. We held those who are mothers themselves - in all the ways that word can be understood.
And beneath all of it, we felt the presence of the one mother who holds every mother. The earth. The Original One. She who does not withhold, does not exhaust, does not require us to earn her care. She simply holds. She has always simply held.
SPIRITUAL INVITATION FOR MAY
✧ Create a living relationship with Mother Earth in a way that feels generative to you. Some examples: talk to the land - the flora and fauna, learn about foraging or wildcrafting, ground daily, spend time in the same spot outside each day, a sit spot, and observe quietly, make an offering for the ancestors of the land.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
✧ We explored the Celtic concept of dúchas: belonging and nature as a single word, a single truth.
The Reflection: Where do you feel most deeply yourself in the natural world? What does belonging to a place feel like in your body?
✧ We received the Sami teaching that every living being in a territory is a member of the same household.
The Reflection: What would it mean to extend your sense of community to include the living world around you - the birds, the trees, the insects, the water? How does that change what you feel responsible for?
✧ On Mother's Day, we held all the forms of mothering - human and more-than-human.
The Reflection: What do you most long to receive from the Original Mother? What do you most long to offer her in return?
PERENNIAL WISDOM SOURCES
✧ DIVINE FEMININE
"The Prophetess" by Chelan Harkin | Passage from "The Feminine" chapter.
Order from a local Rock County bookstore here.
✧ INDIGENOUS
"Anam Cara" by John O’Donohue
Order from a local Rock County bookstore here.
NEXT GATHERING:
MAY NATURE GATHERING - May Message: She Who Holds Us All | Honoring the Original Mother
Sunday, May 31st, 10am-Noon
Location: Gibbs Lake Park
Map link: 9103 W Gibbs Lake Road, Janesville, WI
What to know/how to prepare:
Wear shoes for walking and layered clothing for the weather
Suggested Donation: $10
ANNOUNCEMENTS
SUMMER SOLSTICE & 1-YEAR ANNIVERSARY GATHERING
Saturday, June 20th: 5-9 PM
Join us for an unforgettable evening of:
🔥 Sacred fire ceremony + bonfire
🍽️ Nourishing dinner (provided)
🎶 Music, connection, and celebration
✨ Special guests + unexpected magicREGISTER HERE
Our Community Support Request form is LIVE on the website, under the Giving Back tab here. This is a gentle way to let the Ancient Hearts community know that you’re navigating a difficult time or could use some extra support right now.
Founding Members: If this is the community you’ve been seeking and you want to help sustain us, we invite you to consider becoming a Founding Member in 2026. We hope to welcome 30 Founding Members into our Founding Circle this year. Learn more and reach out to contact@ancienthearts.org with any questions you have.
