Sisters of the Sacred Earth

Conversely, in a partnership culture, people willingly and gladly share their knowledge and teach their skills to anyone who seeks to learn, knowing that their community is strengthened, enriched, and improved when all who wish to learn are enabled and empowered to learn, and in that process they are also empowered and enabled to contribute to the well being of all.  

It is our job as parents and caregivers to create a rich and dynamic system of redundancy for our children by consciously and intentionally nurturing active involvement with numerous trusted, caring family and friends within our immediate community.  This system, or support network, also serves our own need for friendship, support, love, guidance, and connection and makes us healthier, more stable (better) parents.

In the beginning our species was deeply connected to and entwined with all that surrounded us.  We lived on the generosity of the Earth; a Mother who provided all that we needed in great abundance.  We spent a portion of each day gathering up what Mother Earth sent to us, fresh greens in the spring, fruit and berries in the summer, mushrooms in the fall, and sweet tubers throughout the winter.  We spent the rest of our day in community with the people of our village, playing games, playing at making blankets, clothing, and tools, laughing, connecting, and working together to repair our dwellings, hunt game, or move to another seasonal camp.  We raised each other’s children in community, as if they were all our own, as if they were all brothers and sisters of the same parents, as if we were all fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles.  It was a time of great joy, peace, and harmony, not because it was a simpler or easier life (because it was neither), but because of our connection to, reverence for, and appreciation of Mother Earth and all of her Creation and because we embraced our place within the web she spun, from which we each hung by a silver thread, woven into connection with every other part.

Despite this deep reverence for the feminine, there was no hierarchy of one sex over another, or of one species over another as there is within patriarchal culture.  Goddess culture was not a domination culture, it was a partnership culture that was egalitarian, peaceful, and artistic above all else.