How to Nourish a Relationship – According to Earth.
Dishonesty, Lack of Respect and Boundaries, Disposable Communion, don’t work.
I’m currently in Melbourne for a few short weeks, teaching a lot. I’ve been held and welcomed by friends, lovingly and generously cared for, in a nest of love and laughter and gratitude.
Yet, I moved to an Airbnb to be closer geographically to where I am teaching. Near the city.
And I wake this morning “homesick” for my friends and their beautiful and loving home. I miss them.
I sit with my heart. I listen.
I realise, as I often do, that I miss an old Other. An Other who, in no longer choosing to tell me the truth about himself or us, fractured all; a sacred union sundered.
I realise, I miss my Coasts.
Coasts. Home.
Where Tidal edges constantly breathe Beauty.
Where air blows and water moves and the Earth beloves the Sea, in constant loving relationship, through stormy and pacific tides.
Coasts, where the truth is always revealed in naked unconcealed honesty, in the respect that is land and ocean, embracing each other in changing coastlines that are commitment, to the edge and the conversation of communion.
Coasts.
Where the balm of ocean soothes and celebrates its beloved Land. And does not know how to lie.
We break everything when we create a “secret”.
This, is Betrayal.
We break everything when we shame another for sensing said secret – form unknown – and asking, as waves might rise and breathe upon a shore. This, the breathing ocean, rinsing clean the sand and tidal pools. Exposing the Light of sky and Spirit.
What I see echoed in the relationship of land and sea, of sand and tidal pools, tells me everything I need to know about the things I need within a loving and healthy and vibrant relationship:
- Honesty,
- Respect,
- Commitment.
Without these, I am living in a confusing maze of smokes and mirrors.
Without these, I may find myself in a web of projection, control, gaslighting, and endless lack of a sense of “settle”. Even the ocean, has a sea-bed. A wide basin of earth upon which to truly rest.
Notice that neither the ocean, nor the land seek to control one another.
Neither makes the other “wrong”.
Notice that whilst tides rise and fall twice daily, the relationship of “Coast” remains. Yes, it may change and erode and inundate and experience significant evolutions over time. Yet, these two, land and sea, remain in constant conversation. They do not “ghost” one another, nor one name the other as “toxic”. In fact, they are committed to each other’s health and balance, no matter how the “relationship” changes.
This, is Oneness.
This is the Sacred.
This, is called Honouring.
Not matter the shifting edges and the defined relativity One to the Other.
Wholeness.
Deep Beauty always,
Narelle ❤️
Narelle Carter-Quinlan is the Founder of the Saltwater Songlines Project.
She travels the globe telling true Stories, including the story of the relationship of the body and earth. She talks with Elders, climate scientists, marine biologists, and other sacred keepers of land and sea.
