Easter: Pondering Ancient Lessons from the Goddesses

What will rebirth, renewal and resurrection look like?

Long, long ago, high atop a mountain snug beside the Aegean Sea, the union of two immortal forces of nature, Earth and Sky, gave birth to the gods and goddesses whose loves, battles and sexual conquests have helped us make sense of our own imperfect, broken, beautiful life for thousands of years.  

One of those goddesses is Eostre and it is she after whom this day, Easter, is named, she who brings renewal, rebirth. It is because of her that we dye eggs green, yellow and purple and hide them for children to find in dark places.  It is she we turn to for the warmth and light that brings our own renewal, and she who returns the red-winged blackbird, the wood thrush and the mourning dove to our forest and beckons the daffodils from the cold dirt.

Illustration by Colin Sullivan-Stevens

And too there is Demeter, the goddess who presides over the fertility of the earth, who causes the fruit to bloom, the grain to grow.  Demeter had a beautiful daughter named Persephone who, while wandering in a field of flowers, caught the eye of Hades, the god of the dead.  When Hades abducted Persephone and brought her down into the underworld, Demeter grieved.  Her grief was so great that after a time darkness fell upon the earth and bitter cold enveloped all the land.  The world waited in fear and unknowing for earth was on the brink of destruction. Would Demeter succumb to helplessness and despair?  But Demeter was not to be dissuaded from her resolve to save her daughter.  Raging and ferocious, she convinces Zeus, the father of Persephone, to send a messenger to Hades to command him to release Persephone. 

But Persephone hesitates.  She has come to love the offerings of Hades: the tapestries, the gold mirrors, the worship.  She must decide whether to stay or to go, whether to choose a life reunited with nature or a life where the price for her being adorned and adored is that all life on earth will die. 

Here we are this Easter in much the same place as Demeter and Persephone.  The very foundation of our grounding on earth is undergirded and unstable.  One only needs to look at our Maine coastline where the question of managed retreat is no longer speculative but real.

Rebirth: such a welcome word but will it come?  Renewal: will we find our way towards it? Resurrection: what must be resurrected and what must die?  What will we choose?

This very moment while you and I are inhaling and exhaling, planning dinner, recalling past Eostre celebrations with long dead parents or grandparents who whisper to us from the other side, Earth, our home, is waiting for us to choose. There is no time left. It’s do or die, now or never. We are at a crossroads and standing here together we can see the destruction all around us, look in each other’s eyes and speak of this moment as either one of withdrawal and denial or one of great privilege and opportunity?

Will we choose to step forward into the flow of imagination and energy and do our part to transform this moment, together, side by side, or will we succumb to Hades’ temptations?

Here in Maine, the vernal equinox is a time when new life holds its breath waiting for a sign that it is time to emerge.  We’ve had days of rain all week, days that followed a historic ice storm that made it seem as if we are living in an otherworldly fairy ice palace inhabited by ice dragons and Norse monsters.  

This is a time for imagination and dreaming.  We are hoping for the world to be reborn but not as it was before.  We need new myths to emerge from the chaos and dying around us, stories that help us imagine a life of interconnection, care, diversity, a life guided not by mechanistic principles that divide us from nature but by the principles of nature herself.  Here’s the great news: new shoots are emerging all around us.  New values are emerging and out of those values new configurations of our economic, agricultural, housing, political, and educational systems are quietly nudging old profit-driven individualistic systems to change.

I know this because it is happening here in Freeport, and I am fortunate to be a part of it. A few nights ago, I attended a workshop given by Richard Gorvett, a Freeport man who has immersed himself in the principles of regenerative design and is a consultant on this topic to organizations and businesses all over the world. Out of his care for this community and his own wish for connection and transformation, he is giving us, totally without charge, what would be, I imagine, a very pricey speed course in regenerative principles! He is asking us to deeply consider the question of what is important to us and to imagine what form that might take here at home.  In nature, change happens first in small cellular systems and grows from there. People are, I believe, starved for this kind of connection and vision and groups are forming all over the world with this intent. I imagine, reader, that there is something emerging like this in your town.  Look for the green shoots! 

What did I scribble in my notes about what I value and what I’d like to see emerge?  The first image that came to mind is the way in which we live on this land, each of us on our own separate lot, fenced in, apart.  I imagined new forms of housing that allow us to be in tune with our neighbors’ patterns and needs so that we can more readily care for each other, like the trees do with their deeply entangled mycorrhizal root systems that sense danger and activate themselves to defend their neighbor.  I imagined schools that are not fortresses kids enter in the early morning and leave mid-afternoon, never having felt the sun on their faces or met another person from outside the fortress for all those hours.  I imagined community gardens and tool lending libraries.  And, with great delight and a little bedevilment, I imagined the behemoth business in the heart of our town transferring their manufacturing from factories in China to local shops where local crafts persons make goods out of recycled fabric and design products that support a regenerative lifestyle. Maybe they would invent a boot made from recycled materials and sewn by local cobblers and used by people who understand and cherish that place they call The Outside? 

I am immensely curious to know what values you, reader, might choose and how you could imagine those values transforming the small cellular life of your community.  If you would consider sharing them in the comments section I would be very grateful!    

So dear reader, let’s together choose transformation, renewal, rebirth. Let’s use our fierce mother self to stamp our feet like Demeter and call on Zeus to let Hades release us from his evil grip.  Let’s, like Persephone, turn our backs on Hades and, for as long as we are able, remain among the flowers, letting them fill us with their wonder so that we do not submit to the temptation to descend, once more into the arms of power and darkness. 

There is great wonder and delight and wisdom all around us.  Let us blossom together!

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Here are some links to regenerative principles and ideas:

Links to regenerative design readings and videos:

https://futurestewards.com/

https://designforsustainability.medium.com/

https://www.regenerativeleadership.co/

https://www.nrhythm.co/about?r_done=1#_634583c79053a