When the Earth Loves You Back

“Knowing that you love the earth changes you,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.  “But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”¹

What on earth can she mean, this Potawatomi writer, this credentialed botanist, who places the wisdom of her people in dialogue with western science? Surely she can’t believe that the earth—this planet that sends us fires and floods and earthquakes and volcanoes—cares about us, let alone loves us?

When I first read her words, they sounded romantic, new-agey, like wishful thinking. Come on, I thought. The earth has no consciousness, no feelings, and I was about to add “forms no relationships” when I realized how ridiculous that sounded. That’s the main thing earth does, form relationships; and that’s pretty much what the earth is, a bundle of relationships. But love? Really?

However, as I have been writing these posts and listening to what others have to say, the idea of being “loved back” has emerged from the mists of skepticism and taken on experiential meaning.

Let me explain.

In my previous post, I recounted the story of Osage leader Everett Waller who has been active for decades in struggles for social justice. These efforts are grueling and draining. “In this battle every warrior gets damaged,” he said. But two Bald Eagles landed on his lawn, bringing with them renewed hope and healing. “I looked for a blessing from the Creator, and I definitely got one,” Waller said.² 

Of course, eagles are sacred to traditional Osage, carrying messages from the Creator to imperfect humans. It makes sense that eagles could convey a “blessing” to a believer, a feeling of transcendent well-being that would certainly feel like a gift from the earth, and a loving gift at that.

But are there generic qualities to Waller’s experience that could apply to people from an array of backgrounds and traditions? Could others also receive “blessings” from natural phenomena, that feel like “love” coming to them from the non-human earth?

At the end of the previous post, I promised to search for those common elements.

Here are the results of that search!

It turns out I already knew about examples from diverse sources that, once I started to think about them, immediately revealed similarities to Waller’s experiences. (Some of these sources appeared in previous posts in different contexts.³)

For instance, George Washington Carver, a brilliant scientist and a devout Protestant, saw all natural creatures as potentially sacred—that is, able to perform the same role as eagles for the Osage.  Any specific creature, if properly considered, could be a portal to transcendence. “A little flower—you can reach out and look into and suddenly find that you are taking hold of the things that lift you up and carry you along and make people love you and give you the joy of living and the joy of having come into the place God has for you, and the exuberance of filling that place in life,” he said.⁴

Similarly, the French Jewish-Catholic mystic and anti-poverty crusader Simone Weil (1909-1943) saw specific natural manifestations as “ladders” that could lead humans upward, out of their ego-traps and into transcendence. Specifics in nature could perform this sacred function when they struck humans as beautiful. To her “attention” was “prayer,” and paying attention to something beautiful could be transforming, for “there is a transcendent character to the beauty of the world.” The flawed human mind emptied out and was filled instead, not just by one beautiful scene but by “universal beauty.” Such specifics were a “sacrament,” an “incarnation,” leading from the particular to the all-encompassing. Experiencing beauty was an “Implicit Form of the Love of God.” ⁵

Other writers describe similar experiences but in secular, psychological terms.

For example, referring to her own interactions with nature, literary critic Elaine Scarry describes the feelings of being caught by beauty, caught up in it, even by something small, such as noticing “the tiny mauve-orange-blue moth on the brick.”  Her own experience is a common human one, she maintains. Such moments “act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space,” she writes. In this “vaster space,” (112) our self-centeredness retreats and universal energies come to the fore. We are revitalized by an “aliveness” shared with all life.⁶

Annie Dillard describes similar experiences, also in secular terms.    In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she writes that when she encounters beauties in nature, she feels “an inrush of power and delight.”  Where does it come from? From outside herself, for sure; it is an “inrush.” Does that mean that there’s a God who lovingly offers “delight” to earth-bound human beings? Dillard isn’t willing to draw that conclusion; the experience is mysterious to her, though revelatory of one thing—that there is a connection between external beauty and transcendent human experience.  She is not sure what the connection means, but she knows it’s there.   If beautiful particulars are just “random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters,” she asks, “then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite?”    Wherever it comes from, there is a built-in connection to natural beauty that “ignites” us with “power and delight.”⁷

In all of these examples, it’s important to notice that there is a common condition—paying attention. Sometimes creation does this for us: it catches our attention. But in others it is part of a deliberate practice—a learning to notice, a repeated openness, a willingness to receive, to grow, to learn.

And in all of the experiences described above, whether religious or secular, the experience is transcendently wonderful—a blessing, a joy, a revitalization, a delight.

Most of us love some things in nature. Now let’s say that we have experiences like the ones described above—experiences that come to us like gifts. Wouldn’t we be tempted to conclude that “the earth loves us in return?”

1. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013. “Knowing that you love the earth….” p. 125.

2. Everett Waller, Chair of the Osage Minerals Council, interviewed by Robert Bryce on “The Power Hungry Podcast.” January 2, 2024. Retrieved September 3, 2024. YouTube:

https://www.google.com/search?q=power+hungry+podcast+everett+waller&rlz=1C1EODB_enUS546US547&oq=power+hungry+podcast+everett+waller&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigAdIBCDkxOTBqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:51641167,vid:NvhMcgoWtDk,st:0

3. George Washington Carver is cited in “At Home in the Land? Welcome to Gaillardia World.” margystewart.substack.com April 2, 2023. Elaine Scarry and Annie Dillard are both sources for “Hopeless in Gaza? Part 5: Against Cynicism: ‘The Canary that Sings on the Skull.’” margystewart.substack.com July 27, 2024.

4. Carver, George Washington. Qtd. by Clark, Glen. The Man Who Talks with the Flowers: The Intimate Life Story of Dr. George Washington Carver. Macalester Park, 1976.“A little flower….” p. 45.

5. Weil, Simone. Waiting for God. Putnam & Sons, 1951; Reprint NY: HarperPerennialModern Classics, 2009. “ladders” p. 116; attention as prayer pp. 57-65; “transcendent character to the beauty of the world” p. 104; “universal beauty” p. 104; “sacrament” pp. 104, 107; “incarnation” pp. 103, 109; love of beauty as an “Implicit Form” of the “Love of God” pp. 53, 99-117.

6. Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton UP, 1999. “tiny orange-blue moth” p. 111; “vaster space” p. 112 Scarry here continues to paraphrase Weil, saying Weil’s description conforms to her own experience; “aliveness” p. 110.

7. Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. HarperCollins e-Books. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pdf).pdf Accessed 11/27/24. “inrush of power…” p. 9 (there is a typo in the e-book, “light” instead of “delight”); “million monkeys” pp. 10-ll.