The Calling—Monica Filippenko
Tonight is the Winter Solstice. Darkness envelops me, saying rest. Sleep. Be quiet. Make space.
I am hoping for some clarity this winter, some answers about which steps to take next, and what Gaia is asking me to do. How to best serve her with my life. I feel movement toward this clarity in certain respects, but I also still feel unsure.
Are we supposed to have a child?
More and more I feel something strong inside of me turning me in that direction, leading me to that place. It is like a calling that defies all that might threaten to stand in its way. The thought of being a mother at this moment in time is both exciting and terrifying, which perhaps explains my confusion. However, the calling seems to rise beyond both excitement and fear. It feels like a deep instinct, moving forward on its own, independently of my thoughts and emotions. Looking back on my life, I know that such instincts are things that I have always followed purposefully, ever since I learned to trust myself from within. Why should this be any different? Isn’t it simply the calling that has always guided me showing up again, showing me the way?
My doubt comes from conflicting ideas about what would be best for the Earth, as her life and welfare is my highest concern. I am still afraid of bringing a new person into being when I strongly believe that there are already too many of us, and when I strongly disagree with our prevailing conduct. I am also personally afraid of the future, afraid of the growing suffering that children born today are all but certain to face. I am ashamed of the iron grip of humanity’s greed, ignorance, and colonization of all that we see and touch. There have been periods of time when I have felt convinced that I cannot possibly ever give birth. I want to follow the ancient instincts alive in me, so much. But when I look at what we are doing to the world, I have felt like I must smother them. I have felt that my right to participate in the cycle of life, the will of Nature, is being stolen from me.
These feelings still exist. However, a voice that has been growing stronger over time reminds me that, while all of the doubt is valid and real, it is also true that the Earth needs children to be born to people who care deeply. The story of humanity has so much ugliness, but it is not over yet. The future is much more complex than “all is lost” — and whoever inhabits this Earth tomorrow and the next day and the next will be the ones shaping it, little by little. They will be the ones alive to receive the truths of the Universe, if they can be open, and then choose how to let that wisdom guide their presence here. I know I will have no control over who my child is or becomes, but I would have control over the mother I am, the example I set, and the guidance I can give from the womb onward in living from a place of conscious connection with the Earth. And that has to count for something.
With this intention, the act of having a child is one of hope. It is also one of surrender — to the understanding that there are no guarantees, but also to the future that will exist one way or another, and the life that will inhabit and experience it, one way or another. Perhaps it is not really up to me to refuse to follow the calling. Life is so much bigger than me, and it is not mine. It is a flow of energy.
In this way, I understand the calling as coming from the Earth. In my heart, I hear her saying, “It all has to unfold. Much is painful. But you not having a child will not fix that. Life has to have somewhere to go, and it will keep going, no matter what you do. Some of it will be beauty and some of it will be pain, but you cannot change that. All you can do is hold true to your intentions and surrender to the will of life, the ceaseless drive to continue blossoming, experiencing, understanding. If you year the call of the unfolding as the call to have a child, then so be it. There is a purpose there. There is healing there. There is so much you cannot see. Listen to whatever calling you are receiving and know that it all comes from me. You will never fail me, as long as you are listening. You can surrender.”
As I walked in the snowy forest today, some magical place held me still. Sunlight streamed through the trees. A gentle breeze blew snow off of evergreen branches in glittering curtains, swirling around my body. All was silence and stillness. I suddenly felt uplifted by the fact that this entire forest has been cut down at least twice, but look what it has become all over again from nothing. That is the relentless, unstoppable flow of life. The trees are not withholding their offspring no matter how horrifying the desecration. They say, “As long as there is Earth, as long as there is Energy, there is Life, and it is not up to us to stop being a part of the future. We will endure.”
In that moment, I felt more a part of the forest than a part of humanity in the sense that I am essentially powerless to stop the destruction of my home and even my own self. But the trees will not deny the calling of the Earth — and look at everything they still are, not by smothering their deepest natural drive, but by continuing to fulfill it even through times of greatest despair. By constantly enduring and moving life forward.
I know that humans don’t have the same life-giving quality on behalf of all creation that forests do, but our intentions and actions carry enormous weight, and if we are aligned with truth we can be life-serving rather than life-destroying. I still do not know what path my partner and I will follow. There is more listening to do. But if we have a baby, it will be to endure, to surrender to the flow of life without knowing, like the forests have. It will be to try and help give humanity a little more time to wake up, another new breath of innocence, another small chance to remember. It will be a leap of faith, born from the soil of this Earth within whom everything beautiful that has ever existed started with an unfathomable leap of faith.
