Our culture doesn’t think much about the first time a child sits upon the Earth, but in some areas of the world it is cause for much celebration. In Bali, for example, children are not allowed to touch the ground until they are three months of age. Before that time, the baby is continuously in someone’s arms whether it is mom, dad, a grandparent, or someone else in the village. After the baby is kept protected in this way, there is a great celebration when the baby’s feet are first placed upon the Earth. The child becomes an Earthly being.

As I derive much of my spiritual understanding from my relationship with Earth, this type of ritual resonates with me deeply. I often wear baby LF in a carrier, but she has definitely been on our floor before, she is a little over 5 months, and she’s had her hands in the dirt already.  We definitely didn’t do things the Balinese way. However, I still felt that there was something special about her first time sitting upon the Earth.

I hope to let my daughter follow where her intuition leads her as to what she is called to do here and what she wants to believe about spirit. Maybe it will be different than how I view things. But I did impose my first words of motherly wisdom to baby LF as she sat on the Earth for the first time in my own mini version of a grounding ceremony.

As her fingers grasped strands of grass and smiles of delight lit her face, I asked that she would grow to respect and love Earth as her mother as she loves me. In words she cannot yet understand, but with emotion I hope she could feel, I explained how essential it is for people to care for the Earth again so that we may always have mothers and babies together. Because mothers and babies are the essence of love, and love is what makes all things possible.

She looked up at me, fluttered her arms in excitement, and in some mystical way she seemed to understand.