Can't believe it's been more than a month since I wrote.

Occupied with the garden... at last, the butterflies arrived with the beginning of August!

Terrible heat and humidity for most of July, but better now.

Also occupied with finishing up the Syllabus to publish.  

School has started; this is the end of the first week.   

After some weeks of worrying, I decided to apply to teach the course completely remotely, from Zoom.

Since I am in the "most vulnerable" population regarding COVID 19, I was granted permission.  My university is primarily operating classes on a "hybrid"  of half in the classroom, half online.  If the students behave themselves and comply with the many rules about social distancing,  it will work. So far so good.

In my Modernity in Literature class, I have 25 students:  13 women and 12 men.  Juniors and Seniors.

A variety of majors, primarily Science majors.  My students are wonderfully reliable, so far. And I think they will remain so.

I like Zoom, now that I know how to use it.  I like the fact that we don't need to wear masks, and can see each others' faces.

So far, we've read  Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman", and four poems,  and , for Tuesday, "The Communist Manifesto."   

Those poems about the future which were written at the beginning of the 20th century are stunning in their appropriateness for today.  Here's one from Rilke:

The Future                               by  Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

  The future: time's excuse

to frighten us; too vast

a project, too large a morsel

for the heart's mouth.

 

Future, who won't wait for you?

Everyone is going there.

It suffices you to deepen

the absence that we are.

 

 

Translated by A. Poulin

One hot summer    art by Katherine Lee Buxton

My Terminal Illness 2014

I am remembering this because now we are again having our Provincial Assembly.  But everything is different!

Here we are in 2014, in Saint Louis.

and here are 20 of the almost 200 of us on Zoom in 2020.

It was at the conclusion of our Provincial Assembly, an event which occurs ever six years.  Our assembly was held in a hotel in Saint Louis.  I am embarrassed to confess that I remembered the food more than the meetings. The food was superb. Not much detail remembered. Just not the rubber chicken food one usually gets st such meetings. Our sisters who were on the food committee did a superb job.  I ate like a horse. I remember feeling rather stuffed at night and having trouble getting to sleep, but I continued to eat up a storm. 

It was at the end of the meeting, when we were boarding busses to take us to the airport, that my stomach began to hurt.  To make a long story shorter, I began to throw up in the airport restroom. This is so awful: I was throwing up whole, totally undigested raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, salad, and kalamata olives.  I kept throwing up until we boarded the plane, and by then I was throwing up gallons of coffee. I filled three “barf bags” on the plane tie from St. Louis to Baltimore. The Sister who sat next to me kept providing me with bags. 

We disembarked in Baltimore and I continued to throw up.  I even threw up on the grass outside our convent in Baltimore, where everyone agreed that I should spend the night. It was a rough night, as everything continued to empty out.

I rode back to Emmitsburg in a van the next morning with some other sisters who were returning there.

By then I was convinced that I had contracted some kind of Norovirus .  

Two days later, still very ill, I drove myself to the ER At Gettysburg Hospital (not wanting to make a big deal ). I told them my ordeal in the ER and that I thought I had a Norovirus. I was extremely dehydrated. And they admitted me and put me in a single room and wore protective gear because of the fear of Norovirus. 

The CAT scans and X-rays and all came back and the surgeon came in to tell me I didn’t have  Norovirus; I had a partial bowel Obstruction.  So they kept me on IV. And nothing by mouth for four days and the Obstruction reversed itself and I went home.

It took me almost five years of misery and repeated episodes of bowel Obstructions ( though none so bad as the first). Got me to agree to repair surgery- a small bowel resection. ( this was all due to radiation damage from cancer treatment back in 2009).  Successful surgery!  I’ve been free from that problem ever since.

Why am I recalling this now?  Because it’s six years and we are having our Provincial Assembly. But this time we’re all at home, and on Zoom.  If anyone would have told us in 2014 that we would be in this situation, we would never have believed them.  COVID19 and Donald Trump! What will happen to our country?

Mourning the loss of Kim Bridgford

Kim Bridgford died yesterday at the age of 60, of stage 4 cancer.  She was diagnosed in March, and so this cancer killed her quickly... as a cancer survivor of invasive cervical cancer, I would like to know what kind of cancer this was. Not that it would do anyone any good.  Cancer continues to be a cruel illness,  mysterious even as we know so much more about it than we know of COVID19.

She was a wonderful , gracious person, and this is a big loss to poetry world.

Here is a poem she wrote about Emily Dickinson.  Thanks to David Katz, who posted it on his blog:

In the sixteenth week of the Quarantine

Art    "Backyard Quiet"  by Katheryn Stott Buxton



I share these wise observations from novelist and friend Josephine Humphreys:

How we move ahead.This plan is not for everyone. 

It's just the way we two old people see the future unrolling before us.

Things are not going to get better for a long long time. Years. Things will be getting much much worse. We will not see a return to that condition we used to call "normal." 

So we will each seriously guard against depression, anger, fear, disappointment, etc., and we will even more seriously guard each other against those things. We'll help family and friends guard themselves as well. We'll look for new ways to connect with people, nature, music, literature, dogs, ideas, justice, history, art, vegetables, memories, wit and humor. And we'll have fun along the way.

Art by Daria Petrilli

Just some captivating images

Great Spangled Fritillary     -   I have seen two in my garden!

Art -  Pool with two figures  - David Hockney      Wish I was in it

Art - Tim Storrier -  The Passenger, into the Evening



And a poem by Richard Wilbur:

June Light

Richard Wilbur - 1921-2017

Your voice, with clear location of June days,

Called me outside the window.  You were there,

Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare

Of uncontested summer all things raise

Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

Then your love looked as simple and entire

As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face

As legible as pearskin's fleck and trace,

Which promise always wine, by mottled fire

More fatal fleshed than ever human grace.

And your gay gift—Oh when I saw it fall

Into my hands, through all that naïve light,

It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight

As must have been the first great gift of all.

There is a road

In the midst of the continuing virus and now the murder of  George Floyd and subsequent protests and then the riots, and the continuing chaos caused by Trump,  here's a song from the Grateful Dead that captures me today:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they're better left unsung
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Jerome J. Garcia / Robert C. Hunter

Ripple lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group

In the Eleventh Week of the Quarantine

Something so unreal about these weeks for me.  I am wondering if this is how it feels to be a cloistered nun.

I seem to be living for my garden.  Each day the plants grow and new ones begin to bloom. We've had unseasonably cold months of April and most of May, but now the mists have lifted.

I am not yet eighty, but I do love this quote by Henry Mitchell:


"By the time one is eighty, it is said, there is no longer a tug of war in the garden with the May flowers hauling like mad against the claims of the other months.  All is at last in balance and all is serene.  The gardener is usually dead, of course."
-  Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman 

and this poem by Philip Larkin:



"The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."
-  Philip Larkin, The Trees

always something pagan about May as well:

"There is some speculation that Beltane and May Day is related to the ancient Roman festival of Floralia. According to the about.com article, this was "a six-day party in honor of Flora, the goddess of Spring and Flowers, the Floralia was a time of singing, dancing and feasting in the ancient capital." Dressed in bright colors in imitation of spring flowers, citizens would decorate the entire city with fresh blooms. "Hares and goats, symbols of fertility, would be let loose in gardens as protectors of Flora, and great singing and stomping would be heard in order to wake up Spring." Of course, dancing is a large part of May Day celebrations as well. Apparently, Flora was also the patron of prostitutes, and during this festival the Roman "working girls" participated enthusiastically, performing naked in theatres and taking part in gladiatorial events. The themes of fertility and sexuality are obviously still very much associated with Beltane and May Day amongst modern pagans... but let's look more closely at the ancient history of Beltane in the British Isles.  First of all, the origin of the name "Beltane" is disputed. The holiday was also known as "Roodmass" in England and "Walpurgisnacht" in Germany. Alternately spelled Bealtaine, Beltaine, and any number of Gaelic derived-spellings, it is also the Irish word for the month of May, and is said to mean anything from "Bel-fire" Feast of the god Bel" to "bright fire." Janet and Stewart Farrar, in Eight Sabbats for Witches offer an excellent tracing of the holiday's Irish roots, and particularly the European fire-god Belenus whom they believe this festival is named for (a name possible traced back to Baal, the bible's only pagan god, whose name simply means "Lord"). Ronald Hutton states that since the Celtic word "bel" means bright or fortunate, this is adequate to explain the translation as being "lucky fire" or "bright fire."
-  Peg Aloi, You Call It May Day, We Call It Beltane 

May, in the 8th week of Quarantine

Still, I rejoice in the Spring. Photos of the emerging garden, and garden quotes today:

 foxglove emerging

 creeping phlox

"The world's favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May."
-  Edwin Way Teale

"May and June.  Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights.  The discussion of philosophy is over; it's time for work to begin." 
-  Peter Loewer  

The garden keeps me looking forward

and a poem or two, or a quote or two:

It's like this today in Emmitsburg.  48 degrees and sunny but blustery. Normal temp is 65.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March."
-  Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, 1926 


and this, from Robert Louis Stevenson:

"Flower god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,
Cold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles,
Here I wander in April
Cold, grey-headed; and still to my
Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,
Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant;
Spring, flower-planter in meadows,
Child-conductor in willowy
Fields deep dotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses:
Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity:
O child, happy are children!
She still smiles on their innocence,
She, dear mother in God, fostering violets,
Fills earth full of her scents, voices and violins:
Thus one cunning in music
Wakes old chords in the memory:
Thus fair earth in the Spring leads her performances.
One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal
Green - one more, and my bosom
Feels new life with an ecstasy."


-  Robert Louis Stevenson, Flower God, God of the Spring

It is waking up before you

I'm not even sure when I wrote this draft, but am publishing it today.


This poem speaks to me today, even though this illness has nothing to do with Covid19:

“Myxomatosis” by Philip Larkin

Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.

I make a sharp reply,
Then clean my stick. I’m glad I can’t explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep quite still and wait.

(a highly infectious and usually fatal viral disease of rabbits, causing swelling of the mucous membranes and inflammation and discharge around the eyes.)


and this song:

IT'S A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING

With his back against the San Francisco traffic,
On the bridges side that faces towards the jail,
Setting out to join a demographic,
He hoists his first leg up over the rail.
And a phone call is made,
Police cars show up quickly.
The sergeant slams his passenger door.
He says, "Hey son why don't you talk through this with me,
Just tell me what you're doing it for."

"Oh, it's a little bit of everything,
It's the mountains,
It's the fog,
It's the news at six o'clock,
It's the death of my first dog,
It's the angels up above me,
It's the song that they don't sing,
It's a little bit of everything."

An older man stands in a buffet line,
He is smiling and holding out his plate,
And the further he looks back into his timeline,
That hard road always had led him to today,
And making up for when his bright future had left him,
Making up for the fact that his only son is gone,
And letting everything out once, His server asks him,
Have you figured out yet, what it is you want?
I want a little bit of everything,
The biscuits and the beans,
Whatever helps me to forget about
The things that brought me to my knees,
So pile on those mashed potatoes,
And an extra chicken wing,
I'm having a little bit of everything.

Somewhere a pretty girl is writing invitations,
To a wedding she has scheduled for the fall,
Her man says, "Baby, can I make an observation?
You don't seem to be having any fun at all."
She said, "You just worry about your groomsmen and your shirt-size,
And rest assured that this is making me feel good,
I think that love is so much easier than you realize,
If you can give yourself to someone,
Then you should.
Cause it's a little bit of everything,

The way you choke, the way you ache,
It is waking up before you,
So I can watch you as you wake.
So in the day in late September,
It's not some stupid little ring,
I'm giving a little bit of everything.”

Oh, it's a little bit of everything,
It's the matador and the bull,
It's the suggested daily dosage,
It is the red moon when it's full.
All these psychics and these doctors,
They're all right and they're all wrong,
It's like trying to make out every word,
When they should simply hum along,
It's not some message written in the dark,
Or some truth that no one's seen,
It's a little bit of everything.

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Taylor Goldsmith

In the Sixth Week of Quarantine

Lizzie Riches,  The Gardener's Assistant





"When the April wind wakes the call for the soil, I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth, and, as I follow through the fresh and fragrant furrow, I am planted with every foot-step, growing, budding, blooming into a spirit of spring."
-  Dallas Lore Sharp, 1870-1929 



Haven't written for a while; I've been sinking into depression.  Napping, eating out of boredom,
watching "Midsomer Murders"  and yearning to get out into the garden.

Finally the temperatures reached 60 degrees and the sun emerged yesterday, so I planted the 10 Dahlia tubers and the 6 Tuberose bulbs and the 1 Blue Hill Meadow Sage plant that I had ordered months ago. 

I don't know what will happen to our country.  Cannot stand the sight of Donald Trump.

It's National Poetry Month, and I haven't even attempted to write a poem.  I don't seem to have anything to say.

Here's a poem, though, from Edna St. Vincent Millay:



"To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?"

-  Edna St. Vincent Millay, Spring

Felix Casorati,    The Dream

I specify you with joy

Holy Saturday      April 11,2020

Art by Daniel Bonnell

To Him that was Crucified

My spirit to yours, dear brother;
Do not mind because many, sounding your name, do not understand you;
I do not sound your name, but I understand you, (there are others also;)
I specify you with joy, O my comrade, to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since—and those to come also,
That we all labor together, transmitting the same charge and succession; 
We few, equals, indifferent of lands, indifferent of times;
We, enclosers of all continents, all castes—allowers of all theologies,
Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,
We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers, nor any thing that is asserted;
We hear the bawling and din—we are reach’d at by divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every side, 
They close peremptorily upon us, to surround us, my comrade,
Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down, till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,
Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers, as we are.

—Walt Whitman

Hello in there

John Prine died last night of Covid 19 . He was 73.


I regret not knowing of his songs until recently.  The lyrics to this one make me cry.


"Hello In There"

We had an apartment in the city,
Me and Loretta liked living there.
Well, it'd been years since the kids had grown,
A life of their own left us alone.
John and Linda live in Omaha,
And Joe is somewhere on the road.
We lost Davy in the Korean war,
And I still don't know what for, don't matter anymore.

[Chorus:]
Ya' know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder ev'ry day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello."

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more,
She sits and stares through the back door screen.
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen.
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? Nothing much to do."

[Chorus]

So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello."

Good Friday, Riding Westward

John Donne (1572-1631)

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God's face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to Thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.

The sad is so big I can't get it all out

This is a magnificent poem  

Oh Wonder     by Traci Brimhall

It’s the garden spider who eats her mistakes
at the end of day so she can billow in the lung
of night, dangling from an insecure branch

or caught on the coral spur of a dove’s foot
and sleep, her spinnerets trailing radials like
ungathered hair. It’s a million-pound cumulus.

It’s the stratosphere, holding it, miraculous. It’s
a mammatus rolling her weight through dusk
waiting to unhook and shake free the hail.

Sometimes it’s so ordinary it escapes your notice—
pothos reaching for windows, ease of an avocado
slipping its skin. A porcelain boy with lamp-black

eyes told me most mammals have the same average
number of heartbeats in a lifetime. It is the mouse
engine that hums too hot to last. It is the blue whale’s

slow electricity—six pumps per minute is the way
to live centuries. I think it’s also the hummingbird
I saw in a video, lifted off a cement floor by firefighters

and fed sugar water until she was again a tempest.
It wasn’t when my mother lay on the garage floor
and my brother lifted her while I tried to shout louder

than her sobs. But it was her heart, a washable ink.
It was her dark’s genius, how it moaned slow enough
to outlive her. It is the orca who pushes her dead calf

a thousand miles before she drops it or it falls apart.
And it is also when she plays with her pod the day
after. It is the night my son tugs at his pajama

collar and cries: The sad is so big I can’t get it all out,
and I behold him, astonished, his sadness as clean
and abundant as spring. His thunder-heart, a marvel

I refuse to invade with empathy. And outside, clouds
groan like gods, a garden spider consumes her home.
It’s knowing she can weave it tomorrow between

citrus leaves and earth. It’s her chamberless heart
cleaving the length of her body. It is lifting my son
into my lap to witness the birth of his grieving.

Because I live where I live

I'm standing, far right.

I live in this large complex:

in one room on one floor of one wing

Our retired sisters live in this building, in another area.  Of all the sisters in this building , I am about the fourth youngest, and the three younger than me are about the same age.

So, death visits our house several times a year.   But last evening , we had two in a row.  One sailed off on the Sea of Faith at 10PM, and the other, about 4AM.  Neither of them from Covid19.
Blessedly, that has not reached our house yet.

But these deaths do give me pause, even as Spring arrives.

here's a poem from Wang Wei:


"O Day after day we can't help growing older.
Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.
Come let's enjoy our winecup today,
Nor pity the flowers fallen."

-  Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring  

The Quarantine continues

It certainly is



I've been counting my 15 day quarantine in 3 ways:

1. from the last day of in-person classes ( March 11) and a shopping trip to Wegmans in Frederick ( March 12).   That one ended March 26.
2. I broke that one with an all-day training session on using Canvas ( our computer program) at the Mount, plus grocery shopping at Weis, on March 14. That one ended on March 29.
3. I broke that one with a trip to the Motor Vehicle Administration offices in Westminster, and grocery shopping, on March 19.  That one will end on April 3.

So far, so good.  If I'm carrying the virus, there have been no signs. I haven't been sick. Yet.  I'm trying to be careful because I live in a big house where about 50 elderly sisters live.  So far, none of them has been sick.  I am certainly not the only one coming and going; we have all the nursing aides and housekeeping and kitchen staff, not to mention the twelve or so other sisters like me.  So we will see.

I have an appointment with the eye doctor in Frederick on April 1, and I hope it is not cancelled.  I need that doctor to sign the paper that says I can drive a car without a problem. My current license expires on April 27.  

These are miniscule concerns compared to the catastrophes happening all over the country and the world.

But Spring is a consolation.


and now I find out that the Governor of Maryland has given an extension for applications for all things motor vehicle related:  30 days after the end of the shutdown period, whenever that it.


So it goes.

may we be kept patient by the Keeper of Spring  ( art by Lucia Ferrara)

Sluggish Dazed Spring Approaches

Early Spring    by Julian Underdonk



Here's a powerful and appropriate poem by William Carlos Williams:

Spring and All (I)

By William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

I love this picture  by Sibylle von Offers.   Translation of the verse:


And as spring comes into the country
there pulls a colorful ribbon,
the beetles, flowers,
small grasses,
rejoicing into the world

Pachamama

The greening of the lawns, which I can see from my bedroom window, as well as the Spring Equinox, make me think of all the artistic renderings of Mother Earth.

Today I am especially reflecting on Pachamama.  I didn’t even know of her existence until Jennifer Heath, in her wonderful book The Echoing Green: The Garden in Myth and Memory,  spoke of her.

art by TeklaU

from The Goddess Garden website:

Pachamama is a fertility goddess, originating from the ancient Inca, the indigenous people who inhabited the Andes mountains. In the indigenous Quechua language, Pachamama (also known as Mama Pacha) translates as Mother Earth or Mother Cosmos. In other cultures, she is referred to as Gaia and Mother Earth. She oversees life by nourishing and protecting it’s inhabitants, her children. She is still an important aspect of religion in Peru today. Andean people believe strongly in the importance of living in harmony with nature and not taking too much from her. When she is disrespected, it is believed that problems will arise, such as earthquakes.

To ensure Pachamama looked favorably upon them, the Inca people made regular offerings to her. This is known as pago a la tierra (payment to the earth). These ceremonies are still performed today, and consist of offerings of traditional items such as coca leaves, huayruro seeds, and chicha (a corn beer). Shrines for Pachamama are made from hallowed rocks, or the trunks of significant trees. Artists depict her as an adult female bearing harvests of potatoes and coca leaves.

art by Arianna Ruffinengo