Meditation: July 16th, 2025
Physical Setting & Preparation
Find yourself in a place where you can witness both abundance and scarcity, generosity and withholding—perhaps where lush growth exists alongside barren patches, where some plants thrive in sunlight while others wither in shadow, or where the evidence of both nourishment and neglect tells the complex story of how life responds to varying conditions.
Allow your body to feel both the warmth of appreciation for what you've received and the tension of recognizing what has been denied or taken. Notice how your chest can simultaneously expand with thankfulness and contract with the sharp clarity that comes from acknowledging unfairness. Breathe deeply, tasting both the sweetness of gifts recognized and the bitter wisdom that comes from understanding how differently life treats its various children.
Opening Invocation | Fosgladh
Tha mi a' teachd gu Màthair na Talmhainn
(I come to the Mother of the Earth)
Place your hands upon your heart and feel the complex truth that beats there—gratitude for the countless gifts that sustain your existence, and resentment for the injustices that wound the heart of the world. Both responses arise from the same source: a heart that loves life enough to both celebrate its flourishing and grieve its suffering.
A Mhàthair, gabh ri mo fhìrinn
(Mother, accept my truth)
In this moment of summer's complex reality, when abundance and scarcity exist side by side, when some beings feast while others hunger, call upon the Mother's deepest teaching about honest response. She who understands that both gratitude and resentment can be forms of love—one honoring what nourishes life, the other refusing to accept what diminishes it.
Body of the Working | Corp
Tha mi taingeil airson iomadh rud
(I am grateful for many things)
Feel the golden stream of gratitude flowing through your being like honey, like morning light, like the sweetest water flowing from the deepest spring. It carries appreciation for breath entering your lungs, for earth supporting your weight, for sun warming your skin, for the intricate web of relationships that makes your existence possible.
This gratitude extends beyond personal gifts to encompass the vast generosity of existence itself—rain that falls on just and unjust alike, seasons that return with perfect regularity, the patient earth that continues growing food despite humanity's treatment of her, the sun that rises each day offering its light to all beings without discrimination.
Summer amplifies this gratitude through overwhelming abundance: flowers offering nectar to every passing bee, trees providing shade for any creature seeking shelter, fruits ripening with such generosity that they often fall to earth uneaten, returned as gift to the soil that birthed them.
Your gratitude connects you to the cosmic dance of giving and receiving that sustains all existence. Every cell in your body was formed from elements forged in ancient stars; every breath contains oxygen gifted by plants; every heartbeat is sustained by nutrients drawn from earth, water, air, and fire in their endless circulation through the web of life.
Ach tha mi cuideachd diombach
(But I am also resentful)
Yet alongside this golden gratitude burns another fire—the sharp, clean flame of resentment that refuses to pretend suffering doesn't exist, that will not call poison healing or name oppression love. This resentment carries the fierce clarity that recognizes when the web of life has been torn, when generosity has been hoarded, when power has been used to harm rather than heal.
Your resentment speaks for every creature that has been denied what it needs to flourish, every ecosystem that has been destroyed for profit, every being that has suffered so that others might live in excess. It burns with the same energy that drives immune systems to attack invading toxins, that compels mother animals to defend their young against predators, that activates natural systems to restore balance when harmony has been disrupted.
This resentment is not petty anger but sacred anger—love's refusal to accept injustice as natural or inevitable. It carries the same force that drives plants to push through concrete, that compels rivers to eventually wear away dams, that motivates oppressed peoples to rise against systems that deny their basic dignity and rights.
Summer's own resentment shows in drought that follows deforestation, in storms that intensify due to climate disruption, in the way ecosystems react when their balance is violated by short-sighted human interference.
The Deep Working | An Obair Dhomhain
Thig a-steach don cho-thuigse
(Come into the understanding)
Descend now into the sacred space where gratitude and resentment reveal their hidden unity—both arise from love, both serve life's continuation, both provide essential information for navigating existence with integrity and wisdom. Here you discover that the heart large enough to feel deep gratitude is also large enough to feel appropriate resentment, and that both responses serve the greater good.
The forest demonstrates this teaching through its own responses. Trees that receive adequate light and water grow strong and generous, offering shelter and oxygen with abundant gratitude. Trees denied these necessities develop deep root systems, tough bark, and efficient strategies that demonstrate a form of resentment—refusal to accept limitation as permanent, determination to survive and eventually thrive despite difficult conditions.
Tha gach mothachadh cudromach
(Each feeling is important)
Feel yourself integrating this deeper understanding. Your gratitude becomes recognition of what serves the whole web of life and deserves to be celebrated, protected, and multiplied. Your resentment becomes recognition of what threatens the web of life and needs to be challenged, transformed, or healed.
Both responses serve the same ultimate purpose: maintaining and restoring the conditions that allow all beings to flourish. Gratitude motivates you to nurture and protect what works; resentment motivates you to change or eliminate what doesn't work. Together they create the discernment necessary for wise action in a complex world.
In summer's intensity, when the consequences of both generosity and neglect become most visible, both gratitude and resentment intensify as appropriate responses to reality's full spectrum. The season teaches that authentic spiritual response includes both appreciation for abundance and anger at unnecessary scarcity, both celebration of life's gifts and protest against life's wounds.
Your breath becomes the rhythm of honest response—the in-breath that receives reality fully, including both its gifts and its injustices, and the out-breath that offers both thanksgiving for what serves life and determination to change what harms it.
Afterthought | Smuain Dheiridh
Take a moment to contemplate:
How might your capacity for both deep gratitude and appropriate resentment be life's way of training you to respond honestly to reality's full spectrum? What would it mean to honor both emotions as forms of love that serve the greater flourishing of all beings?
Closing Blessing | Beannachd Dheiridh
Beannachd Mhàthair na Talmhainn ort
(The blessing of the Mother of the Earth upon you)
As you slowly return to the world of choices and actions, carry with you the deep knowing that gratitude and resentment are both forms of clear seeing—gratitude recognizing what deserves celebration and protection, resentment recognizing what requires change and healing. Like summer itself—simultaneously the most generous and most revealing season—you are designed to respond honestly to the full complexity of existence.
Thoir leat cridhe fìrinneach
(Take with you a truthful heart)
Go forward knowing that every moment offers opportunities for both authentic appreciation and appropriate resistance. Your heart is large enough to hold both overwhelming gratitude for life's gifts and fierce resentment of life's wounds, both celebration of what works and determination to heal what doesn't. This is how you serve the great work of creating a world where all beings can flourish—through honest recognition of both what deserves thanks and what demands change.
Thank you ❤️
Thank you, thank you! Especially because I read it at five and I just now woke back up! It gave me three more hours of sleep💕