“All the Earth Is Sacred” Video
This song and video are dedicated to my sister, Dr. Anne Morton, a powerful, tenacious environmental activist for many years.
All the Earth is sacred; sacred is Her ground;
mountains, trees, and flowers everywhere abound.
Her beauty all around is still found.
Earth calls out for nurture; Earth calls out for care;
we will work to save Her treasures everywhere.
Her beauty all around is still found.
Words © 2019 Jann Aldredge-Clanton
Climate change threatens our survival and the survival of all life. Scientists say Earth is warming faster than previously thought. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and fires are increasing in frequency and severity. Climate change has contributed to the spread of viruses, including the coronavirus. Though Earth shakes, floods, burns, and groans, there is still hope.
As Gerard Manley Hopkins writes in his poem “God’s Grandeur,” though “all is seared with trade,” there still “lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”
The song video “All the Earth Is Sacred” ends by celebrating that Earth’s “beauty all around is still found.”
References to Earth are traditionally feminine, but the feminine is not given sacred value in our culture and worship. Like females, Earth continues to be devalued, exploited, assaulted, and abused. Including female divine names in our worship connects the revaluing of females to the revaluing of the earth, contributing to overcoming the interconnected oppressions of gender, race, class, and nature.
Ecowomanism uses interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to link social justice issues, including gender, racial, economic, and sexual justice, to ecological justice. “Ecowomanism is critical reflection, contemplation, and praxis-oriented study of environmental justice from the perspectives of women of color and particularly women of African descent.”–Melanie L. Harris, Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths
This song video “All the Earth Is Sacred” draws from ecowomanism in connecting social justice issues, and calling us to celebrate the sacred beauty of Earth and “work to save Her treasures everywhere.”
Video Credits
Performed by: Katie Ketchum
Music: Katie Ketchum
Lyrics: Jann Aldredge-Clanton
From: Hersay: Songs for Healing and Empowerment
Recorded at: Joe Hoffmann Studios, Occidental, CA
Visual Artists:
Katie Ketchum: paintings of Hersay Cover Image & Divine Wisdom
Julianne Hickerson Newton: photo of sun beaming through trees
David Clanton: photo of orchids
Kevin Peng; photo of Alice Heimsoth working in beautiful Zen garden in Tassajara, California
Deborah Tash: photo of rose
Stacy Boorn: photos of blacksmith lapwing with eggs and of columbine flower
Elaine Chan-Scherer: photo of trumpet vine