Silence leaves the door open - it leaves intentionality undeclared so one can claim "Oh, I hadn't realized that you thought / expected / wanted ... ". When one does not claim intentions, and one functions in silence, the door is left wide open for all unstated commitments (or the lack thereof).
Rupert's Land (sometimes called "Prince Rupert's Land") is a prime example of intentionality trumping silence; the taking of Canada from the First Nations by colonial powers is another prime example of intentionality trumping silence. Culture had a big part to play in intentionality trumping silence. The irony is that the culture of silence was seen as no culture at all - especially when you consider the culture of Mother Earth is a culture of silence.
We cannot take the earth with us when we die; and while we are alive we cannot fit physical tracts of earth, acreage, into our pockets, into our backpacks, into our carry-on luggage - boarding a plane with land and taking it to another country - it is possible only in the mind, and in the power-hungry eye of the person who thinks they can own that which they cannot even begin to try and carry: the Land, Mother Earth, remains as she always has been - present and immovable, available, but not really take-able. Get that. And get it good - you cannot take Mother Earth with you - whether or not you have a title, a piece of paper claiming your entitlement to her, you cannot take her with you. The best you can do is hope to return to her - ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She will win every single time, even if she has been ravaged and raped, seeded and succeeded by ownership changing hands on paper, she is un-own-able, un-capturable, solidly silent. She may be destroyed but she is indestructible, whether fallow or fertile, she will outlast all of our puny little human existences, all of our paltry power struggles on paper with ownership and titles. Mother earth will remain un-annihilated, long after each war-monger and capitalist is dead and gone.
Don't mistake her silence for a language in competition with this modern-day intentionality, this nouveau need to know what everything is about - the status of each and all. Mother Earth does not need Facebook to tell us her status - unlike us, she does not need to declare her whereabouts (for she is everywhere) and her what's-she-up-to's (for she's up to it all, about it all, around it all, in it all, through it all - through and through).
There is nothing we use, eat, buy, sell, trade, keep or throw away that is not of her, that she did not in some way provide the raw material for, the energy of, the coming into being of. There is no antique that she does not predate. There is no artifact that she does not supplant. There is no history whose truth she could not reveal were she to speak the language we speak. But she's not into the business of stated intentionality - she is silent, our Mother Earth. She leaves words up to us.
Who is this Christian God juxtaposed against this Mother Earth? The Christian God speaks intentionality into the silence of nature; speaks of the power concepts like sin, salvation, redemption and rapture. If language had not given voice to these power concepts, if the concepts of power had not been named so intentionally, would God be able to be as silent as our beautiful, ever-present, Mother Earth?
Yahweh, Jesus Christ, God, Holy Spirit - do you realize that Mother Earth predates your naming? No doubt you existed as force before she did - but you were not called into named form until humankind had need to put title to concepts of power and predecession. Before you were named, Mother Earth was the throne of all power. Language is a tool to name concepts, not always sound concepts. Language allows us to use words as metaphors, to hang titles on things our minds can scarce conceive. When our minds go to the powerless places, language allows us the words that, knotted together form the rope ladder that brings us back to a place of some sense of power.
Oh Mother Earth, I never saw you bear forth a dictionary tree or a thesaurus vine; Oh Mother Earth, your rivers never flowed with intentionality, your mountains were never sign-posted and billboarded with ads until humankind felt the need to compete with your huge and perfect nature.
It's not enough for humankind to spring forth from the earth, from you, Mother Earth, in silence. We need a drum-roll of intentionality to lay and pave the way ...
Think of the human relationship - man meets woman; they like each other, there is attraction, there is sexual chemistry, there is lust. They have sex. If there is no declaration of intentionality about their relationship, what do they have? If they declare their emotions (as love) and they declare their union (as marriage), then their sexual relationship is blessed. The declared intentionality has converted what would otherwise have been (perceived by some) as sin, into a beautiful act that is part and parcel of a blessed union of God. Words, words - how beautifully do you wrap sinful silence with the powerful presence of intentionality. Does the God who pre-dated spoken and written word, who created our silent Mother Earth, recognize a blessed union if it is a union of silence?
Intentionality - declared in words, on paper, was a big part of what was missing from Canada's First Nations'. The French and then the British would have been much harder pressed to justify their behaviour had they landed on these shores and been met by First Nations' people who handed them paper titles for land ... if intentionality of ownership had been declared in the language of sovereignty, the language of power, the only language the colonists understood. But the First Nations of these lands did not see land as something to be owned by individuals - they understood that a leaf, a seed, a feather, a bit of bark could fit into a pocket or a pack, but not Mother Earth. They saw no need for declaring intentionality over something they could never pack up and move with - something to which they belonged, rather than which belonged to them. They spoke the language of Mother Earth - a language of silence.
Colonial declarations of intentionality had no trouble trumping the language of silence. The lands the First Nations had occupied, worked, lived on, been supported by for thousands of years, these lands by the swipe of ink across some colonial parchment became "Prince Rupert's Land"! Ownership was declared and the logic of who was there first, who had the most rights to the land, those logics went the way of the silent sexual union - unblessed by declarations of intentionality into the sacrament of marriage. Declaring intention does not make it right.
I trust Mother Earth. I trust the God of my understanding to speak with me directly. I trust them both before I trust any words on any paper provided by any human hand.
In the silence, God speaks loudly, and Mother Earth holds me safely in the palm of her hand.
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