In a recent Resilience and Possibility call hosted by Pachamama Alliance, we had the honor of welcoming Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining), a Diné (Navajo) grandmother, activist, and visionary. What unfolded was not just a conversation—it was a transmission.

In her embodied presence, words become medicine. You don’t just hear what she says, you feel them. It is as if the Earth is speaking through her and she speaks as one who remembers: 

“I introduce myself as Holy Earth Surface Walker, life bringer, life bearer, and I stand with the full authority of this Mother Earth behind me, through me, as me. And it is my place always to speak on behalf of life.”  

Here are three powerful teachings she shared, guiding us toward a renewed relationship with the Earth.

The Pact Between Earth and Humanity Is On The Line

Pat didn’t mince words: 

“The pact that humanity has with Earth is on the line right now.” 

This isn’t a metaphor—it’s reality. The question before us is whether we will remember our place in the sacred web of life or continue our path of disconnection and destruction.

She spoke of Oak Flat in Arizona, a sacred site where the Apache people initiate their young women as life-bearers. These places are not only culturally important, they are ceremonial grounds where ancient prayers and traditions are renewed and kept alive. They are the spring from which future generations draw strength, wisdom, and the authority to speak for life. 

To desecrate such places in the name of profit and copper mining, Pat explained, is not just environmental harm—it severs humanity’s ability to live in “omni-beneficence,” which means to be “a benefit and blessing to all.” That, she said, is our highest human potential. 

“Even if you don’t feel like you are from an Indigenous people, you are Indigenous to Earth. Your love, your awe, your exhilaration, your care, your respect for this Mother Earth counts. And it counts quadruple right now,” she says.

And it’s not just enough to say it. “You must get ourselves out onto the land,” Pat urged. “Place your hands on her. Touch that water. Say thank you and acknowledge the beauty.” 

These everyday acts are how we uphold our part of the pact.

Pat urges, “It is our place as humans to always ask: Are we placing life at the center? And if not, then we must begin again.”

Land Reunion Is One of Earth’s Strategies for Interrupting Destruction

Throughout the call, Pat shared a profound view: Earth herself is strategizing. She is not passive, but actively working through us to interrupt systems of destruction. And one of her strategies? The return of land to Indigenous stewardship.

What some call Land Back, Pat calls Land Reunion. She described how sacred Diné land was returned with the help of unlikely allies: wealth holders who recognized that their family's wealth came from land theft and extractive industries, and landowners who said, “We can't hold this and we know it's sacred to your people.” 

She also described standing at Oak Flat with a group of Catholic nuns who held signs that said “Complicit No More,” a direct renunciation of the Doctrine of Discovery, the 15th-century Christian legal doctrine used to justify colonization. 

These acts of reparation, land back or land reunion, she said, are not just symbolic—they are interruptions of long held power-over narratives of ownership, of law over life, of finance, and of domination.

Listening Is a Practice of Right Relationship

At the heart of restoring humanity’s relationship with the web of life is a simple and radical act: listening. It’s about tuning into a field of intelligence far older and wiser than human intellect. When we listen from that place, she said, we don't act from urgency or ego. We act from guidance.

The Earth is not a backdrop or a landscape. Pat described Mother Earth as a single living organism and as a medicine wheel. Each being, including humans, is a part of the sacred hoop of life, not the whole hoop, she reminded us, but one part of it. 

Each member has to uphold its place for the hoop to remain whole. Humans have a responsibility to offer their unique medicine, as all species do, to contribute to the flourishing of life. This pact with the Earth requires us to come back into the right relationship and any good relationship requires listening.

Pat offered a simple daily practice:

“Rise with the sun. 

Go outside. 

Make an offering—whether it be cornmeal, tobacco, a gesture or breath. 

Say aloud, in your own words: I want to remember how to be in a relationship with all life. 

I want to be a participant in the Thriving Life way. 

Speak to me in a way I can understand. 

And then listen.” 

Make it real, even if it feels awkward. We’re unlearning hundreds of years of a modern world paradigm that has conditioned us to forget these innate capacities. It is not about performance. It is about relationships, which requires sincerity, humility, and consistency.  

“Try it for 30 days,” she says. “And just see what happens.” 

Listening in this way isn’t passive—it’s a sacred act of returning to the web of life.

“The Earth is not waiting to be saved. She is guiding us—if we’re willing to follow her lead and humble ourselves.”

Global Day of Listening

So may we remember that we are not separate. We are not here to profit from the extraction of Mother Earth. We are kin. We can stand with the full authority of Earth behind us, within us, as us - and speak on behalf of life. 

As a way to honor and restore humanity’s sacred pact with the Earth, we invite you to join the Global Day of Listening on the Equinox, September 21st, 2025. Take the pledge to pause, listen, and attune to the wisdom of the living world—not just with your ears, but with your whole being. Participate alone or gather with others in a listening circle. Either way, you’ll be joining a global community remembering what it means to place life at the center.

Learn more and take the pledge to co-create a global field of reverence and attunement. 

Watch the Recording