Sardinia as Mother

I have no connection by blood with the island of Sardinia and her people. At least not that I know. Yet in the course of the many visits I made to the island from my childhood to my early 40s, a bond was created which never faded. I am sure that there are people who feel the same about a land which was not the one they were born in, or they live in, yet it is in some ways their motherland.

I have been feeling connected to other lands and places where I dwelled. Longing for a connection with the earth, the landscape, the native plants, as well as the ancient history of the human beings who lived there is part of my innate spirituality. Sardinia, however, has a special place in my heart.

It’s hard for me to be objective about Sardinia. I will tell you just some of my deep impressions, not unrelated to facts and information however. The people of Sardinia are unlike any other Italian. They seem to constitute a nation of their own, not just because of their language but because of character traits that are unmistakable.

Their hospitality is incredibly warm and yet not invasive. Their kindness is matched in intensity by their old stories which always regard deep feelings rather than just events. Regrets, love, loyalty, hate, hardships, and honor seem to be the stuff of which the island is made. The perception of the sacred in its everyday manifestations, but also in its terrible forms, is higher than in any other place I visited.

In Sardinia survive more Neolithic and Bronze Age sites than on any other place on earth. A myriad of pilgrimages and ancient magic rituals happen to this day, either with a veneer of Christian meaning attached to them or being called “just our customs.” Their a cappella music plunges the hearers into a very archaic soundscape.

In short, there is something incredibly premodern going on in the Sardinian soul and I am convinced that living Sardinians are embedded in a stream of tradition that goes back not centuries but millennia. We all are physically connected to our ancestors, of course — the DNA means something! —but it is seldom the case that one can feel a kind of collapsing of time, as if the modern era never existed, as if it was just a blink.

This is not to argue that Sardinians and their traditions and their ways of thinking are better. But they are surely unique.

I have recently heard a grown man telling a story about his childhood, which must have occured not earlier than the 1970s.

The child runs, in his hands is a water-filled clay vessel. He falls down, the pitcher breaks and the water is lost. He goes to his mother to implore forgiveness. The mother asks: “Why was what you did wrong?” The child answers: “Because I broke the pitcher.” The mother replies: “Wrong answer. You will not see me for a week.”

A week later the mother asks the same question and the child answers more or less the same: “Because the pitcher I broke was valuable?” After another week, the mother finally forgives the child with an explanation: “What you did was wrong because water is sacred and you don’t spill it on the ground without a reason.”

You tell me if this is not very ancient wisdom bubbling up in the 20th century. While I don’t agree with the pedagogy — and I am sure that the boy was sent to his grandmother or something of the kind, surely not left alone for two weeks — there is something about the sacred, motherhood, and wisdom that is utterly archaic in this story. Like many other things in Sardinia.

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Banner Image: The Bronze Age Nuraghe Loelle monument of Buddusò, Sardinia. Photo by Gianni Careddu on Wikimedia Commons.

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Queries for Contemplation

Have you ever had a connection to a land as mother?

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Related Readings by Matthew Fox

One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Time

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

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