Book: Summoned by the Earth : Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World
Author: Cynthia Jury
Publisher: Prospecta Press
Year: 2024
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “The most pressing question in these uncertain times may well be, How can we bring healing and protection to the Earth? It was this very question that Cynthia Jurs carried with her in 1990 as she climbed a path high in the Himalayas to meet an “old wise man in a cave” – a venerated lama from Nepal. In response to her question, the old lama gave her a formidable assignment based on an ancient practice from Tibet : she must procure earth treasure vases made of clay and potent medicines, fill them with prayers and symbolic offerings, and bury them around the world where healing is called for.
Thus begins the journey of a lifetime – sometimes harrowing, but always shining with beauty at the threshold between urgency and the timelessness of the sacred. In Summed by the Earth we accompany this passionate and creative Buddhist teacher, as she attempts to fulfill the daunting task. Ultimately, the path from the wise man’s mountain cave winds around the world, bringing Cynthia into relationship with elders, activists and diverse communities. One by one, as the humble clay pots are planted in the earth, the power of an ancient technology of the sacred comes alive and global community grows to protect the Earth and learn how to become vessels of healing.
As many of us wonder what we can do in this eleventh hour, Summoned by the Earth offers a riveting account of one woman’s response to the challenges we face, and is an irresistible invitation to become “sacred activists” heeding the call of the Earth.”

Review : Oh boy. You know, sometimes I read a book that moves me in such a profound way that I end up not even reviewing it – how do you put words to the thing that has changed and transformed you from the inside out? Anything you might say after that would pale by comparison. As I sit down to write this review, I fear the struggle to fully encapsulate the enormity of Summoned by the Earth may keep me from conveying to you just how life altering this book has been for me. I’m going to do my best!

This book, unlike what I generally review, did not come to me as an advanced reader copy, instead, it was sent to me by a PR agent post-release. I’m grateful this is how I was able to read this work: in its totality, with maps and endnotes and glossary and photos, with a foreword and an understanding of just how this journey has unfolded for the people involved as well as the planet. My copy is now filled to the brim with notations, underlined passages, dog eared pages, and little colorful tabs to remind me of all the many ways in which Cynthia Jurs has spoken directly to my soul. I suspect this will be a reread many times over and a gift I will be passing along to my friends.

In the 1990s, Cynthia was already considering the harmful effects of mankind’s destruction of the Earth when she took her pilgrimage to meet a reclusive Buddhist Lama, Charok Rinpoche. Living across the Rio Grande Valley from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) where nuclear weapons are created, tested, and stored, Jurs had already been contemplating the harmful effects of radioactive poisoning on the land. She explained her concerns to the Lama and asked him how she might be of service to the Earth, how she might heal the planet, and how she might do the work in a world devoid of hope in light of the atrocities being faced across the globe. Charok Rinpoche then gave her a directive : plant Earth Treasure Vases in the ground, allow them to do the work. In Charok Rinpoche’s Buddhist tradition, Earth Treasure Vases are clay pots filled with sacred medicine, containing what are referred to as “precious pills”, or those remaining aspects of a realized practitioner’s body that do not burn when their earthly vessels are burned after they’ve passed. The Earth Treasure Vessels, 30 in total, were created for Jurs after her departure from the mountain and sent along to her later, however ETVs are traditionally filled, closed, and sealed, never to be opened again. Because they were being shipped to Jurs, they could not be filled and sealed without fear of being reopened when passing through customs on their way to the United States, and so they were created using both clay and the sacred ingredients, empty vessels ready for Jurs’ filling.

Jurs, a Buddhist teacher who studied directly under Thich That Hanh, spent a great deal of time following the directive to heal the Earth by burying sacred vessels within her soil deepening her own spiritual practice, forming a Sangha (or community of practitioners), and meditating on the most useful places around the globe for these precious vessels to do their work. Beginning in the United States, Jurs, along with Tewa elders Marian Naranjo and Vickie Downey, chose to plant the first ETV within an area referred to as Area G, in a cave overlooking LANL. The Los Alamos National Laboratory resides on stolen indigenous land, belonging to the Tewa people, but taken by eminent domain during World War II. Indigenous tribes have not had access to their sacred sites located within LANL since their land was stolen.

Throughout this amazing, eye opening, deeply moving work, Jurs does more than simply plant vessels, hoping they’ll perform miracles. No. She engages her Sangha, meditating on each vessel with specific intentions for each chosen location, doing decades worth of research into communities that might benefit most from this practice, and connecting with elders from across the world. Several of the vessels were stewarded by those within her community, taken and placed by someone other than Cynthia herself, often by people with personal connections to the spaces where the vessels would be buried. There even remain a few left to be buried today, a work that continues on in the world even as we speak, despite already having put nearly thirty years into the ETVs.

Something that I appreciate so greatly about Cynthia’s work here is how transparent and honest she is with the reader – at times she describes mistakes she’s made when interacting with elders and indigenous communities, though never once making excuses or acting as though the mistakes are trivial matters. She outlines the work she’s done to make things right, to make reparations, and the communications she’s had to ensure it doesn’t happen again, she also acknowledges her own privilege and speaks to how that informs her work. Throughout this practice, in traveling to nearly every continent on this planet, she relies solely on the advice and acceptance of indigenous elders, never taking over or forging ahead if the vessels are not accepted. It is a welcome change from so many who leave the United States and travel to other countries with the idea that they might be a “savior” to those they encounter. Jurs remains humble, prostrating herself at the feet of those who hold sacred connection to their land, taking in whatever knowledge she can gain from them, and simply facilitating the space for the vessels to be filled with the prayers and intentions of those who live on the land where they’ll be buried. There are so many instances of indigenous elders waiting to receive signs or divining prior to accepting the vases, Jurs always defers to the elders.

There are so many moments throughout Summoned by the Earth where Nature herself seemed to be responding directly to the prayers and meditations being poured directly into the vessels, from the roars of white lions living within a refuge in the South African bush, to endangered eastern lowland gorillas in the DRC coming close enough to witness, to a humpback whale breeching and splashing the vase along the coast of Oaxaca, even to incredibly synchronous and intricately detailed crop circles appearing while in England. I found myself shedding tears over each moment as Jurs explained the connection she felt to the planet with each incredible inhuman encounter. It’s almost as if the planet understands our intent.

While the idea of Earth Treasure Vases healing the Earth may sound far-fetched or overly spiritual, at the end of the day there have been noticeable changes within regions where the ETVs have been planted – and this speaks directly to the impact of community healing that happens when people come together for a common cause. Within Liberia, where multiple vessels are buried, four Peace Huts have been erected to specifically address the prayers for peace within the region that came about during the prayer ritual and burial of the original Liberian ETV; multiple non-profits have been formed due largely in part to the work of the Sangha community, Jurs own work, and the work of those across the globe who have heeded the call for restoration and peace; and since the burial of the initial vase across from the sacred Tewa site where LANL resides, Tewa elders have been granted access to small portions of the land in order to leave offerings and begin to tend their holy spaces. When communities engage and gather together for a common cause of peace, tremendous work and healing can occur, of that we can be sure. Whatever you believe when it comes to the Earth Treasure Vases, it is clear that our global community is hurting, not just from climate change and radioactive waste, but from horrific humanitarian crises that are impossible to untangle from each other. Bringing communities together for prayer and intention and peace is a symbol of profound hope that this world so desperately needs.

It was an absolute honor to read this book, to delve into Cynthia’s life’s work, and to feel that in reading this book I have shared the emotions that have risen within me with an entire global mandala of people’s prayers and wishes and hopes for a better world. I read this book slowly, purposefully, and with intention and I come out of it feeling as though I’ve been unzipped in a way, as if the healing work of the ETVs has been at play in my own life, as though the energy they create has reached a small tendril out into my life and has drawn me into the matrix of global hope that permeates outward from the center.

Advice : Pick this book up. That’s all I have to say! My review is a measly thing in comparison. Pick this one up. You won’t regret it.