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The recent UN Climate Change Summit, the marches in New York and around the world, once again brought into our collective consciousness the need for real change. As did the shocking news of the global loss of species. The vital need to protect our ecosystems is part of a cry that embraces the whole earth, from the smallest creature to the vast oceans.

And in the midst of this call to cease our globally self-destructive behavior is a story that touches each of us, every day. It is in every bite of an apple, every bowl of rice, every piece of bread we butter. It is the essential and elemental story of seeds, how we are losing our heritage, and how this effects our soul as well as our body.

As I take my walk these early fall mornings, I pass by an old apple tree with gnarled and empty branches. Only a few weeks ago these same branches pushed over the hedgerow, laden with red and golden fruit. Nature’s generosity is one of life’s wonders; and yet, seeing these empty branches, I am also reminded of the hidden sadness of loss, knowing how once in this country we had around 5,000 apple varieties but now mostly grow only 15 varieties.

Accordian, Camack Sweet, Haywood June, Sally Crocket, are just a few names of what has been lost. Like apples, all seeds, our most essential source of sustenance, are losing their biodiversity. They are suffering the same fate as much of the natural world, with many varieties being made extinct — 75 percent lost from the world’s fields: yet another example of what our mechanized world is destroying, the ecocide we are witnessing.

And yet behind this visible tragedy is another deeper sorrow, the loss of the stories of seeds, stories that have nourished our souls for millennia, just as the fruits of seeds have nourished our bodies. The story of the seed planted in the earth, germinating, growing in the darkness, breaking through the surface towards the sunlight, is one of the most ancient stories of fertility. These stories tell of the mystery of death and rebirth — both the outer, physical rebirth of nature as winter turns to spring, and also an inner transformation, reminding us that we too can descend into the inner world, the darkness within us, where we can experience the secrets of the soul, a spiritual rebirth. Stories of seeds not only connect us to the seasons of the Earth but also to our sacred inner nature.

These stories of the soul are part of our human history, our spiritual and mythic heritage that has nourished us with the sacred meaning of life — as real as grains ground into flour. For example, the myth of Demeter and Persephone speaks of the mysteries that belong to the sacred feminine, mysteries that were practiced at Eleusis in Greece for over a thousand years.

In this story, Persephone, the maiden, is gathering flowers in a meadow, when Hades — god of the underworld, who had fallen in love with her — carries her off into his kingdom. Here he gives her the seed of the sweet pomegranate, because of which she has to remain in the underworld for part of the year as Hades’ queen and wife, returning to the surface every spring.

The seed eaten in the underworld images the mystery of fertility and creativity that transforms a girl into a woman and gives her the instinctual knowledge of conception and birth. This ancient feminine mystery embraces life and sexuality and reveals its sacred meaning — an inner and outer transformation. And yet as a culture we consider this to be just a myth — how many women today are nourished by this knowledge, feel its primal power?