Dorje was sharing a song with me last night.

He’s sang this song for quite a while, and until last night, I thought the words were:

Are you sleeping
Are you sleeping
Boys and girls
Boys and girls
Mother’s going to keep you
Mother’s going to keep you
Warm and safe
Warm and safe

Last night I realised the words were actually:

Are you sleeping
Are you sleeping
Boys and girls
Boys and girls
Mother Earth will keep you
Mother Earth will keep you
Warm and safe
Warm and safe

Excited by this new discovery, and ready to launch into a discussion of the Gaia hypothesis, or a discussion of various forms of the mother goddess, I asked Dorje if he knew what Mother Earth was.

“Yes”, he said, “it’s a gnomie that lives under the ground”.