Earth was a gift
This world was a garden given to us to play and learn in; a place where we would be dazzled and fed and loved. It's the very bosom of the Mother that bore us, the Mother of all. However, we've allowed fear and laziness to do injury to this kindness.
How do we heal the Earth?
As a species we clearly have the ability to destroy and upset the balance of natural cycles, eliminating billion-year old lines of life in daily extinctions, poisoning and outright demolishing and desecrating the living world around us. Change, and the willingness to change the direction of humankind's future and our relationship with the planet begins with the knowledge that the Earth, specifically the incredibly thin layer of life on its surface, and the atmosphere that is the product of that life's breath circulation, are infinitely more complex, interconnected, and precious than we can possibly comprehend. Accepting that air, water and food are the true sources of our life, rather than money is the most essential paradigm shift that must drive humanity's decisions in this time of increasing climactic chaos.
Life on Earth is on the verge of being radically altered. Mass extinctions, severe weather, and population explosions threaten to upset the balance of the entire web of life. Our question is whether our truest loyalty is to convenience, technology, and material possessions, or to water, air, food, our fellow human beings and the great community of life, from Earthworms all the way up to phytoplankton, and the clouds they help create in the sky to keep us alive.
Our souls are connected to the flesh of this Earth that's torn and poisoned on a daily basis. Whether we witness the destruction of the rainforest ourselves, or simply live in concrete boxes in mostly dead cities consuming the last living elements of the surface, all of us can feel this desecration in our souls. All of us have the same sense that this cannot go on, and that something bad is destined to happen. And this very awareness is the beginning of renewal. Often an ugly, fatal truth is the only way to change reality into one in which the natural beauty of life can blossom again.
The seeds of our hope can bring flowers from our windowsills and edible delicacies from the gardens, from the Mother to our mouths, allowing us to be.
What can I do?
From the very air that green life has produced, to the trees our homes are made from, everything that we are and need is given by our Mother Earth. When we accept this, we can focus on what can be done to continue our existence.
Grow your own food!
The first, and most essential item we consume (and the only one we can not cut out entirely, unlike most of what we purchase) is what we eat. This, in the form of agriculture, is doing great harm to the planet. Vast swathes of grassland, forest and irrigated regions have been violently converted from their original wilderness into consumer food baskets. Unfortunately, a great deal of pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used to grow such a large amounts of food, and of course the destruction of the tropical forests especially, along with all the natural leafy cover of the surface, is the other side of the climate crisis, along with the burning of fossil fuels.
We need to understand that to survive, be healthy, and nutritionally complete, we do not need to do all of this damage. We can actually be much healthier with a smaller footprint on the land. This is because the majority of land we use for farming, and the majority of the food we grow on farms is for the purpose of feeding and fattening up cows, chickens and pigs, which are overpopulated by tens of billions beyond human numbers, in order for us to consume them.
Increase the amount of protein we get from plants.
Plant sources like whole grains, legumes (beans) and nuts will radically decrease the amount of land required for agriculture, allowing much of it to regenerate in to wilderness. Human assistance is essential here, as we race against time to re-seed trees and plants to stabilize the climate in time to avert biological breakdowns and inhospitable climates.
Get food from as close as possible, preferably your own or a community garden.
This will reduce the massive amount of greenhouse gasses emitted to fly, ship and drive our food thousands of miles from its original spot in the soil to our plates.
Buy organic produce.
The pesticides and herbicides used now to decrease crop loss from insects and weeds, will not only harm us in the long term by putting these poisons into our body, but will make the growing of those very crops impossible if the vast community of life that makes up the soil is not intact to support the corn growing so majestically above it. Organic, or naturally grown food is not a luxury but rather a necessity that must become the law in our lands. We would not drink or eat poisons voluntarily, so why would we put them in our foods and juices?
A few other things to reduce our ecological footprint.
Reduce energy use, use mass transit when possible, buy greener vehicles, and vote! Politicians and decision makers will not increase the service and capacity of their systems until they see a demand, make your voice heard. Silence is complicity.
There is a myriad of other ways to help the planet, all visible at www.myfootprint.org, and though some of these may seem challenging, they are nothing compared to the obstacles we will have to face with inaction.
Our greatest challenge is not in our relationship with nature, but to our own species. Cooperation and togetherness are a necessity in the process of change. We must set aside conflict and aggression. The human genome project, as it analyzed our DNA and our connections to each other, has confirmed what any one of us knows just from looking into the eyes of another, that we are quite literally all a family. By recognizing the Mother of this family, and that all life was born from her same beautiful, blue-green womb, humankind can survive in this garden.
Knowing the truth of our self and our source is the greatest spiritual reward in any birth. We must overcome the manipulation, and meditate on the truth of life. Even a still moment, being softly touched by the sunlight can be enough to remind us that this Earth is here that we may know that we are loved.
Special thanks to GaiaisI (Gabriel Nicolau) for making this contribution to ekatvam.org.
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