The planet is also so beautiful!
Share your Thoughts
Posted on June 24, 2008
Filed Under Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Earth spirituality, Inspiration and reflection
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Threatened, endangered, abused, battered, exploited, degraded — all those things, yes.
But also - so beautiful, this planet of ours.
My niece sent me this photo — a rainbow over the Chicago lake shore at Lincoln Park:
Wow, no? It’s a “wow!” for sure.
So much difficult news, so many concerns I could speak of today.
Goddard Institute for Space Studies’ Dr. James Hansen [”This is the last chance”] showing again that he is gloomier and scarier than I am about the planet’s future — the sky really is falling and we are out of time.
The presidential candidates’ disturbing proposals and political support for policies that will increases planetary degradation — McCain with his eagerness for drilling, Obama with his boosterism for corn ethanol. Both will increase carbon emissions; both will destroy ecosystems. [on corn ethanol, click here]
We could reflect on levees — on this human hubris that makes us think we can beat rivers into submission, until they humble us again — and then again. Two 500 year floods in the past 15 years, and more to come because of climate change — but don’t make me pay higher energy prices to force me to conserve or change my lifestyle — yea, we could reflect on that today, couldn’t we?
So many concerns we could speak of today. But all I really want to do is share this photo and invite you to take a moment to reflect on the beauty of this planet.
More, reflect on how it is that the Earth gave birth through billions of years of evolution to the kind of creatures with brains that can look out at such a wonder and gasp in awe at the beauty of it — the Earth evolved life to experience beauty.
Maybe if people begin to fall in love again with this planet, we will stop our domestic violence, our horrific abusive family dynamic.
Chicago — city of millions, dense, urban, overdeveloped, polluted — and this delicate ephemeral beauty arcing over it. Just the sun’s reflection on an evening rain — and we gasp in awe.
The blue sky is an optical illusion [great page on this for kids]. Another little miracle to make us love our world, an interacting of light, dust, oxygen and the human eye — and we experience it as beautiful…
…and then fill the illusion with smog and permanent haze that dilutes the color until we forget how deep a blue it once was — not that long ago, just back when I was a kid.
Deanna, stunned, goes for the camera, all excited, immediately sends out the photo, eager to share, needing to talk about it — that is the real human urge for life, that is the part of us that propels life forward to the greater consciousness we will need to save us from ourselves.
Even over dense, polluted, urban Chicago.
She signs off on her email messages with the phrase: “Take a moment to open your eyes…”
Yes, open wide. LOOK at your world. Look at all that made us, tries despite all our abuse to nurture us, to help us give up our false lives and phony identities, to reclaim who we are in the scheme of things — these creatures made for awe and wonder, these creatures made to shout out at beauty, “Oh my God, look at that!”
Take a moment. Experience the delight. Rediscover what really matters. Then live accordingly.
You could not help but see
that to be beautiful is also to be simpleand brief; is to rise up and be glorious, and then vanish…
Mary Oliver, The Book
Technorati Tags: rainbow over Chicago, degraded planet, beautiful planet, Dr. James Hansen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, McCain and oil drilling, Barack Obama and corn ethanol, failing levees, greater consciousness, Mary Oliver
Photo: Rainbow over Chicago by Deanna, used with permission
Poem fragment: Mary Oliver, The Book, in New and Selected Poems, Volume Two, Beacon Press, Boston, 2005
Comments
Leave a Reply
