Earth Day 2024

Today we celebrate our planet, our earthly home. At our home in the woods a celebration of the planet takes place in some way every day. Perhaps it's a seed order, a letter about water quality in the creek that crosses our property, admiring a blooming orchid or slicing into an amazing tomato harvested a few yards from the kitchen. More often these days I simply watch nature flowing through the seasons.

Our appreciation of nature persists in spite of the full-on seizure and politicization of environmental themes by the radical left - the green movement - that came with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Even the unhinged need an anchor and it is after all the birthday (1870) of the Communist butcher, Vladimir Lenin. Still, it's sad they selected such a universal idea. And now even our information technology isolates us from the outside making it more difficult to experience, understand, appreciate, and protect our planet. All of my adult life, I fought hard to dissolve the barriers between people and nature. Whether we like it or not we live IN nature. The sooner we recognize it the better off both we and the planet will coexist.

Father Mississippi Walter Inglis Anderson, U.S., ca. 1955

Experiencing the earth and the built environment upon it has been the greatest teacher over the years. The written word provided significant guidance along the way. First came the foundation heard from childhood:

Psalm 104

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. 2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent 3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. 4 He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. 5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 8 they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. 9 You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. 10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. 11 They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. 13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. 14 He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-- bringing forth food from the earth: 15 wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart. 16 The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17 There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees. 18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the coneys. 19 The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. 20 You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. 21 The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. 22 The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. 23 Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening. 24 How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-- living things both large and small. 26 There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. 27 These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. 30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. 31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works-- 32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD. 35 But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, O my soul. Praise the LORD.

And here, from 1971, are words that to me reinforce that foundation:

...If you think that the world is going somewhere, that there are certain things that are supposed to happen and there are certain things that are supposed not to happen you never see the way it is like music. Music has no destination. We don' play it in order to get somewhere. If that were the way, the best orchestras would be those who got to the end of the piece the fastest. Music is a pattern which we listen to and enjoy as it unfolds. In the same way, "Where is the water going?" Where do the leaves go? Where are the clouds going? There not going anywhere because nature understands that the point of the whole thing is to be here, to be wide awake to the now that is going on. So when you listen to music you don't try to hold in your memory what is past or to think about what's coming. You listen to the pattern as it unfolds and so watch it as it moves now. It's a dance. And dancing is like music for when you dance you dance just to dance. You don't aim at a particular place on the floor that is your destination of the dance. You listen to the music and you move your body with it [as if] your eyes are following the patterns of the water.

 

The secret of...life is to spend some time every day in which you don't think but just watch, in which you don't form any ideas about life but look at it, listen to it, smell it, feel it. And when you get rid of all the talk in your head, all the ideas about what I do as distinct from what happen to me or what's the difference between man and nature or between what's mine and what's yours it all goes. And it's just the dancing pattern, what the Chinese call "li," the word that originally meant the markings in jade, the grain in wood, or...the pattern on water. When you let go of the definitions, of the attempt to try to pin down nature, to pin down life in your mind so that you can feel you are completely in control of it, its all based on the idea that you're different from it, that you have to master it. When you don't pin it down anymore, when you don't try to cling to it as if it was something different from you then your whole life has about it the sensation of flowing like water. It always goes away. but it always comes back because away and back are two sides of the same thing. Let it go!

Earth Day 2023 will soon be over in my woods but these passages where East meets West tell me that every day is an Earth day. For me the celebration indeed flows like water. Every day is a day to spend some time in observing nature and practicing its wise stewardship. Five generations ago the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak, spent his last summer in the United States in the Czech settlement of Spillville, Iowa. In two weeks there surrounded by a landscape of fields, farms, and families under the open skies of the prairie he composed what has become known as the American Quartet. It is a beautiful expression of the optimism of the American experience (see Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America) and a fine way to conclude remarks on what should be an uplifting celebration of the "big blue marble" we call Earth.

I hope this post encourages you to go OUTside and find your INside.

 



Sources

Text:

Psalm 104, Holy Bible, NIV

Alan Watts, writer/narrator, Buddhism, Man and Nature, Hartley Foundation, Inc., Cos Cob, Connecticut, 1968

Photos and Illustrations:
Andrew Weyth, Airborne (1996), porterbriggs.com