Environmentalism

The Plastic Bank.....social plastic, an idea whose time has come!

Loving, protecting and living on the earth

Another post about plastic, but this one is good news! This will be very short.

Please, check out the Plastic Bank - Harvesting Plastic Waste to Reduce Poverty.

What a brilliant idea they have! I don't know these people, but I am pretty sure I love them:

David Katz is the founder and President of The Plastic Bank. According to the website, David's dream was to bring hope to and liberate the minds of the world’s most disadvantaged and to rid the world of ocean plastic. His inspiration came from his travels, seeing beaches with more plastic than sand and people living in extreme poverty withouthope. David realized that, not only do the people of the world need hope, but also that the world itself is also struggling. I realize this too.

Shaun Frankson is a social entrepreneur. He wants to change the world. So do I.

Andrew Almack believes in the power of social entrepreneurship to change human behavior. I believe in the power of ideas to change human behavior.

Sarah Ross is dedicated to making the world a better place for her children and her children's children. So am I.

Please go to their website and read about this revolutionary idea. If it makes sense to you, the way it does to me, please sign their petition asking companies to use social plastic in order to improve lives while reducing plastic waste.

If you know of any other innovative businesses that are trying to solve environmental problems and improve lives, please leave a comment.

I want to introduce my readers to all of them, because I know that if we all work together we can protect the environment and improve the lives of those living in dire circumstances.

With open minds and optimistic hearts we can make a difference. That is why WE are here NOW.

Loving, protecting and living on the earth!

I write many blogs about the environment and how we must all do our part to slow climate change and to protect our natural resources. This page will be a page for sharing ideas, inventions and discoveries. I hope it engenders a real conversation about what individuals can do in big and little ways.

Here’s a question to start us off. Plastic is so much a part of our lives. It seems to be a part of almost everything we buy – on the packaging, if not in the product itself. So much of what we use in our homes is plastic, and to make matters worse, so much of it is one use plastic- cellophane wraps, plastic bags, plastic sandwich and freezer bags.

Question: What are the ways you reduce the use of plastic in your life? Let’s see how many ideas we can get.

Here is one thing I do. It doesn't sound like much, but after years of using plastic without even thinking about it, it was a big change for me. Now I hardly ever wrap anything in any kind of plastic for storage. Instead, I use glass containers for leftovers.

A simple easy change at the grocery store - I don't put my produce in plastic bags when I buy it. Why put apples, lettuce, tomatoes, etc in a plastic bag in your grocery cart just to put it in another bag to carry it home? My produce always arrives home just fine even though it is packed loose in my reusable grocery bags. (I have quite a variety of bags that I use for toting groceries. I think I got them all free and I just keep accumulating them. )I realize that for much of the world using reusable bags is the most common practice imaginable, but for many of us here in the U.S., it is something we actually had to "learn" to do. The same goes for not wrapping things in plastic...a learning curve for us here in the U.S.

Please add some suggestions for reducing or eliminating your use of plastic in your home. The more ideas we share, no matter how simple, the more we help people like ourselves make simple changes, and if enough us make simple changes it adds up to a big change. Even it you think it is something everyone already does, put it in a comment anyway. You never know what an impact your one idea may have.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Earth Day 2014

Please join me in a Thunderclap in honor of Earth Day. If everyone of my readers, friends on Facebook, and Twitter followers joins my campaign and shares it with their friends, we can reach 1000s of people by April 29. We need to keep the momentum from Earth Day, April 22, alive and growing! The message is simple - the time is now for us to unite our hands and hearts to slow climate change.

Yesterday the United Nations issued a report warning that governments are not doing enough to prevent profound environmental risks in coming decades...not centuries, decades! http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/science/earth/un-climate-panel-warns-speedier-action-is-needed-to-avert-disaster.html?_r=0

This is exactly the message in my novel, I Call Myself Earth Girl.

The silver lining in all this is that there is still time to do something about it if we have an intensive effort over the next 15 years.

The most encouraging aspect of all this is that for the first time ever the political will to take serious, committed action on the environment is rising across the globe.

I believe this will is the direct result of the grass roots efforts by people like you and me to raise awareness and to keep environmental issues front and center in our conversations, emails, and letters to our governmental leaders.

So, here it is... a call to action now! We have 15 years to save the future for our children, grandchildren and all those who follow.

We have been chosen to transition humanity to a new way of living, that will allow all to have a decent standard of living, achieved by living in harmony with nature and with each other.

The scientific evidence is clear. We can not wait. We must not wait.

It is our privilege and our responsibility because we are the humans who live on this planet right now. We can not let our differences divide us and keep us from solving the greatest problem of our time.

When it comes to climate change we can not be Democrats or Republicans. We can not let religious beliefs, national boundaries, political and economic philosophies divide us.

We must do all we can to learn how to reduce our own carbon footprints now. We must continue to protest, petition and speak out against policies that harm the environment. We can not wait for someone else to do it for us.

This is our problem because this is our planet, our lives, our future.

We are the leaders we have been waiting for!

Please join me with optimism and faith in your fellow human beings.

I believe making the necessary changes within 15 years is the biggest challenge the worldwide community has ever faced. I believe we can do it. But not without YOU!

In coming blog posts I will be sharing resources and asking readers to do so too. If you blog, please reblog this post, or do a blog of your own about this topic. Blogging gives us a free opportunity to reach people across the globe.

Let's get this movement moving full speed ahead!

Available at all online bookstores as a paperback and available in all ebook formats. Support your local book seller by asking them to order it. ISBN - 978 1 78279 049 5

What if the world stopped spinning?

Earth-from-Space What if the world stopped spinning?

If it just stood still on its axis and refused to move?

If at every latitude and longitude, the sun and moon stayed still?

What if somewhere it is always sunrise and somewhere else the sun is always setting?

What if some live forever in total darkness and others in unrelenting light?

What if the earth just took a stand and said, “I will not turn once more, not one degree, not even the 100^th of a degree, until you learn to love me?”

What if the earth were to shout to us, “I have done all I will do for you. I will not provide succulent morsels for your wasteful tongues after you rape me with violence and pollution?”

What if she told us that she was finished with the struggle, that it just was not worth it anymore?

What if she screamed in anger and in pain, “I have no more tears to shed for you. You have hurt me more than I am willing to endure. You come to me for everything you need and give nothing in return.”

What if she said in a voice full of despair, “ It is too hard to sustain life when you choose to kill and maim each other as a way to solve problems.”

“I can not keep spinning. I will no longer enable you to destroy us both. I have given all I have to give. It is your turn now.”

What if in the bright light of the un-turning world, we could never stop seeing all that we have taken from her, if we were forced to stare at desolation?

What if in the perpetual darkness we could never again see the beauty of a flower, a tree, a mountain stream, waves breaking on the sand?

What if some lived in the glory of an eternal dawn or the beauty of an eternal sunset, knowing that the rest of the world would never ever see it?

If it was you, could you stand to know that you were one of the few to be so lucky?Knowing that so many are denied light and so many others never given the respite of the dark?

What if we had no choice? What if the earth just stopped giving? What if there was nothing we could do to change her mind?

No pleading, no promises, no planting trees, no conserving energy, no cleaning polluted waters, no small gestures to show we care.

Would we realize how small these gestures are? Would we be sorry that we did not do more?

What if it was too late? What if the world just couldn’t take it anymore?

~~~

I wrote this more than two years ago and complacency about the environment is still widespread. Yet, I am hopeful. I see more news stories about climate change than I did two years ago. I see more about the environment on social media. So, I think change has begun at a grassroots level.

This makes me hopeful because I truly believe you and I and many millions across the globe will be the ones to accept the honor and privilege of transitioning our species to a new way of living in harmony with nature. We are the generations that will figure how to use our technology to protect, rather than destroy, and we will also figure out when using technology is not the best solution for our health and the health of our planet.

A book that gives us some solutions and lots of hope is Cows Save the Planet by Judith D. Schwartz. http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/cows_save_the_planet:paperback

What books would you recommend?

Is the First Great Drought happening now?

We have been given the incredible gift of access to knowledge and access to each other. We are in this adventure called life together as members of the only real race, the human race.

Dearest readers,

I have to share something important with you. The more I learn about the drought in California and other states, the more I am convinced that we are actually experiencing the First Great Drought I wrote about as fiction in I Call Myself Earth Girl. While I was working on the novel in 2010 and 2011, I was aware that the western and southern states were experiencing severe drought conditions, including more and longer-lasting forest fires. At the time, I did not think that these droughts would still be going on in 2014.

In the book, Gloria is a contemporary woman living in Newport, RI. She is disturbed by recurring dreams in which a young girl who calls herself Earth Girl speaks to her. Gloria eventually becomes convinced that she is pregnant with Earth Girl's child who was conceived in another lifetime. In the dreams, Earth Girl recounts the story of her life to Gloria. She tells of living in a bleak and barren time.

She first mentions the drought this way: My father told once told me that they stopped putting pictures in books when he was a boy. ... Once, I heard him tell my mother that he thought they kept the pictures out of books because they didn't want the next generations to know how beautiful everything had been before the first great drought.

Later in the story, Earth Girl recounts her father's fears that a Second Great Drought had begun. He predicts that millions of people will die because the second great drought is happening before the earth has had time to recover fully from the first one. He knows how bad things became during the previous large scale drought. He tells his daughter that "people didn't pay attention to the first great drought until it was too late."

Earth Girl also tells Gloria what her mother told her about the droughts and famine: But people weren't very smart, she said, because if the famine was in a different country, they would just thank God it wasn't happening to them. They didn't even notice when bigger parts of their own countries got drier and drier and they had less drinking water and less water for hydroelectric power. ... She said that people kept on doing all the things that hurt the earth and then they were surprised when the earth could not recover.

I think that we are the people to whom Earth Girl's parents were referring. We are not paying enough attention and soon it will be too late. If you find this hard to believe, please do a Google search on droughts. I will include some links to articles at the end of this blog, but if you do your own search, you will be amazed at what you find. There is a wealth of information, and yet, there seems to be a dearth of concern in the general public.

At first Gloria did not pay attention to the mention of the droughts. When she finally does, she is distressed to discover that in 2011, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published this report: An intense drought has gripped the southern tier of the U. S for several months, accompanied by destructive wildfires, low water supplies, and failed crops. Dry conditions emerged as early as October of last year and culminated in one of the driest winter and spring seasons in the observed record for the region. ... At the peak of this year's drought in July, exceptional drought conditions were spread across nearly 12 percent of the U.S., from Arizona to Florida, reaching the highest recorded level of drought since the U.S. Drought Monitor began reporting conditions 12 years ago.

This excerpt is not fiction. I copied it directly from the report. Gloria is alarmed by what she reads, but she does not want to believe that it really matters. She asks herself if this could be the beginning of the first great drought that Earth Girl keeps talking about in the dreams. She tries to convince herself that it is not: Get a grip, girl! Don't let some crazy dream make you think this stuff really matters. If this was really serious, the government, the scientists and politicians would be all over it. There is no way they would ignore this stuff.

Is Gloria right? Would the government ignore something this serious? Wouldn't politicians on both sides of the aisle devote hours to this? After all, the drought and its effects - including lack of clean water and failing crops - are major problems.

And if that drought were continuing, wouldn't it be a major news story? If we were really in a serious drought, wouldn't the networks devote as much time to it as they did to Justin Bieber egging a neighbor's house, or Paula Deen's lawsuit, or the birth of the newest heir to the British throne?

Of course, they would! But, they didn't. So I am.

In the first of the Earth Girl series, a young girl named Ella does pay attention and she begs grown-ups to pay attention too. In the sequel, Ella's father, one of the many who did not pay attention, is now dead and living in three different realities. Two of those realities are in the future, but they are very different from each other. One is the future that may result if people don't pay attention. The other is the future that may be ours if people do pay attention.

I feel compelled to draw people's attention to the seriousness of climate change and the impending water crisis in my novels, in my blog, on Twitter, facebook, and in general conversation. Just take a moment to think about what life would be like for you if water were a scarce luxury instead of something you take for granted. (I realize that in some parts of the world this is a reality right now.)

Think about this: Today, one-third of the world's population is living without access to adequate supplies of freshwater. By 2025, up to two-thirds of people in the world may be facing serious water shortages, including people in 35 percent of cities in the U.S. (Statistic from WATER CONSCIOUSNESS)

Take a moment to picture some of your favorite natural places. How different will they be without water? California is already finding this out. Why aren't we alarmed by this?

Of course, being alarmed really counts for nothing. Figuring out how we, as individuals, can make a difference is what really matters. One way is to let your local, state and federal government representatives know that environmental protection matters to you. I'll be blogging about this in various ways throughout the rest of 2014.

If you're with me in this, please spread the word. Share this blog or re-blog it. Write your own blog about it. Put this on facebook. Bring it up in conversation with your friends.

It matters. Let's not wait to discover how much it matters. It will be too late by then.

As I have written a few times in my blog, we have the privilege of being the people who are on earth right now at this critical juncture in human history. Thanks to the internet and the ease of communication across continents we can transcend national barriers and collaborate together to solve these problems. We have been given the incredible gift of access to knowledge and access to each other. We are in this together as members of the only real race, the human race.

Let's use these gifts now. Let's revel in our privilege of being alive right now when we have the power to improve the present and shape the future.

Do it for your loved ones. Do it for my loved ones. Do it for everyone who has loved ones. Do it for those who struggle with lack of water now. Do it for those who will live in the future that our choices create for them. Do it because you can. If you don't, who will?

Dry reservoir photo: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2014/01/california-suffering-possibly-its-worst-drought-in-a-century/#1

Forest fire photo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/10/17/report-western-wildfires-growing-more-intense-insurers-deeply-concerned/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/17/planet-climate-change-risk-drought-famine-epidemic

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/feb/18/california-drought-as-seen-from-space-nasa-picture/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/01/16/drought-west-disaster-declarations/4522651/

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/DroughtFacts/

WATER CONSCIOUSNESS - How We All Have to Change to Protect Our Most Critical Resource

AlterNet Books, San Francisco, 2008

www.alternet.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-drought-california-and-other-western-states-gird-for-a-landmark-year-in-forest-fires/2014/02/13/ec23fbae-9417-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

Come join me in the mission of the new millenium

We are the lucky ones who get to participate in the most amazing adventure of the new millenium.

My dear readers, I have come to a turning point with this blog. I started it when I was looking for a publisher for my book. I named the blog What a Heart Can Hold with the general intention of writing about all sorts of different things and building up a readership before I actually signed with a publisher. It turns out that I found a publisher sooner than I expected (yay!) It also turns out that writing a blog about all sorts of different things is not necessarily the best way to promote a novel. So, I intend to reinvent this blog over the course of the next few weeks (well, let's be truthful...the next few months).

I noticed looking back on my posts that there are topics I just naturally wrote about the most: the environment, peace, and the power of love. Although I only wrote once directly about my book, without even being consciously aware of it, I was writing most often about the three major themes in my novel. This makes sense because these are topics that fill my heart to overflowing.

Now I am working on the sequel to the book and I find myself frustrated by trying to promote my first novel while writing the next one. I feel that I spend too much time on promotion and not enough on writing. I have the uncomfortable feeling of letting my passion be dulled by the need to promote. In the past few weeks, I have been moved to finish this book and get its message out SOON because I believe that every one of us is being called to create a new and better future.

Although I never would have predicted this, I feel that my purpose in life is to get people to pay attention to this. More specifically, I feel that I have a message for all of us who are living right now: We are all now, at this very minute, living through a transition of enormous significance. I believe that we have been chosen by God, or the universe, the spirit world, or random chance to guide ourselves and this planet on which we live through a period of vast change.

In the last 5 years, almost all continents have experienced extreme drought conditions. We need to take this seriously and we need to do whatever is needed to reverse this trend. If the trend can not be reversed, we need to figure out how to make sure everyone has access to clean water. This should be a major concern of all governments and all citizens, everywhere.

This is our task as the people who are living on the planet right now. It is our responsibility. But it is more than a task and a responsibility. It is a privilege. It is an honor to be the people who are living on this precious planet right now. We are the lucky ones who get to participate in the most amazing adventure of the new millenium.

We have been chosen to usher humanity into a new and better way of living. We, yes my dear reader, you and I, were born to be living here now for a reason! We are the leaders we have been waiting for.

The earth has been placed in our hands.

Do you see how beautiful it is? Can you feel the life that pulses through it? Look carefully at it. Its beauty is majestic. Yet it is fragile and growing ever more so. It needs our care. It needs our love. It needs us to learn to work together to protect its resources. This is our challenge. This may even be why we are here!

We can do this. Let's begin right now. Together.

Available as a paperback in bookstores and all online retailers. Available in all ebook formats, including Kindle and Nook.

The fire of love

"The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire." Teilhard de Chardin, 1936

I love this quote because it speaks to the amazing potential of love to totally revolutionize the way we live. But, only if we harness the energies of love with the same fervor and dedication that we have devoted to harnessing the resources of the natural world.

It is so interesting to me that Teilhard predicts we will finally understand the power of love after we have learned to harness space, wind, tides and gravitation. So much of the 20th century was devoted to figuring out how to "conquer space." Why is it that we use such a militaristic term to describe our desire to explore our solar system? As if we could, somehow, control or contain the vast universe of which we are such a tiny part.

So what does it mean to harness space, the winds, the tides, even gravity? I think that Teilhard, in 1936, meant "harnessing" in the sense of learning about and understanding these things in order to use them in a way that protects the earth.

He viewed gaining knowledge as a step in our quest to understand our relationship to divinity. As a scientist, he sought to understand the natural world and as a priest, he sought to understand our relationship to God. He believed in the continuing evolution of the natural world and the continuing evolution of the human capacity for understanding.

Most importantly, to me at least, he believed that the natural world and the spiritual world are intricately connected. To grow in reverence for one is to grow in reverence for the other. He meant, I think, that the natural world is a manifestation of God's all-encompassing love. The more we understand the mysteries of nature, the better able we will be to understand the mystery of divine love.

Now, in the early 21st century, we have come to a tipping point of enormous consequence. The natural world faces all sorts of threats caused by our misunderstanding of our relationship to it. We are in danger of depleting our natural resources, as well as eliminating species in both the plant and animal world.

Due to our unrelenting search for sources of energy that come from the earth and our unsustainable agricultural practices, we are in danger of losing the capacity to harness the most incredible and powerful source of energy in the universe - love.

Was Teilhard suggesting in 1936 that when we come to understand space, wind, gravitation and tides, we would learn to how to use them for energy production without damaging the natural world? And was he also suggesting that only when we finally learn to produce energy without harming the natural world, will we be ready to understand the true power of love?

What a mind-blowing concept that is!

We tend to think of love as something that exists for us and in us, despite how we live on the earth. But maybe, the love that we experience is just a tiny fraction of the love that is waiting for us when we learn to live in harmony with the earth. Maybe, there is a love so powerful and energetic that we can't even imagine it and, maybe, it is accessible, not in some after-life state of being, but here and now... vibrant and living within the natural world, waiting to be discovered and released.

Maybe, we who are living now at this period of environmental peril are the ones who will discover how to truly harness space, wind, tides and gravitation with reverence for the natural world and gratitude for all it provides. Maybe we are the explorers who will discover and unleash the incredible power of love that has surrounded humanity for all of its existence.

Maybe, just maybe, you and I were chosen to be emissaries of that divine love.

~~~~~~

Personal note about my discovery of Teilhard when I was a student at Boston College.

Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a Jesuit priest and a scientist. He fell out of favor with the Vatican due to the nature of some of his writings...writings which are now taught in theology and philosophy classes in many Catholic universities.

I came upon this quote at the beginning of the first chapter of the now-classic, Chicken Soup for the Soul. The first chapter is about love. Reading this quote brought me back to my days at Boston College in the 1960s when the Vatican still considered his work to be erroneous, if not heretical. Like many other students, I read his writings with great interest. I was particularly struck by Hymn of the Universe.

Although, I had not really thought about him in quite some time, I believe that his writings have had an influence on how I think about the earth, the cosmos and our place in both. Finding his quote as I was thumbing through Jack Canfield's book was a revelation to me. There it was so succinct and elegant - a quote that expresses what I feel and believe.

I wanted to find the date of the quote so I googled him and came upon the American Teilhard Association. Its objectives are:

A future worthy of the planet Earth in the full splendor of its evolutionary emergence.
A future worthy of the human community as a high expression and a mode of fulfillment of the earth’s evolutionary process.
A future worthy of the generations that will succeed us.

I might have to join this organization. I think I would find kindred spirits there. I embrace their objectives and explore some of them in my novel I Call Myself Earth Girl and its sequel which I am writing now.

http://teilharddechardin.org/index.php/our-mission

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin

WTF is happening in Warsaw?

Presenting a short dialogue between two characters I know quite well, ME and I. ME represents me when I really think about climate change and what it means

I represents me when I want to convince myself that it will be okay, or when I don't want to think about it because it is too upsetting, or because thinking about it should naturally lead to doing something about it, and how hard is that? I mean, I have a life to live and blogs to write and a family to care for and places to go and things to do, and Christmas presents to buy. I'm too busy to pay attention to this.

ME: Climate change is real. There is almost universal agreement about this now. Climate change has the possibility of drastically changing our environment and our way of life.

I: Don't worry, things will be okay. After all, the 20th UN Climate Change Conference is being held in Warsaw right now. That's a relief, right?

ME: Depends on how optimistic you are. Things are deteriorating rapidly. Yesterday delegates from 132 poor and developing countries walked out of the talks.

I: Yea, but those things happen. It's how they negotiate. No worries. They managed to come up with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and that had a legally binding plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 6% to 8% below what they had been in 1990 during 2008 -2012.

ME: Wow, I'm surprised you knew that.

I: Everyone has heard of the Kyoto Protocol.

ME: Did you know that Congress wouldn't ratify the treaty after Clinton signed it, and Bush completely rejected it in 2001?

I: No, I didn't know that, but I'm sure Bush had a good reason. Anyway, that was in the past. Now, good things are going to happen in Warsaw. Hey, do you want to have a snack?

ME: I think it might be a case of too little, too late. If they manage to get an agreement, it won't actually be signed until they meet again in Paris in 2015, and it won't go into effect until 2020.

I: WTF? 2020? That's more than 6 years from now. Seems like a long time if things are really at a tipping point for carbon in the atmosphere. Those experts must know that the situation isn't really that serious. Thank goodness. Let's try that new pastry shop.

ME: Don't be so sure. It is more about diplomacy and politics and funding than how serious the need is.

I: Well, some good will happen. Since the Cophenhagen talks in 2009, developed countries have invested more than $10 billion per year towards international climate actions.

ME: Yes, that is true and they agreed to get it up to $100 billion a year by 2020, but no one really thinks they will.

I: Well, no wonder! $100 billion a year is an awful lot.

Me:You should see how much we spend on fossil fuel subsidies.

I: I'm getting bored with this. Can't we talk about something else? Anyway, that pastry shop closes soon. We'll have to drive to get there before it closes.

ME: sigh.....

The End

I find myself having these inner dialogues more often than I like to admit. I feel the sense of urgency and I know in my heart, in my soul and in my mind, that we must all contribute to solving this problem now. We really don't have time to wait. We must cut our worldwide carbon emissions. Yet, rich countries spend 5 times more on fossil fuel subsidies than on aid to developing nations to cut their emissions. In other words, we are spending more on ADDING carbon emissions to the environment.

My head actually hurts when I think of how complex the problem is. I know it is not simple. But, I also know we must not become paralyzed by the complexity. I saw Wendell Berry (poet, farmer, environmental activist) being interviewed by Bill Moyers and he spoke of our need to take care of the earth in simple terms.

He framed the question in terms of our relationship to the earth and our separation from nature; about how we don't really know and love the very land we live on, the little plot of earth that is underneath our homes and the land that surrounds it. No matter where you live, the building is grounded on a piece of land. The water that comes into your home started flowing from an actual source in the earth. Berry says we can't really take care of it until we are connected to it.

In his words:

"Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded, the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned. Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is, and by caring for it as you care for no other place...Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields... Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet. Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot... The world is no better than its places. Its places at last are no better than their people while their people continue on them. When the people make dark the light within them, the world darkens."

Berry's sense of the earth's places is interesting to me. He expresses how we have harmed them, but he also urges us to care for them and to find hope in the ground underneath our feet. So what does that actually mean to us, as individuals living in vastly different places all over this earth? I think he answers that. He does not want us make dark the light within us. Caring for the earth, then, is intimately connected to keeping the light of hope shining inside us.

Do I think that this is the whole answer to healing the earth? No. But I think he gives us a pretty concrete suggestion when he says:

"The only question we have the right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does the earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it."

For me, framing the question in terms of what the earth needs us to do in order to allow us to live on it is a helpful way to think about it. The planet earth will be here, with us or without us. If we want to continue to survive here, what does the earth need from us?

That is the question we must ask, and we must dedicate ourselves to finding the answers.

On the first season of West Wing in 1999, President Bartlet asked a question that is never answered:

"What will be the next thing that challenges us? That makes us go farther and work harder? You know that when smallpox was eradicated, it was considered the single greatest humanitarian achievement of the century? Surely we can do it again, as we did in a time when our eyes looked towards the heavens, and with outstretched fingers, we touched the face of God."

The answer to that question is clear now. We must heal the earth before it is too late.