An Earth Day Celebration

Nature Notes - May 2023

Two generations ago, concerned citizens protested to protect the planet and actually made a difference. Today, environmental issues sometimes seem remote from our day-to-day lives, but they are still there, in some cases worse than ever. Who will carry Mother Earth’s torch today – and how?

​-by James Inabinet, Ph.D.

James Wheeler | Pexels

“What did you do once you knew?” [Drew Dellinger]
 
I’ve been grappling with how to write this for weeks. On Earth Day the ideas coalesced, just not in the way I thought. Writing what makes sense to a heart, and maintain coherence, is hard. I have a vague memory about the first Earth Day. I was in high school and was already aware of the damage human lifestyles were wreaking on our Earth home. In the early 60s of my childhood, pelicans were common in and around Lake Pontchartrain. By the time I was in high school there were few. Having read an article about Silent Spring, I knew why. At that time, the oil and gas industry ruled Louisiana, just as big business and money ruled the United States. They still do. “If everyone only knew what was going on,” I mused, “things would change.”
 

Tom Fisk | Pexels

 
In the face of burning rivers, rising extinction rates, and toxic air, the environmental movement claimed early successes: the first Earth Day, the establishment of the EPA, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. It surprised me then (not so much now) that a movement against protecting our common environment almost immediately arose to counter those successes. There are costs to doing the right thing. Big business and moneyed interests almost immediately saw this as a threat and countered. Our own congressman recently filed a bill to abolish the EPA. To be sure, the excitement of those early successes quickly gave way to resignation. If everyone only knew...
 

Markus Spiske | Pexels

 
It’s clear that we all know. Knowing doesn’t seem to make much difference. It’s not that we don’t care as much as the crisis doesn’t appear to be much of a threat. Climate change, for instance, is simply not as urgent a threat as paying bills, getting kids off to school, fixing the car. The crisis is not “in your face” enough to keep us from averting our collective gazes. There’s plenty of natural beauty still around. I see lots of it all over, forests and green pastures, beautiful beaches, nice city parks. The really bad stuff is off somewhere else, hidden by design – or too subtle to see. Though forest land is increasingly being turned into houses and yards, there’s still woods. The upshot is: if it doesn’t directly affect us, we don’t have time for it. Flint, Michigan’s drinking water problem wasn’t a thing around here until Jackson got its own. Extinction wasn’t much of an issue in Louisiana until the only Brown Pelican (the state bird) in the state was on the state flag.
 

Reagan Ross | Pexels

 
And yet the problems rage on. Climate change is serious. We’re in the sixth mass extinction, the first caused by one group of Earth’s children. Microplastics are in your body and nobody knows what that even means! What’s to be done? Hundreds of people have asked me that, and I still don’t know. All efforts seem to be too little or too late. The economic system causing the crisis is the very same we depend upon for getting our needs met. Fifty years ago, I was filled with desire and energy to do something; I did the petitioning against; helped organize locally; wrote the obligatory letters. I refused to pump 750 barrels of toxic drilling fluid into an estuary, and it cost me my job. Though important, these activities just don’t satisfy.
 

Lara Jameson | Pexels

 
Living in my forest home has given me a decidedly different take on what to do. Though I still believe in the importance of letter-writing and petitioning, my real work proceeds by a shift in the way I see the world, the way I am in it, the way I hold it. It’s a change in heart, a heart-opening into a heart that is willing to be penetrated – and touched – a malleable heart that can offer itself to the world in receptivity, one that feels it all. Heart opening begins by seeing through surface appearance, going deeply into the heart of the world, to see the inside of that outside. There’s nothing ugly there. Seeing the sublime beauty in any place, finding the remnant of beauty that’s left after bulldozing, this is a valid response! Experiencing the beauty, feeling joy, in the single coreopsis bloom in the midst of parking lot construction. That’s what we can do – and talk of it to everyone! That is not nothing!
 

Philippe Donn | Pexels

 
I’ve asked myself, what is a natural, child-like way of being human, a human unsullied by culture or fear? I’ve wondered how a child simply “is” in nature? Curious, amazed, allured by everything, she embarks on a “walk of wonder.” That’s what I try to do, put on the mind of a child, a beginner’s mind, that sees everything fresh. That’s what an open soul experiences, and with such a soul, one can move into joyful, peaceful communion with a place. So now I ask, what do we do? From this uniquely different vantage point, maybe it’s as simple as publicly making our homes a host for life: moss left growing on brick walls, a yard full of native wildflowers with bees, butterflies, and ladybugs, an un-mowed patch of whatever comes up in a corner, a grotto covered with native vines. Hiding it won’t help. This is a good beginning I think, and one that satisfies. By daily taking care of these little tasks, when a big, tough task comes along, we’ll be ready for it.
 

Arnie Chou | Pexels

---

Enjoy this feature?