May 2004 | Environment
Earth Day, Every Day!
by Wes Nisker
Since April of 1970, a growing number of people have begun observing “Earth Day,” a minor holiday that deserves major attention. In fact, we should have an Earthday once a month (maybe every full moon) as a time to bring awe and adulation back to our true home.
It’s time for a mythological revolution. Not only do we need some regime change in world governments, we also need a new spiritual pantheon. We have lived long enough with the old stories: the mishugas of warring desert tribes; the personified sky gods who judge and punish; the idea that we aren’t tied to materiality, to atoms or to the elements; and the notion that our true identity has some life beyond the one we are now living. Isn’t it time to be more in the present? Isn’t it time to come back home?
Our current mythology is not only out-of-date, it has become dysfunctional. It has stripped us off the Earth and placed the divine somewhere else. Our major religions have come to regard Earth as little more than a training camp, a place where we come to learn some special lessons, get rid of some karma, or get saved by some messiah or another. The general hope is that once we’re done here, we can go off to a better place, where we truly belong, and be in a better life, forever and ever!
Maybe one of those old religious stories is true: your guess is as good as mine. Meanwhile, we have overwhelming evidence that we arose from the evolution of life on Earth. What if we could fully embrace our nature as part of that story: our identity as Earthlings? Maybe then we would take better care of this living planet; maybe find our meaning and purpose in seeing that it continues; and maybe even find more joy in our existence, however brief, here and now. If there is a god, then the Earth is that god’s little biosphere project and, for now, we seem to be the caretakers.
Spring is the perfect season for a shift of spiritual attention. It beckons us to celebrate the virility and mysterious beauty of our home sweet home, often referred to as the “mother,” and for good reason. No other place that we know of in the universe has just the right temperature, moisture, and mixture of elements to grow this amazing variety of living beings, all of these self-propagating and self-propelling pieces of the cosmos, along with human consciousness to wonder at it all. It all happened because your Mother is supporting you, suckling you, nourishing this strange dance you do through the universe. You’ve got to love your Mother, Earthlings.
Earthday is a special holiday because it can be celebrated, not only by all humanity, but by all life, regardless of kingdom, phyla, or means of locomotion. Earthday is everybody’s mother’s day, from the microbes and ferns to the earwigs, salamanders, and great apes. We are all little Earthlings (although, lately, humans seem more like Earth ding-a-lings — a little off balance.) My theory is that standing upright must have raised our heads too far off the ground, and that is the source of our pride and also of our idea that we came from some other place. Now even our feet are too far off the ground, with everybody walking around on leather, with a floor, carpet or rubber between them and Earth. We seem to have forgotten that without the Earth we are nowhere.
Just check it out, Earthlings. You already know that you are living “on” the Earth, but you are also made “of” the Earth: your body and brain are built out of “all natural” earth ingredients. Your bones are made of calcium phosphate, the literal clay of earth molded into your shape. We humans don’t get dirty much anymore, and maybe that’s why most of us aren’t very earthy, either. Can you feel that you are a walking, breathing piece of earth? We are earth sprouts that somehow gained a lot of mobility.
Meanwhile, around 75 percent of your body is liquid, and most of that liquid has the same chemical consistency as the oceans. You literally sweat and cry seawater. We are drops of ocean that became infused with the sun’s fire and then splashed up on shore and walked away. Where else could our bodies have come from but the Earth and its seas?
The Earth made us who we are today. Your legs and feet, fingers and thumbs, this upright posture and big brain, even your thoughts and emotions — all have been designed by living plasma as it slid and slogged and boogied through the ever-changing Earth environment, adapting, changing shape, gaining consciousness.
Remember that legs and feet were not developed until land emerged from the oceans, because they simply weren’t necessary. Over the course of threeand-a-half-billion years, volcanoes erupted, continents bumped into each other, ice ages came and went, and life kept figuring out new ways to live, growing new appendages, plumage, camouflage, new ways of sensing, eating, and moving. Nature is the sculptor, carving and coaxing humanity into being. Nature is the artist, and we are the art.
And just think of it, fellow Earthlings: here we are spinning around on Earth’s axis at about 1,000 miles an hour. (That may be why we get dizzy and bump into each other.) Meanwhile, Earth is spinning around the sun at about 66,000 miles an hour, and the entire solar system is spinning though the Milky Way Galaxy at a million miles an hour toward a point in space that astronomers call the Great Attracter.
Yea, baby! Mothership Gaia is moving fast! But you don’t even have to hold on! The Earth holds on to you, like the dear mother she is, embracing you with her strong arms of gravity. Even Michael Jordan can’t jump all that far off the Earth.
Gaia is life’s rock of ages, the ground of being, and everybody’s `hood. As such, she deserves more of our mythic imagination and adoration. Here are suggestions for remembering and celebrating Earth: When you go outside, wear earth tones, colors of clay and dirt and stone. And if your skin is already an earthtone, just take off all your clothes. Paint designs on your skin with mud, or go barefoot all day. In honor of our Mother, picket in front of the oil company of your choice, climb a tree and refuse to come down, or tie yourself to an endangered coral reef.
Go out in the ocean and play some soothing music for the fish that must be very confused because of global warming. Make a strong intention in your heart that in the coming months you will do more to protect your Mother, and clean her up, not least of which means getting rid of the invasive Bushes.
Also important, Earthlings, is to dance on the Earth, or lay yourself down flat on her bosom, ignore your inner cynic, and give the Earth a great big hug.
Jai Mother Nature! Gaia Lives! Everyday is Earthday!
Bay Area radio personality Wes Nisker is the author of The Big Bang, The Buddha, and The Baby Boomer. www.wnisker.com
Recommend this page to a friend
Top Ten pages recommended to friends:
