Be a Good Ancestor Now

I’ve been doing my own genealogy for years, and recently I have begun to help others search for their ancestors. I have literally seen the lines, uninterrupted, of parents and children, and parents and children, stretching out and down from the past into our waking present. I cannot see that without also being able to envision my parents’ names at the top of that tree, with the unknown generations who will stretch out past us. But what world are we leaving to those who will come after?

I can no longer think of the future without wondering which generation of my family’s children will run out of fresh water. Do I care? Should you care? After all, I won’t be here. Yes. Yes I should. Yes you should. Anything else is selfish and human selfishness is killing the planet.

Human selfishness is killing the planet. Which means it’s also killing us. We need to cultivate the mindfulness that the planet we walk on is part of us. Our blood, bone, and tissue evolved from the life that crept out of the oceans. We carry the earth within us. We are not separate from it.

The way Western culture lives is not sustainable. Most of the people I know work hard and get little in return for it. I know they often decide not to care, because they don’t think they can make a difference, and if no one else is sacrificing, why should they?

Big Corporation wants us to think that. They want us to feel like we can’t make change. That’s part of the problem. We all need to make hard choices or the places we love, that feed us, will keep disappearing.

Make choices like your decisions will decide the fate of the next seven generations of your descendants. Because they will. This week I am sharing some photos of my favorite places in nature, places I hope those who come after me will be able to experience for themselves. Included among the photos are quotes on sustainability

The supreme reality of our time is ...the vulnerability of our planet.

- John F. Kennedy

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?"

- Rachel Carson

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

- Henry David Thoreau

We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.

- Terri Swearingen

Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something.

- Carl Sagan

One planet, one experiment.

- Edward O. Wilson

There is a great need for the introduction of new values in our society, where bigger is not necessarily better, where slower can be faster, and where less can be more.

- Gaylord Nelson

Reducing our levels of consumption will not be a sacrifice but a bonus if we simply redefine the meaning of the word 'success.'

- David Wann

Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.

- Cree Indian Proverb

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

- Albert Einstein 

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

- Native American Proverb

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.  

- John Muir

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.  

- Edward Everett Hale

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.  

- Archibald MacLeish

Again and again

Some people in the crowd wake up.

They have no ground in the crowd

And they emerge according to broader laws.

They carry strange customs with them,

And demand room for bold gestures.

The future speaks ruthlessly through them.  

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Quotes Contributed to:

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was the 35^th President of the United States of America. Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was an American marine biologist. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. Terri Swearingen, a nurse from Ohio, was the 1997 Goldman Prize winner. Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, and author. Edward O. Wilson (b.1929) is an American biologist, researcher, theorist, naturalist, and author. Gaylord Nelson (1916-2005) was an American Democratic Senator and Governor from Wisconsin. David Wann is an author/speaker of sustainability. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was an American writer. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. John Muir (1838-1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher. Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) was an American author, historian and Unitarian minister. Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was an Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist.

Malidoma Patrice Somé, Supernatural is Natural

“Earth is where we belong. She is our home. She gives us sustenance unconditionally and makes it possible for us to feel connected. Earth is where we go to and where we come from. The nourishment and support of the Earth Mother grants us the feeling of belonging that allows us to expand and grow because we feel strong.”

Western civilization superimposes us onto the natural world, as if we are above it, and it is below us. As if it is nothing more than a storage shed for resources at our disposal, and not a living, breathing world we are a part of. We see this viewpoint in the entitled way we dam rivers and when we clear-cut forest dwellers of their habitat, of their trees. We even blow holes in hills and mountainsides to make a way for ourselves and we call it progress.

Along the way, we stopped living with the earth and began to try to tame it to suit our needs and comforts. It is saddening. Yet there are people who walk with feet in both worlds, that of our constructed culture and that of the world we wandered far from as generations of nomads settled into cities. And these people are using their gifts to serve as guides, and awaken our perception to the larger truth.

“Human beings are most of the time unaware of the extent and intimacy of their connection with nature, especially the world of plants and animals. We act as if we are the proud and dominant other and thus can and should manifest our superiority in ways that are rather careless and devastating to nature. Indeed, trees live in harmony, and we create dissonance. Yet we want to live in a world where everyone and everything is harmoniously linked to everyone and everything.”

Malidoma Patrice Somé is one of these remarkable people, straddling both worlds and successfully acting as a mediator and translator between them. He was born to the Dagara people of Burkina Faso in West Africa. Malidoma was kidnapped from his village at the age of four by a Jesuit Missionary who had befriended his father. He was placed in a boarding school, on path to become a priest, to be used as a tool to convert the African people to the white man’s God.

When he was twenty he managed to run away and walked the entire distance back to his village, where he found himself home once more, and yet a stranger among strangers. He had been gone for fifteen years and could not even recall enough of the Dagara language to communicate with his mother and sister.

His Western world upbringing left him inadequately prepared for his return. He and his people did not understand each other. Well past the age of manhood in his village, Malidoma was required to undergo a month-long rite of passage before he could fully become a member of his community.

He had to first unlearn what he had learned.

His trials are compellingly written in his book Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. In its pages he describes one of his first breakthroughs, where he was bidden to sit and watch a tree. He was aware of his own head processing through wondering what the purpose was, of wondering what the correct thing to do was. There had to be more to it than staring at a tree, right? Then he became angry and felt like he was being made to go through a public humiliation, as he was sat in the center of the village. Passed that anger, he broke open and began to speak to the tree. It became a sort of confessional where he poured his feelings of frustration out and apologized to the tree.

What he experienced next was a transformation of the tree into what he calls the green lady- a green human form spirit who felt like love and home. He ran sobbing to the spirit and she held him in her arms. When he came out of the moment and was hugging the tree he immediately tried to blame the vision on the heat and lack of food- which is the Western way of thought- except that the elders of his tribe who were watching had seen the same green lady in the moment he did. How could he explain that?  

“My experience with the green lady raises an important issue, namely, the true identity of the elements of nature. What if they are not inanimate objects, as people in the West have been taught to believe, but rather living presences? How would we need to change if we granted to a tree the kind of life that we usually reserve for so-called intelligent beings? If you peek long enough into the natural world - the trees, the hills, the rivers, and all natural things - you start to realize that their spirit is much bigger than what can be seen, that the visible part of nature is only a small portion of what nature is.”

            What we would call the supernatural, his people call the natural world. They have no word for supernatural. The closest word they have is Yielbongura, “the thing that knowledge can’t eat.” Western thought may have decided that it is separate but that doesn’t make it a truth for the larger world.

In fact, that way of thinking will only serve to separate us more from that which we all want most- to rediscover the sensation of wholeness. Spirit is real. What is spiritual can be explained by science, but not explained away. After all, you can put blinders on a horse so that he cannot see the distractions around him, but the distractions around him are still occurring. He does not see, yet they happen.

That’s true of the fullness of the world around us. Either we are open to it or we are closed to it, but it does not stop existing if we do not believe in it. If we choose to, we can do work to open ourselves up to the spirit world, the larger world, the greater web around us. We can see and hear with more senses than we use. People who have had these experiences, as Malidoma had, often decide in the aftermath that they must have hallucinated. So much of the spirit world is ephemeral that it takes a certain amount of faith and openness to make the connection.

"You can acquire what is usually seen as magical. When in fact the more you dwell in this kind of world, the less you see it as magical because it is the familiar, it is the kind of thing that every human being is entitled to and it is the kind of thing that is at the core of human nature, the search, the intense search for the magical." 

            I can’t recommend Somé’s writings enough. He has two other books The Healing Wisdom of Africa, which chronicles his life after the awakening, and Ritual: Power, Healing and Community. The story of his life’s journey and the purpose his Ancestors gifted him with is laced and woven with a breathtaking, wondrous, and seemingly simplistic awareness of the larger world that stretches beyond our everyday perception. Malidoma’s words act as a gateway, a doorway that the reader can grasp, an opening they can step through.

“Indigenous people see the physical world as a reflection of a more complex, subtler, and more lasting yet invisible entity called energy. It is as if we are the shadows of a vibrant and endlessly resourceful intelligence dynamically involved in a process of continuous self-creation. Nothing happens here that did not begin in that unseen world. If something in the physical world is experiencing instability, it is because its energetic correspondent has been experiencing instability. The indigenous understanding is that the material and physical problems that a person encounters are important only because they are an energetic message sent to the visible world. ... Ritual is the principal tool used to approach that unseen world in a way that will rearrange the structure of the physical world and bring about material transformation.”

            [This article was originally published July 20, 2011.]

Every Day is Earth Day

Earth Day is every day. It’s not just a sentiment. It’s true. Despite what Western convention would have you believe, land does not belong to anyone. We belong to the land. We were born from it. We evolved out of it. And from the moment of our birth, we are charged as caretakers of the Earth. We are all Stewards of the Land.

Believe it. Own it. Live it. How will you rise to meet your birthright?

Let’s Talk Trash for Earth Day. I know the trash you see on the streets and in the parks does not belong to you. You didn’t put it there. That doesn’t mean you can’t pick it up. Just yesterday I picked up three knotted plastic bags of dog shit left behind in various yards. I don’t have a dog. But the owners of those dogs were obviously not going to do it.

I am especially offended by all the broken bits of plastic littered about that most people don’t see, all the bottle caps and bits of food packaging containers. Have you seen the video about the birds that die with bellies full of plastic? They mistake it for food and it kills them from the inside. Who will defend their right to life free from harm if not us?

Maybe you don’t have it in you to pick up all the trash you see. The best way you CAN help is to not add to it. We create the world we want to live in by the choices we make. Do not ever throw a thing to the ground because you don’t know what to do with it. Adopt a practice of Carry In, Carry Out.

And then take it a step further with the Earth Week Challenge. It doesn’t have to be earth week when you do it, but challenge yourself to spend a week not using garbage cans or waste baskets. Carry a reusable shopping bag with you (one you can wash afterwards) and throw personal refuse you would normally put in the garbage in your reusable bag- unless it’s actual food waste, because that can be unsanitary. But collect everything else. At the end of the week you will see the waste you produced, just from your day-to-day routine. You may not be able to apply this to work-related refuse, but that candy bar you ate at on break should go in your reusable bag.

Then reflect on ways you can pare down on the unnecessary garbage and maybe keep the challenge going for a month. What choices can you make when you’re shopping to both get a good price AND cut down on the amount of wasteful packaging? How much can you reduce your garbage output and increase your recyclables output over time? It makes me feel good that every week I put out one small garbage bag and two very full recycling bins. Someday, when we can have a composting bin on our property, even that minimal garbage output will go down.

If you have a mind to face the truth, if you can stomach it, read writings by Derrick Jensen. It’s hard to face the legacy of the effects our pursuit of industry and progress have had on the Earth. My firm belief is that if we cannot do it cleanly, we have no business doing it. We cannot afford to forego the effects of what we do for the sake of progress. And yet big business does just that. How can we care if we don’t know? Check back in the next few weeks for my thoughts on the essay “What We Leave Behind” from The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution. Even my hometown is not immune to the aftereffects of industry, made known in a new film by Tanya Stadelmann, called “This Creek.”

I don’t blame you if it’s too much to hear, too much to know, or too much to handle. But we all spend enough time with our heads in the sand, like ostriches, trying to protect our human hearts. But while we do that, who is protecting the heart of the Earth?

We’re slowly learning. People and groups are making changes, but the time has come for more sweeping global changes. The best way to move forward is to follow by positive examples. The country of Sweden recycles all that can be recycled and what little garbage remains, less than one percent, is turned into an energy source. Other countries are now paying Sweden to import the garbage they do not have room for.

Did you know there are giant swirling masses of plastic covering our oceans and separating the underwater life from sunlight? There are five main masses, totaling millions of tons of weight (of plastic, which weighs next to nothing. See what this group is doing to help clean up the oceans. Do you want to eat fish that has been eating plastic?

In Paraguay, people have seen beauty and possibility in the trash piled up around them. Imagine beautiful musical instruments for underprivileged kids made of recycled materials pulled from dumps. Seriously. Watch the video. Listen to the music. One man's waste is another man's treasure. Literally.

These problems are human ones. Humans created this waste. Not the Earth. It can’t be the Earth’s problem. Sometimes we need a reminder that when we let nature be what she was meant to be, beautiful things happen. Humans once trapped wolves to near-extinction, and the land changed because of it. These changes are not irreversible. Watch the magic that happened when wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone.

Every day is Earth Day. We are born from it. We evolved out of it. And from the moment of our birth, we are charged as caretakers of the Earth. Believe it. Own it. Live it. How will you rise to meet your birthright?

Talking Trash for Earth Day

“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”

~Paulo Coelho

I take daily walks around my neighborhood, often playing Lisa Gerrard’s “Sacrifice” or Deva Premal’s “Gaté Gaté” low in my ear buds as I wove through the neighborhood. I keep the volume just high enough to drown out the street traffic, but not so loud as to drown out the natural birdsong. The ice and snow have melted in my residential area, unveiling the layers of litter, clothing, red Solo cups, broken bottles, and pieces of furniture long gone to the curb.

People walk by it every day and don’t see it. It happens. The garbage becomes part of the background, or maybe people get depressed by it and they stop seeing it. Where I live, it’s a mixed bag. One block to the west of us is made up of quiet residential homes and the streets are nearly cleaned up post-snow melt after just a couple of weeks.

One block to the east of us is mostly rental apartments. The difference in the condition of the yards and streets is tangible. There is a sense of “I didn’t put that garbage there. It’s not my garbage. It’s not my yard. It’s not my job.”

Just a quick walk around the corner this morning revealed an old sweatshirt, a small plastic child’s pennywhistle, chunks of broken liquor bottles, a rusty metal bedframe in pieces, old plastic bags with soupy dog shit, candy wrappers, a warped phone book, a car gas tank cover, three empty dime bags, a baby shoe, a row of abandoned plastic cups, a plethora of cigarette butts of varying ages, and a deflated basketball. I picked up the garbage, wearing a pair of kitchen gloves, and put it to the curb with my trash.

Side note: As a general rule, I only pick up trash between the sidewalk and the curb, or from vacant and abandoned houses. I don’t go into people’s yards without their permission. I did learn, while walking around and snapping pictures, that other people may not see or want to pick up their own trash, but they sure get persnickety when they realized that I saw it and was documenting it. I guess blinding yourself to something sad only works if everyone is in silent agreement to do the same. I have also learned that most people are more than willing to let me pick up the trash in their yards. Only a few get suspicious that I have ulterior motives… that there might be treasure in their trash that I am lying about. I couldn’t possibly just be doing it because it needs to be done.

I rent. I don’t own my apartment. I don’t own my house. I don’t own my yard. I don’t own my street. But I care what the yard looks like. I care what my home looks like, and what that message says to others when they come to visit. I think the way people live is a reflection of what they think they deserve. I may not have the money to move into a nicer neighborhood, but I can keep my home clean. I can steward myself to the earth that holds me. I can care for it. I can do that much.

It doesn’t matter if it is my trash or not. It doesn’t matter if I was the one who threw the garbage to the ground or not. It doesn’t matter if I own the yard or not. The Earth belongs to everyone and I am a part of it, walking with my eyes open. The garbage is there. Someone has to clean it up.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

~Mahatma Gandhi

I don’t want to live in a home full of trash. I don’t want to come home to a yard full of trash. I don’t want to park my car on a street covered in trash. It makes me sad to see the spring crocuses and daylilies choking beneath so much garbage. We all need a little breathing room. 

Our Natural, Magical World

It's sunny in my city, after weeks of being blanketed in snow. It's been a rare winter for where I live. But the ice is melting and the sidewalks and potholes are full of puddles today. The air is warm and I can smell spring beneath the snow. The grackles and robins have made their appearances and over the next few weeks the grass will emerge, the ground will warm through, and nature will reveal itself again. Nature is the seed-source of my spirituality.

One of the moments that developed my spiritual understanding came when I was prompted to read the introduction to David Abram’s book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Abram, a philosopher, performer and ecologist worked as a sleight-of-hand magician in his early years in clubs across New England, including the infamous Alice’s Restaurant. In and after college he traveled around the world, studying the connection of magic and medicine in Indonesia.

His own experiences gradually altered his perceptions of native shamanism and the craft of their true work. He describes a significant moment during a stay with a young magic practitioner in Bali. Each morning, his hostess would bring him a tray of fruit. Each morning, she also carried many small green bowls filled with white rice, which she intoned were offerings for the household spirits, the spirits of the family compound.

Curious, David watched his hostess leave the small offerings of rice along the outside corners of the various buildings. When he sought them out later in the day, he found the bowls empty. He hid himself away on the second day to wait and watch. What he witnessed was a line of black ants struggling for hours to drag each kernel of rice away one at a time. He discovered that the same event occurred at each offering place.

“I walked back to my room chuckling to myself. The balian and his wife

had gone to so much trouble to daily placate the household spirits with

gifts--only to have them stolen by little six-legged thieves. What a waste!

But then a strange thought dawned within me. What if the ants themselves

were the "household spirits" to whom the offerings were being made?”

That thought initiated David to take in more of the natural landscape of the village, as well as the compound. He realized that there was a large population of ant colonies surrounding the buildings which should have been more of a nuisance to the family. In placing a consistent daily offering for the indigenous insect inhabitants, his host family had found a way to live with the natural world, assuring their own food and kitchen area to be left invasion free. This notion challenged his understanding of spirit as meaning something more than “not flesh.”

“… my encounter with the ants was the first of many experiences suggesting

to me that the "spirits" of an indigenous culture are primarily those modes of intelligence or awareness that do not possess a human form.”

All living things have spirit. It pushed me forward in my Ancestor work. The Western definition of ‘spirit’ limits them to a supernatural existence, separating us further from the natural world. Clearly we define things too much, and there is a point where understanding takes us out of the moment and into our heads, and definition stunts growth so that we can move on to something else. David Abram could have stopped at the observation of the ants taking away the rice and assumed he had figured out the magic trick. Instead, he allowed the revelation to open his own understanding.

The voices of our ancestors speak to us in the unfurling flower buds and the rippling grains in a meadow. They speak to us in the hatching eggs of spring. Everything of spirit inherits energy from our ancestors. Spirit is the natural world and the natural world is spirit.

It can be hard to garden in the city, where the birds, squirrels and stray animals are also looking to thieve themselves a meal. A full birdfeeder and a scattering of nuts in the side yard once a week stopped the squirrel-sunflower carnage and allowed the vegetable seeds to grow unscathed. We feed them through the winter so they are not starved come seeding time. The stray animals know there is always something for them at the back of the house, so they don’t pillage our garden or root through our garbage. As a result, we have co-existed beautifully together, while the quicker pulse of the modern world flows around us.

[This article was originally published March 9, 2011.]

We are All Relations

Mara, descendant of the Little Boy.

I was at the zoo this weekend, talking to the mountain lion, when I overheard a conversation between a small boy and his father.

“He’s sleeping, like me on the couch.”

“You’re not an animal, dad,” the son said.

“That’s true,” dad answered, and they moved on.

But it wasn’t true. We are animals. I’ve always had a soft spot for other animals, seeing them as kin and cousin. We put food out when we have stray cats about. We put seed out for the birds and nuts for the squirrels. When we get mice in the house, we put out humane traps to catch them live and release them to the woods. We do this because we live on the same land they do. We all share this space of city, and we do what we have to do to survive.

We do this because when we put food out, the cats leave our garbage alone. When we put seeds and nuts out, the birds and squirrels don’t eat from our garden. We find ways to co-exist. Relationships are born from kindness, human or otherwise.

There was a black and white stray cat we named Little Boy who was the dominant tomcat in our neighborhood for over seven years. He regularly came by to get some food and show us he was alive. Sometimes he had kittens with him, showing them his route, and where the kind humans lived. He died after a street fight. One of his other regulars took him to the vet and had to put him to sleep. A lot of people missed him when he was gone. How many strangers were unknowingly connected by our concern for this one cat?

We get a lot of strays in the city. When a small black and white kitten showed up on our stoop last summer, it was a familiar sight. She even bore an uncanny resemblance to our old friend and we took Mara in. A week later, a second black and white kitten showed up, same age, though she was slightly longer-haired. A local rescue helped us find her a forever home. And then the third kitten showed up, who might have been Mara’s twin; they had similar markings and the same short, stumpy tail. He also looked just like the Little Boy. We were sure they was a family. We took one in, found a home for a second, and we were watching over their brother, who did not seem interested in people at all. But we were waiting to earn his trust.

Easter Sunday, we went for a walk. I got dressed and took out the garbage. I could hear the crying of a cat bouncing around the rooftops. I turned to see if I could spy the cat, wondering if it was a hungry Little Boy, Jr. He’s been by a lot lately. At the end of our walk, we veered back a less scenic route, and immediately knew why. There was a lump in the street. It could have been a garbage bag. It wasn’t. We both knew it, at the same time. I ran across the road.

It was Mara’s brother.

I cried out. He was dead, but it had recently happened. He was warm, still limp with just a slight stiffness to his legs and tail. The blood was still fresh on the pavement, bright against the road, and he had voided himself. I knew that he was the cat I had heard crying out.

I’ve seen a lot of animals dead in the road. But none whose faces were familiar to me. I said prayers over his body, hulking in the middle of the street, daring the cars to hit me without a word. Because I couldn’t understand why, if I had heard him from my house, the people in the houses across from his body, who came out to stare at me standing in the road, hadn’t come out to help him. Because he was just an animal. Too many people stand on the other side of a closed door before responding, waiting to see if someone else is going to take care of it.

I run to the sounds of people and animals in distress. Because I would want someone to come help me, or one of my cats. I would rather find out I was concerned for nothing than find out later I could have done something.

It could have been one of my cats I picked up off the road, held in my gloved hands, and bundled into a heavy plastic bag. Little Boy, Jr. didn’t have a home. He didn’t have anyone who loved him special and the least we could do was see to the end of his life with dignity.

I would have felt that for any animal I found dead. A friend of ours offered us his woods to bury Little Boy, Jr. in. We labored in the warm sun to carve a hole in clay and stone, digging around and under thickened tree roots. We buried him in a hole between two birch trees with a view of a wooded hillside and a creek running gently beside him. We laid three pieces of silver over his body and burned sage above his grave.

When we listen to the world around us, when we step outside of ourselves, we feel the threads of connection to everything. If you meditate on that web, you feel connected to everything, and you can’t imagine being the cause of pain or sadness in another living being. And magic happens.

We went for a walk, spontaneously. We found his body moments after his last death, before another vehicle could run over where he lay in the road. People who knew his face and cared about him, found him.

It’s not that I think things happen for a reason. I don’t believe in purpose like that. But I do believe that if we can connect to the intuitive world outside of our flesh, we will find ourselves drawn to the places we need or should be. Where we can be of the most help or in the place of being helped... that thing we call luck.

We are all relations, all animals trying to survive in this world together. I treat all living things as I wish to be treated, with kindness and compassion. May we all do the same. May it be so.

Earth Week Challenge

Have bag, will carry.

There are consequences to all of the choices we make. We know this. Give and take, ebb and flow. It’s how life works. We wake in the morning and we go to sleep at night, our energy expended. We eat food to fuel our bodies. We defecate out what is not needed for our nourishment. And, with some animals, that natural waste is returned to feed the soil for growing more food.

I think about this stuff all the time now. When I was in college, one of my shop supervisors worked days at the Shit Plant- that’s what he called it. I learned everything there was to know about what happens to our shit after we flush the toilet. I hadn’t thought about it before then, where my waste went. Most of us who were raised in Western Society don’t think about it.

It was different before modern plumbing, when townspeople had to be aware of the levels of crap in their outhouses. Just a week ago I came across an article about a medieval dig site in Denmark, and how they recently excavated four wooden barrels of human excrement. What they found was the communal shit house. When the barrels were full, they were sealed, covered in dirt, and four new barrels were placed somewhere else, and the external bathroom was moved. And guess what? Seven-hundred years later and the shit still stinks.

We consume, we create waste. That’s what our bodies do. What about the waste we create outside of our bodies? How much waste do you produce, externally, on a daily basis?

Years ago, a friend of mine was on walkabout, working at a foundation in Ireland. We were sending her a care package from the States and she asked us to unwrap anything that was individually-wrapped as there was no garbage service, and she had to carry her garbage around with her. We got creative with the packaging, trying to use filler that could be reused or burned cleanly. And I began to wonder how much garbage I would accumulate if I had to carry it with me.

There is a challenge I encourage others to do for a week, to get the tangible feel for the weight of what we discard. All you need is a reusable bag and the awareness that throwing things in garbage cans is a habitual action you need to pay attention to. Instead of throwing your bits of trash in the nearest garbage bin, put it in your bag. Unless it’s uneaten food, because that’s unsanitary- although that alone could cause you to rethink your portion sizes.

I started doing just that as a personal challenge, to exist in a state of mindfulness about the garbage I produce. At first, I did it in spurts here and there, cultivating awareness. After doing it long enough, I can now be found shoving bits of garbage into my pockets, purse, or backpack, even if there is a garbage can right beside me.

The goal with this exercise is awareness, and to reach it, you have to see the truth of what you discard. From what you collected, sort out things that can be recycled in your district. If you aren’t sure, look it up with your local sanitation department. After the recyclables have been sorted out, what is left to go to the landfill?

What story do the remaining items tell you? Do you see ways you could pare your waste down? Any ways you could buy items in bulk? Be good to the Earth, for we are at her mercy, and it falls upon each of us to leave it a better place for those who will come after.

Stewards of the Land

We are born to the earth, we live on the earth, and when we die we will return to it. Just as our planet rotates around the sun, so do we, in our infinite migrations, rotate around the planet. So why doesn’t the Earth sit more fixedly centered in our thoughts? In my life it’s not a choice. I have nieces and nephews. I have great nieces and nephews even. Knowing that they and their children will live on long after me makes living a life of being kind to the earth important to me.

Over the generations we’ve watched our changing landscape spread out, crawling across the open spaces and clearing away the forested ones. We’ve despaired against the loss of green and wild places as animals became endangered and extinct. And now, it is such a state of how we live that we can’t imagine it any other way. We think that we cannot be a force for change, that one action cannot be a catalyst for renewal. But our bones know that we are people of the earth and they know that is not true.

The earth is not just dirt and bedrock beneath us. It is alive. We were born from its matter and our bodies will decay into its dust when we die. The earth is our Mother, a real and tangible parent beneath us. And mostly, in our short lives, we take little notice of the way we affect change to her. When we run out of room for progress, we build our cities out, abandoning discarded industry to decompose. So we build out, carving more space from the wild, and then we complain when the coyotes, bear, and deer wander our city streets.

What we need to do is to protect the green spaces that are left, from those who would wish to develop them. We are too smart to think that more green spaces will be discovered after we have removed them all. So we have to stop now. We have to become true stewards of the land and watch over the plant and animal life that is left.

Many people are already acting as stewards of the earth. And their pursuit of earth-centered actions have had larger and wondrous effects. Like this video of what happened after wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park. Click here to view the 4 minute video How Wolves Change Rivers.

I’m not talking about a total re-wilding of the earth, though I have to confess, I do love images of nature taking the earth back, like in the films I am Legend, Twelve Monkeys, and The Happening. To my delight, I have even met trees already engaged in the process (see the picture at the top of this post).

Be a steward of the land, no matter what that means to you. Where is the place you can make a change? How can you teach your children to have reverence for the world around them? Maybe you will pick up litter, or plant a garden. Maybe you will feed the birds or rehabilitate wild animals. Maybe you will protest environmental destruction from industry. Maybe you will protect the whales in the sea. Maybe you will be a teacher. Maybe you will plant trees.

Maybe you will sit quietly in the forest and its language. Maybe you will call the crow, sister. Maybe you will call the raccoon, brother. Maybe you will hear the earth singing back to you and maybe you will understand that we are all kin, and that our purpose is to walk softly with the natural world. 

How We Shape the World

As the internet posts this blog for me, I will be in the middle of my week-long retreat in the mountains of Massachusetts at an event called Rites of Spring, presented by the EarthSpirit Community. This will be my 10^th spring celebrating the natural world with them. Except for the battery in my travel alarm clock, my flashlight, and the lone bulb at the top of our rustic cabin, I will be eschewing electricity. As wonderful as it is, I sometimes forget how little we need, and on that mountain, I have discovered I do not fear the dark.

I like to challenge people to do two things. The first thing is to spend a day vigilant enough to note and be aware of every electronic and technological device you use while you are awake: coffee maker, toaster, computer, mp3 player, television, stove, refrigerator, air conditioner, vehicle, ATM, credit card machine, Nook or Kindle, microwave, cell phone, laptop, garage door opener, etc. Have gratitude for those resources that make our lives easier. But to cease to be aware of them means we have taken them for granted.

The second part of the challenge is tougher. Can you go one day without these items? Without all of them? Which ones would be easy to give up? Can you unplug yourself from the electrical world and immerse yourself in the natural one for a day? Can you sit in a shady afternoon with a book instead of a computer? Can you put pen to paper instead of typing at a keyboard? Send someone a hand-written letter. Spend the day in your garden instead of watching television. Play outdoors with your children. Fix something around the house you’ve been meaning to get around to. Talk a walk and listen to the birds and life around you. Listen to your own breathing. Be present in your day.

If you don’t think you can do it, not even for one day, explore why that is. Do you work too much to give yourself a day off? Do you find yourself bored without occupying your time with games and cable? Are we too far removed from the living things of a silent world? Do you find the stillness unsettling? Where is that discomfort within you? If you can push through that the natural world will reveal itself as a pulsing, breathing being. It’s priceless, and I would willingly live in a world of darkness if it meant more of the wild would survive. Our ancestors lived without for centuries. I have found that most of my ancestors lived long lives.

A lot of the energy we use comes from fuel sources that have a finite end. We have culled the forests at a greater speed than we have replanted. Fossil fuels will run out. Why are we putting money into developing new technologies like smaller cell phones and larger, flatter televisions instead of working towards solar technology that is more cost effective for the public? Why have we, as a culture, not swerved away from letting big business tell us what we should want? Why aren’t we demanding less game systems and more reliance on green energies? If someone told you that giving up your cell phone, for life, would save the world, how quickly could you hand it over?

People say that it’s hard to think about the future when they live week-to-week. I am one of those people, and I understand how difficult it can be. But we don’t get to not care. That’s the bottom line. For me, it simply means that where I do spend my money matters more. The world beneath us is our Great Mother. Every advancement we make, and have ever made, has been at her expense. We have to care.

Just because our reality isn’t pretty doesn’t mean we get to close our eyes or turn away from it. Just because we close our hands, doesn’t mean we do not bear responsibility in allowing big business to destroy our home from beneath us. We choose personal comfort over survival every time we turn our heads (hear that, lawmakers?). When we do, we tell the next generation of children that we don’t care enough to leave this a better world than we found it.

We think singularly. We want to leave the world better than we were brought into it, with more things, and bigger ones at that. And if we care about others, we care about our own, first, and sometimes, only. The way we think is wrong. Every crying child should be of concern to us, because it could be ours. Every case of pollution should be of concern to us, because someday it could be where we live that is polluted. Every oil spill and flooded town should concern us all. What happens when all the fresh water is contaminated? Who will we blame when there is no more water to drink? Our fresh water is not endless.

I leave you with some time lapse photos from NASA, showing areas of the world over 30 years, de-forestation and dwindling water tables and all (click the link below). I have gratitude for the visuals, even with the realization of how polluted our space is because of the space program. You can also plug into the search, the name of anyplace in the world to watch the change. It’s sobering, and real, and paints a picture louder than words. One we need to open our eyes to. This is how we've shaped our world.

How much more will we change the landscape of the world in another thirty years? Can we stop the pattern-on-motion now? The world we live in is based on our grandparents and great-grandparents’ choices. What world will we leave our grandchildren and great-grandchildren? What will they think of the choices we made and what we left behind?

When I come home from the mountain, from the friendships and the necessary solitude, I will find the hum of the fridge too loud, the crank of the fluorescent in the kitchen too jarring, and the smooth surface of the pavement will be unsteady beneath my mountain-climbing feet. But I will hold the wonder of that mountain in my heart, and I will see the life of that world alive within this city.