Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [27]
Americans in particular have never been more disconnected from their biological inheritance. We talk about “nature” in the abstract even as millions of microbes cleanse our skin, digest our food, and destroy harmful invaders. And this is happening in our very own bodies! Microbes “get no respect” in America.
It’s not that we are bad people who have set out to plunder the earth, but we are ignorant of how life works and how we are a part of it. That knowledge, once the inheritance of every young child growing up in communities across the earth, has been lost in modern technological cultures—lost to our peril.
So, what can thoughtful people do?
On a personal level we can contemplate those five principles of ecosystems and use them as a checklist for our own lives. How can we use less of a polluting type of energy, recycle more, leave a smaller footprint, create habitat in our yards, join conservation efforts, and change our ways to meet the new challenges? Call it a program of self-regulation.
Some might challenge that suggestion, asking why they should give up their comforts or restrict their activities when no one else seems to be doing so. That reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s quest to find an ethical basis for living. Here is what he thought:
As I sit here under this tree I think about how much I value my own life and wish to go on living and to have more of it. Then I look up at this lofty tree with its gently swaying leaves and think, “This tree must hold its own life as valuable and also want to go on living and have more of life, too. And even though it is mute, it nevertheless is no different than me in its desire to live, to grow, to flourish.”
Everywhere we see this, if we stop to observe … the force of life willing itself into being and survival upon the face of the earth for its time. The fleeing gazelle with the swift cheetah in pursuit, the child bubbling with excitement about being alive, and bees pollinating the flowering beings that bring us pleasure and food—all to survive, to thrive.
Recognizing this common bond to all of life around us, Schweitzer realized, results in Reverence for Life, which he concluded is the ethical basis for living. We begin to value our own life more, to see it as a precious gift and to live it to its highest purpose. We regain the will to live.
This brings us full circle to Lovelock’s premise that the earth itself is a living organism of which we are all functional parts. All together the whole thing works. Works, that is, as long as we follow the five basic principles that are the great roots of life on this planet.
Perhaps this time in human history is a call to return to a higher purpose in life, to realize the human’s role to consciously participate in the well-functioning of earth’s living systems.
We are being reminded of our place in the whole pageant of life we find around us. We are called to Reverence for Life as a way of life. As individuals we can find emotional, spiritual, and practical guidance from the life we observe around us. Reconnecting, experiencing life in all its manifest forms as fellow inhabitants with which we share this beautiful planet—this life—is a way forward in an uncertain future.
REFERENCES
Lovelock, James. 1995. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Planet. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Schweitzer, Albert. 1990. Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Susan Feathers is an environmental educator and nonprofit consultant whose writing and fundraising for nonprofits is aimed at realizing a nonviolent, ecologically sustainable world community. Visit her Web site for more information: www.writeforchange.com.
Living with Purpose in the End Times
JAMIE McHUGH
I am by nature an optimistic person. Yet, with