Earth Wisdom

Yesterday I had one of those "downer" days: you know, the kind of day where you're all sitting on the pity pot and beating yourself up? Well, this morning I read a statement by Alice Walker which blew me away: "As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can.  As long as the earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I'm the Earth.  I won't give up until the Earth gives up."  Too many of us continue to leave a big grimy footprints all over Mother Earth, and, as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it: "...all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell..."  Yet, as Walker marvels, look at what Earth continues to do and produce, and shouldn't that give us some optimism in the human endeavor? If Earth can make a spring, and flower, and not give up, surely I, as a part of Earth, can draw from deep within the lifegiving energy to deal with the sadness of my friend's life ebbing away because of cancer, to register my outrage at the continued debasement of women as I read the news account of another rape locally, to patiently wait for the slow-moving elderly man pushing his cart ahead of me as I hurry along, to realize that my worst "downer" day has far more positive possibilities than for two-thirds of other people on the planet.

Yeah, thanks Alice!