A love letter to the Earth – how to begin?
Dear Sir or Madam? Wait, is Earth a sir or a madam? Dear Sir AND Madam?
Thich Nhat Hahn started his love letters with “dear Mother Earth.” Numerous cultures consider Earth mother and the sky or the sun as father, recognizing the dual energies that fuel creation. But is Earth just this big rock we stand on, separate from the sky above, or does Earth include this biosphere we exist in, the fusion of the solid land and water and the air and the heat of the sun? It’s a lot to wrap my head around, maybe for you, too.
Let’s try another approach. Dear Mother and Father…
Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh.
Maybe Earth is both mother and father, and also everything that is not father or mother, neither male nor female. I’ve never been able to separate my experience of interconnection into two parts. That’s why I say “nature” or “the spirit of nature,” around me and within me. But how should I address a letter, a letter that expresses my love to Earth or nature, when who I’m addressing includes me? Is me?
Perhaps I should set the salutation aside and consider what’s more important anyway: how I can express my love for all this Earth. I could use Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s way and ask, “how do I love thee?” and count the ways.
Earth
I love thee to the deepest cavern and the tallest mountaintop. I love the trees, and the feel of their bark, rough or smooth. I love the sand that holds my footprints and the squish of mud. I love the soft, dark moss and the mysterious lives of mushrooms.
I love the stones, and the memories they hold. The stones are the historians of the planet, full of fossil impressions of life and the layers below the soil that tell the stories of the eons, including the Anthropocene, the era we live in, when we humans have radically changed the biosphere and are laying plastic as the story of our time.
I love what is written by tree roots snaking away from the trunk, visible, and then not. And I love what is written in gravel where rivers once flowed and may flow again.
I find love in the slow march of a tortoise and the plodding of big-bodied lizards. When squirrels chatter in the trees, their path revealed by shaking branches, I feel love. Love is there in the twitch of a rabbit’s nose and the red flash of a fox. Love is in the quake, too, as you, dear Earth, settle into a landscape subtly or drastically altered.
Oh, dearest Earth, I write with a heavy heart, because I don’t love you as well as I could. Living in this modern age means I and my fellow humans leave footprints more permanent than those of a barefoot beach walk. I’m a participant in extraction, of drawing the memories of ancient life from between layers of stone, and in the burning of the records of what came before, every time I flip a light switch. May I walk more gently tomorrow because I love you.
Air
Love is there in the bird silhouetted in the blue sky and in the feather that floats slowly, gracefully to the ground, still possessing the weightlessness of the body from which it fell. Love is in the sweet smell of honeysuckle, the heady aroma of a rose, the fierce and rugged scent of pine needles as I walk on them.
I feel love when the cold inbreath hits my lungs and when a gentle breeze fluffs my hair. Love is in the lace wings of dragonflies and the magical flutters of butterflies. I hear love in the rattle of last year’s aspen leaves still clinging to branches until pushed aside by new buds.
Love is in the buzz of a jeweled hummingbird, in the caw of a crow, the hoot of an owl betraying her silent glide, the haunting call of a loon in the morning fog. Love is even in the spin of a tornado, in gale force wind that rips shingles off the roof. Love is in the inspiration of a sunrise.
Blessed Earth, why do I ignore so many of the breaths I take each day? Your air supports me, filling me with life-giving oxygen, yet I am mostly unconscious to it. I take a breath now – breath in – breath out – and feel my lungs expand and contract, and I am grateful for the air that fills me. I feel love for the air, when I think about it, but most of the time I don’t.
I forget, blessed as I am to breathe clean air, that many beings aren’t so blessed. Every time I drive my car, I pollute it a bit more. And I am just one of billions. Is it love to dirty up what is essential for all life? How can I say I love you and still harm you? How can I love me and still taint that which I need to live? I’ll start now, with consciousness – I breath in – I breath out – and I will love every molecule of air, grateful for each.
Water
Love is in the plunk, plunk of raindrops on a metal roof and light sparkling on a rippling lake. Love is in the majesty of a roaring waterfall and the roll of ocean waves.
I am in love with turtles, of course, and with croaking frogs and clumps of amphibian eggs shimmering just below the surface of the pond. I love the aquatic newts exploring feathery submerged water plants. I feel love in the splash of a fish and the antics of river otters. There is love in a dolphin’s playful breach and the scuttle of crabs in the ebbing surf.
Love is in the silence of snowfall and in soft spring rains. Love is present as I stand under the shower, soothed and cleansed.
Beloved Earth, your waters have birthed all life. All that is possible is because it arose from the primordial ocean. Whether we left the water or chose to stay, all beings depend on you to live. Oh, beloved, how I have failed to honor your waters. Why do I not fall to my knees at the sight of a stream churning with spring’s snowmelt? Why do I not sing of the awesomeness of the pounding rain of a hurricane and of flooded riverbanks? How can I forget how blessed I am to open my tap and fill my glass and drink?
Your oceans are heating, and we humans are filling them with garbage. They’re no longer life-giving. Soon, they won’t even be life-sustaining. The beings that chose to stay within the waters are disappearing, replaced by what we – what I – have carelessly discarded. When I drink, when I bathe, I will try to remember that these are acts of privilege. With love for you, my beloved Earth, I will try to do better.
Fire
Love is felt in the growing warmth of the rising sun. Love is seen in the flash of lightning against a dark sky. Love emerges as red-hot lava flows that reshape the mountains.
I love the garden snake slithering by and the bright orange efts on the forest floor after a rain. I love the twinkle of fireflies as they dance in the grass.
In winter, I rest comfortably in the warmth of my home, and fail to acknowledge, with love, the fire that burns to make it so. Of all that is Earth, fire, for me, is the hardest to remember to love. From the heat in my oven to the fuel burning in my furnace, fire is making my existence possible. Yet, I fear fire. We all do, I guess. Wildfires rage and destroy what we humans hold dear. We’ve contributed to the conditions that make them so fierce: rising temperatures and drought. But, oh Earth, your fire regenerates the forests, clearing the way for new life to emerge. We cannot tame you. Believing we can is the great delusion of this age of humans.
To love your fire means to love what is wild. To see myself as Earth I must love that wildness in myself, to surrender my belief in control to the purifying fire. We humans cannot force the power of the Earth to bend to our will, to push forward in the name of unrestrained gain, because I see that you, oh Earth, will only turn the fire we think we can control against us. We see your wild, unbridled power in the charts and graphs of global warming and burned acreage and homes reduced to ash.
So how do I love that, too? How do I love the consequences of my clinging to a way of living that is unsustainable for you, oh Earth? How to I find love in the results of my failure to act on behalf of the Earth? How do I fall in love so deeply with whatever you become, however catastrophic it seems to me, that my heart bursts with joy at your disastrous wonder? Can I love you enough to surrender completely to you?
Oh, wonderous Earth, oh divine, beautiful creation, I love you and yet I fail you time and time again. I should be gently caressing your soil with each step but instead I press my mark into you, forcing the stone to remember I was here. I forget to notice I’m breathing when I should be filled with gratitude with each lung-opening breath in. I sip from my glass oblivious that each drop of water holds the gift of life and that I am privileged just to be able to take this sip. And I’m afraid of the way your fire is responding to my very human desire to trap it, to put it to use, afraid of the wild fierceness which is more powerful than me by far.
In one of her essays about climate change and climate justice, But the Greatest of These is Love, Mary Annaïse Heglar calls it “wild love.” She writes: “This love is not a noun, she is an action verb. She can shoot stars into the sky. She can spark a movement. She can sustain a revolution….” I say wild love is patient and kind, and brutal, and broken. Is my love wild enough for you? Am I wild enough to love you?
I know it’s not sufficient to pledge my wild love to the Earth if I don’t turn it into action, if I don’t stand up in defense of the one I so truly, truly love. But I am Earth, part of this interconnected web, and loving the Earth means loving my imperfections, my failings, my fear, the things that keep me from knowing that true, true love.
I think this is where the climate movement gets stuck. We march. We wave signs. We yell at politicians. We scream in frustration that nothing, or at least not enough, is getting done. We get angry at our neighbors who drive big, loud pickup trucks and at the car companies who keep producing them. We rage at the accumulation of wealth by those who are doing the most damage to our dear Earth. And we drive home in our cars that pollute a bit less and turn on our lights and feel guilty that we aren’t willing to live without the comforts of heat and light and cooked food and internet connections. I do, anyway. Maybe you do, too.
And we take that anger and frustration and guilt and think that’s what everyone should be feeling so more people will take our side. But we can’t put anger out there and expect anything but anger to come back. It’s a shouting match at best, violence at its worst. It’s the kind of revolution that flairs up and is doused before anything substantial is accomplished, the kind that only creates casualties.
And what do we do with frustration? We turn it against hope. Frustration eats away at your vision of a better future until you don’t see the point in even trying. We come to believe that we are caught in this system that can’t be changed, can’t be beat. So why bother waving a sign or driving a hybrid or installing a heat pump? They, you know, the they out there that isn’t us, will keep being greedy, keep doing all the harmful things without consequences. And the we who is not them can’t fix it.
And guilt? I’ve never known any one of “them” to agree to feel guilty about the state of the Earth just because I’ve told them to. It’s more like, “Well, you drove here today so it’s you who isn’t doing your part.” We can’t make anyone else feel guilty, but we can internalize it really well. It’s the never-enough-ness, the feelings of inadequacy that keep us from liking ourselves very much. Guilt doesn’t shoot stars into the sky. Guilt sits in your gut.
So how are you and I going to recognize our inadequacies and keep liking ourselves? How do we stay hopeful in the face of inevitable change? And how to we project peace into the world? I don’t’ have all the answers, but I know that I feel love when I hug a tree or when I turn a warm, smooth stone over in my hand. I find love in the morning mist and in a bead of water spiraling down an icicle. I know love when cool air fills my lungs, and the scent of wild thyme reaches my nose. And I find love, too, in the warmth that flows out of the heating vents and in a steaming cup of coffee.
Loving the Earth means loving it all, the beauty, the wonder, the grandeur, the fierceness, the calamity, the uncertainty, the messiness. And remembering that you are the Earth, too, and you are also beautiful and wonderful and fierce and messy. Love that. Love one another. Love everything that is good and horrible right now. Love the big-pickup-drivers and the politicians and the CEOs. Love not knowing how this is going to turn out. Then grab a sign and buy a hybrid and choose products without plastic packaging because you are so in love with the Earth you simply must be tender with her. With him? With us.
And so, my dear, dear Earth, this love letter comes to a close with a promise to show you how much I love you, not with anger or frustration or guilt, but with recognition and surrender and even more love.