Hello!
Mother Earth to Douglas! Come in please! Anyone hear me? Good! We need to talk. That is, I need to talk, and you need to listen. You have a problem and Mother Earth can help.
Yes, I said I’m Mother Earth. I am more than “just” Earth. A rocky-mostly-round-mass-supportive-of-life-rotating-around the sun planet.
I am more than a Pale Blue Dot (1) spinning through space, offering great photo ops. And I’m more than the Green Planet (2) boasting its chlorophyll, the beauty of living things. Mother Earth: it's not just some tree-hugger, anthropocentric, poetic moniker, it’s biochemically correct and theologically apt! According to many ancient myths, I birthed you. You were born from the stuff of my body. No atom in me isn’t in you! In the Hebrew story, Creator God scooped up some of my adam-ah, that is the clay on my surface, and like a potter, shaped it, smoothed it, gave it all the necessary appendages to move about and all the bodily entrances and exits to be nourished, and detoxified and to be playful, and then, taking a deep breath offered a sort of Holy CPR, and breathed life into you. Mind you, The Earth creature God created was not some white, cis-gendered, privileged male named Adam. (I may be 4 1/2 billion years old, but I’m woke!) No, Adam was an Earthling, a pre-gendered God-filled offspring of Earth. (That business with Eve will have to wait for another time). I didn’t need the myth to tell me who I am. I can feel it. I am your Mother. Your Earth Mother. I hold you. I nourish you. I protect you. I help you to flourish. I LOVE you. It was brilliant. In creating you, God chose not to be just out there, but be around here, not just surrounding you, but in your bones. There’s something else I need to tell you about me... You’ll think I’m off my axis… I am God’s Body. One very brave, creative, feminist theologian knew this about me and has tried to tell the world. "God isn’t just 'Spirit,'" she wrote.… "God comes to us in matter. minerals, and waters, and rocks and…. flesh." You live on God’s body! You’re integrated with spirit and earth. It’s a ‘we’ thing not an us/them thing. Are you still with me? I have to be sure we are on the same page before I talk about energy. I need to be sure you understand the job you’ve been given. Your job on Mother Earth. Your responsibility as God’s Body. I need to know that you understand about the "D" word. "Dominion." (Really: God is great at Creating, but needs a consultant linguist.) In the Hebrew Bible and many of your English translations God gives Adam (and you) what has been God’s: dominion, rule, authority over all the earth. Unfortunately earthlings have thought this meant that you can do anything you please with any of the creatures that live on my land, swim in my seas, or fly in my skies. They think they can blow up my mountains, and drill in my deserts, and frack in my shale. They think I can just wave a magic wand and clean up the mess they’ve made. Greedy, self-important, narcissistic Earthlings! Only thinking about what my plants and animals and minerals and rocks can do for them without considering MY health. The delicate balance I need to keep…. and you require! What’s the matter with you? For heaven’s sake, you are responsible for God’s body. What you are doing isn’t what God means by dominion! It’s domineering! It’s abuse! And it makes your Mother cross. It hurts me. The pain sometimes makes me groan. f you want to know God’s idea of dominion, look to Jesus and Francis and Buddha and First Nation people. They understood the relationship between God and Earth and Earthlings. You need to get the D word out of your head. It’s confused you. You are the manager of; the steward of. You are responsible for. maintaining Earth’s balance. Who else is going to do it? God needs you to “work and serve; observe and preserve" creation. That has a nice ring to it. Work it and serve it. Observe it and preserve it. (say it with me) Okay, now I’m ready to talk about energy. Can you keep three words in your head? Sustainable. Clean. Accessible for all. There’s no doubt about it. I am resource rich! Creator made sure of that. Mother Earth provides not just food and beauty, but also all you’ve ever needed to thrive! A perfect balance. Over the millennium earthlings have found on me sources for light and heat. And there are still more to uncover, I’m sure of it. At first there were so few earthlings their habits had little impact on my resources. But has that has changed. There are 8 billion of you now. The balance God set in place at creation is all out of whack. Getting it back is…. complicated. Once wood -- burning wood -- provided the only source of fuel for light and warmth -- where there were trees... Once, clean-burning and odorless olive oil lamps provided a bit of light for homes — where there were olive trees.. Desperate for light some burned animal fat. Tarrow. Whew! Stinky and not very bright. For awhile, and in some places today, animal dung warms homes. Once whale oil was the fuel of choice. A great improvement over earlier options, but my elegant sea- giants nearly died off! Was I ever depressed! And mad! And then... coal! I have a lot of it. Maybe enough for 200-300 more years. Mining it has provided jobs — dangerous, dirty ones. And frankly I don’t particularly appreciate miners chopping and tunneling through me, Or dynamiting the tops off my mountains. The worst is what coal sends into my skies. Ash, carbon dioxide, sulfur. Burning coal was the beginning of the heat-up. Don’t think I haven’t felt it. And then... and now… fossil fuels. Cleaner for my skies than coal. You’ve been burning SO much! ! Maybe Mother Earth can provide another 50 more years of oil. 50 more years of natural gas. It’s not sustainable. But the real tragedy is what carbon emissions are doing to Earth’s finely tuned biosystems. I’m heating up even more... You know what it’s like to have a temperature when you have the flu? You sweat. You take Tylenol. You eat chicken soup. You get better. Well, I have a temperature all the time now and nothing will bring it down. Mother Earth can only take so much:
When I cry; when I groan; it is not without hope: There is YOU. Listen to your Mother: You were chosen to be the responsible ones, to work and serve and observe and preserve. You have a moral obligation to choose the safest, cleanest, and most sustainable sources of energy. Listen to your Mother: I have what you need. I HAVE WHAT YOU NEED! I have Wind. Earthlings have been using my wind in windmills for more than 2,000 years And the first windmills were NOT in the Netherlands, they just knew a good thing when they saw it. Wind power is absolutely sustainable. And clean. Are there complications? Storage for one. But it you are committed and creative, you’ll work through them. I have Water. Rivers: Lots of them. Your ancestors built waterwheels, and today you build hydroelectric dams. Where is moving water, electricity is not far behind. It’s sustainable. It’s clean. It’s inexpensive (after the initial cost). Are there complications? Yes. Don’t ignore them. They are solvable. AND I have Sun! SUN! My best resource. Well, it’s not mine, but it shines here! It’s the most promising source of power for you. It’s sustainable. for at least the next 5 billion years. It’s clean! And it’s getting less expensive and easier to store all the time. Did you know you can graze sheep or goats underneath the solar panels? Oh that makes me so very happy. No, the switch from fossil fuels to sustainable, clean and carbon neutral fuels won’t be easy. But stop making excuses that it’s impossible. Jobs in coal and oil will fade out. Be sensitive to that. Find opportunities for poorer folks to access new energy forms. I hear you are rainbow people. Yes? Can I get an Amen? I want to leave you with a rabbi’s rainbow image... Once upon a time God became angry at misbehaving Earthlings and decided the earthlings must be punished. Earth must be destroyed— save one earth family and a few animals to repopulate the purified earth. God sent a flooding rain. Every living thing on the earth died, except for what was left on that one boat. After God saw what all that death and destruction looked like, God’s love prevailed over God’s judgement. The once bow-and-arrow carrying warrior God hung up the bow as a promise to never again destroy the earth. But the rain-BOW we see is a half-picture, where is the other half that completes the circle of wholeness? Earthlings hold the other half said the rabbi. You must decide if you will continue in your violent addiction to unsustainable and earth-warming sources of energy, or if you will take the weapons that are destroying your Earth Mother and hang them up for the sake of wholeness. Yours and mine. Do you love your Mother? Your Earth Mother? Do you love God? God’s Body? Do you love yourselves? All God’s creatures? What are you doing to show it? 1.Carl Sagan, 2. David Attenborough, 3. Sally McFague, 4.Rabbi Shlomo Riskin (a prominent American-born Orthodox rabbi in Israel)
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