October 2, 2021

By Rev. Billy Talen

On the way to COP26, there is the overwhelming feeling that we never made a galvanizing event about the Earth.  Not one that really rang out like a great story across the world. Not like ACT UP and Occupy and Standing Rock and #metoo and Black Lives Matter. There is no Pettis Bridge, no Stonewall.

         The solid mass of consumers cannot decide to move beyond their symbolic gestures.  Nobody really pressures the big old institutions that are pouring CO2 into the air.  There is no Nelson Mandella for the Earth.

         For some reason there isn't a representation of the crisis of our planet that makes us rise up in fury.  The news, the arts, the speeches at victim's funerals - none of that motivates us to change our polluting, consuming ways.  What would it take, since this is an emergency that is killing millions of innocents.  What would it take? 

         All indications are that an extinction event is accelerating.  In the last few years the Earth seems to have blown by the environmental movement.  And yet a lot of us are manufacturing hope in ourselves, and our little group in New York is spending all the money we've got to go and sing in the streets of Glasgow and confront the international pledge-breakers..

         Permit me to go off in a wild direction.  We have been discovering for decades now that the elephant, honeybee, whale and octopus - each and every living thing on this planet has a kind of intelligence. And for most of our 100,000 years on this planet, we have felt that the Earth is also alive, with some kind of view of its living beings, some kind of conscious perspective.

         This idea of the Earth having smarts - what does that have to do with the activism we're hoping for, that would break our habitual social condition.  What does the Earth being in some way - as the Gaia hypothesis puts it - a "self-regulating organism" - what does that have to do with performing that tipping point moment that we're looking for? 

         If the "rights group" in this scenario is the entire species of humans, living with the rights group of all living being, and with the sum of all of life that we know, the Earth, then where's the story?  If the thing all of us share is the mysterious condition called life, and we are all threatened by a death cult - then where is the plot?  What is the stage with the show-down?

         That series of social movements from ACT UP to Black Lives each have their activating story.  The people in those moving moments engage our love, compassion, anger, vision...  And the fact is that the Earth doesn't tend to inspire that emotional response, because this planet is not a person.  As the crisis goes forward the people who are there at the scenes of flooding, disease, migration, and fire - they are victims of what the Earth has done. 

         In public language about "natural disasters" by the news and politicians the Earth is portrayed as a fearsome criminal with baffling motives.  Beyond this, capitalism and colonialism has taught us to regard the limitless natural world as a thing to be conquered and then used as a free resource. 

         Could we have that love, compassion, and a feeling of protectiveness for the Earth when we are dealing with death-dealing winds and waves, baking sun for years and the emboldened evolving of viruses?  The answer is yes we can and yes we must.  When we know that the life of the Earth our emotional partner, our activism makes more sense.  The Earth will enter a story of our struggle against the poisoners when we feel the full array of responses to the source of life.

         There is a simple practice I would like to suggest, based on my personal experience.  For some this is a joy and for some fake-feeling hard work.  The general plan is simple.  Go to the park, walk across your backyard and out into the woods beyond the back fence... or climb the fire escape and find a patch of sky.  Go to the Earth.

         Talk to the Earth. Give the Earth a name if that helps. Gaia is good. Gaia works.  There are tens of thousands of names for the life that surrounds us, they are all good.  I use Sophie, my grandmother's name who died at 20.

         Talk to the Earth and then ask the Earth a question.  How are you feeling?  Have a sincere conversation, or have that goal and let the sincerity come in as you get used to it.  You'll be surprised at how "the outside" begins to feel.  It's amazing.  The everyday weather starts to feel like hearing secrets.  It's the discovery that we are the Earth ourselves. We are made of the Earth.  We're not strangers. 

         For many Earth-lovers, the closeness does not come in the form of conversation. Try an openness, slowing down and letting the sunlight in as you sit in a forest clearing.  Let the vocalizations come one way, toward you, from the thrushes and crickets and bullfrogs. 

         However you get to the Earth, it's like learning a language -- do a little every day and things begin to change.  Soon enough there will be the presence of the Earth all around, showing up in all sorts of ways.  You'll feel like you have a bank of non-nonsense dreams.  Clouds and trees in the wind become a hell of a show.

         And then there is the other way - the Earth will arrive in this crisis we share with it, as just happened here in my city with Hurricane Ida.  And will you have an emotional word with the deadly wind?  Will you invite the Earth's role in a drama that helps us with our activism?

         The Earth is the leader of our movement, the Earth Movement.  This living thing, this conscious being spinning in space - is forcing the drama that everyone of us will come to recognize.  

         The Earth has struggled against the carbon poisons.  The storms and wildfires are messages for us, which we have dulled with data, news, miles of concrete.  The Earth will change us so much.   Suddenly the life inside the storm will be clear to us.  

         The nation states, corporations and NGO's of the environmental movement never address the Earth in a personal way.  But they will eventually, because they will notice that the Earth and you and I - we are in talks.

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