"EARTH DAY"

 “EARTH DAY”

This year marks the 56th anniversary of the official beginning of Earth Day.  I remember when Earth Day was officially recognized in 1970.  It had been semi-officially started in 1969 by Iowa native and later Californian John McConnell.  Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin got it going nationally by calling for a country-wide teach-in on the environment on April, 22, 1970, using the model of the teach-ins against the Vietnam war.  It caught on, and I remember that Caroline and I started observing it in worship in our church in Norfolk in 1976.  As we all know now, we are at a crucial point in the earth’s life, and many think that it is already too late. 

And, of course, the Trumpsters are pushing hard to retract all the scientific truths about climate change and the destruction of life on earth as we know it.  The New York Times published an article last week entitled “Climate Change Denial Is Back in Washington.”  The article noted that a conference held in DC hit hard on the idea of climate change, and the article began in this way: “Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by ‘leftist politicians.’  Fossil fuels are the greenest energy sources.  More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be harmless.”  We all know that these are deliberate lies, just like the lies told by the tobacco industry in the days before smoking was not as regulated as it is now.  Indeed, in Atlanta we were projected to hit 90 degrees last week, the earliest that we have ever hit 90 since records began to be kept in the 1870’s.  The second earliest was in 1980, that horrible, heat-filled, drought dominated summer when our son David was born.

We are at a crucial time now in the life of the earth, and no matter what the Trumpsters tell us, the climate is warming, and our abuse of the earth is the cause of it.  So, on this Earth Day, we are asked to find ways to lessen our impact on the life of the earth, so that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have a chance.  There are many steps and many options, but perhaps the best place to begin is to change our attitude towards the earth and all its inhabitants.  No one better supplies that opportunity to make the change than did Mary Oliver in her poetry.  So, here is one of her many poems about the appreciation of the earth and all its creatures.  It was first published in 1979 in her book “Twelve Moons.” It is called “Sleeping in the Forest.”

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better

Mary Oliver