"EARTH DAY, 2024"

 “EARTH DAY, 2024”

This year marks the 54th 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.  I prefer to think that we still have a chance, and in that mindset, I’m sharing a poem by Wendell Berry that will help us shift our way of thinking about the earth and its creatures, including ourselves.  

The Heron

By Wendell Berry

While the summer’s growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river

where it flowed, faithful to its way,

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand.

I could not reach it even in dreams.

But one morning at the summer’s end

I remember it again, as though its being

lifts into mind in undeniable flood,

and I carry my boat down through the fog,

over the rocks, and set out.

I go easy and silent, and the warblers

appear among the leaves of the willows,

their flight like gold thread

quick in the live tapestry of the leaves.

And I go on until I see crouched

on a dead branch sticking out of the water

a heron—so still that I believe

he is a bit of drift hung dead above the water.

And then I see the articulation of a feather

and living eye, a brilliance I receive

beyond my power to make, as he

receives in his great patience

the river’s providence. And then I see

that I am seen. Still, as I keep,

I might be a tree for all the fear he shows.

Suddenly I know I have passed across

to a shore where I do not live.