If we could come face-to-face...

If we could come face-to-face with the ecological devastation that we casually leave in our wake, would we change our ways?


"Let no species disappear without public notice. If our ways of life are going to destroy infinitudes of lives, let us at least do so knowingly, and grieve for the terrible loss. Evolution is an infinitely branching tree. Each branch branches again, and branches again, budding and branching, a beautiful and endless complexity. Killing off a species not only wipes that creature off the earth forever; it also lops off the budding branch, eliminating for all time the infinite variation that might have grown from that limb. This is a loss literally beyond imagining. It is also a loss that is largely invisible."

"Create art that fills the forests with death notices. Transform every stump in the clearcut into a cross, so no one can drive by a ruined hillside without seeing it for what it is--a graveyard that stretches for miles. Let the roadside bloom with shrines adorned with plastic flowers to mark the extinctions of sparrows. Post 'missing persons' notices for the white-headed woodpeckers that used to frequent the ponderosa forest. Send an obituary to the newspaper each spring, when the frogs do not sing. Howl across the lake for the gray wolves that once roamed North America. Assemble the choir and sing hymns as the bulldozers gouge out the last checker-lilies in the valley. Print pictures of ivory-billed woodpeckers on milk cartons. Rent a hearse and follow the truck that sprays poisons in the ditches."

From Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson (Trinity University Press, 2010).

"I have a heart."

A SINGING CLEANING WOMAN

A leaf says,
"Sweethearts - don't pick me,
For I am busy doing
God's work.
I am lowering my veins and roots
Like ropes
With buckets tied to them
Into the earth's deep
Lake.
I am drawing water
That I offer like a rose to
The sky.
I am a singing cleaning woman
Dusting all the shelves in
The air
With my elegant green
Rags.
I have a heart.
I can know happiness like
You."

A poem by Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky in The Subject Tonight Is Love

I Am What the Universe Is Doing

Thoughts from an address by Bruce Sanguin:


"On a silent retreat in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 20 years ago I had an enlightenment experience in which I realized my essential unity with all of creation. My dualistic worldview--a product of modernism--collapsed. I knew myself to be the self-reflexive consciousness of the universe. I was the universe noticing the universe, reflecting upon itself, dreaming as the universe about a new future. I no longer walked upon the earth located outside of me. I knew myself to be the earth in human form. I was what the universe was doing. And everything I gazed out upon--the water, the birds, the grass blowing in the wind--was sacred. Every thing and every body pulsated with an interior sacred dimension. Sitting here today, being in conversation with each other, dreaming of a better future for our planet and for the left-behinds of the world, we are the universe in conversation; we are the consciousness of the planet coalescing; we are the planet plotting a resurrection."


Found at http://www.tcpc.org/library/article.cfm?library_id=627

"One-fifth of your current use..."

"To act justly is to take no more than one's fair share of the Earth's resources, including the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb carbon dioxide without causing major climatic change. Simply take the population of the Earth and divide it into the available resources; the resultant number will tell you the share of resources you can fairly claim. Unfortunately, if you are an average American, this number will be approximately one-fifth of your current use."

"Think hard about the most important personal decision you will make: Whether to bring children into the world. It's easy to think of overpopulation as a moral failing of other people, other religions, other continents. But if you have more than one or two children, overpopulation is a moral problem in your household. No one 'deserves' more children than anyone else; in fact, affluent Americans may have difficulty claiming even equal rights to children, given the global impacts of our lifestyles and life spans. Overpopulation in a time of climate crisis creates terrible problems of distributive justice; overpopulation coupled with overconsumption creates injustice that is exponentially worse."

From Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson (Trinity University Press, 2010).

"If we awaken..."

"We don't have to sink into despair about global warming; we can act. If we just sign a petition and forget about it, it won't help much. Urgent action must be taken at the individual and collective levels. We all have a great desire to be able to live in peace and to have environmental sustainability. What most of us don't yet have are concrete ways of making our commitment to sustainable living a reality in our daily lives. We haven't organized ourselves. We can't simply blame our governments and corporations for the chemicals that pollute our drinking water, for the violence in our neighborhoods, for the wars that destroy so many lives. It's time for each of us to wake up and take action in our own lives. ...

"We have the power to decide the destiny of our planet. If we awaken to our true situation, there will be a change in our collective consciousness. We have to do something to wake people up. We have to help the Buddha to wake up the people who are living in a dream."

--Thich Nhat Hanh, "The Bells of Mindfulness" (emphasis added)

From Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson (Trinity University Press, 2010).

"What kind of person...?"

"Ethical thought going back to Aristotle has assumed that right and wrong actions ought to be judged not by the sort of results that the actions produce, but by whether the actions express the appropriate virtues. The moral person is not necessarily the one who accomplishes good, but the one who is good. So what is it to be good, to be fully human, the best example of our kind? ... In character and action, we can choose to embody love or hatred, peace or violence, humility or arrogance, courage or timidity, wisdom or stupidity, care or indifference, empathy or callousness. ...

"So a virtue ethic does not ask, Do we have oblications to future generations to avert climate catastrophe? Rather, it asks, What kind of person would put his immediate interests ahead of the interests of the multitudes to come? What kind of person could imagine that the suffering or possible extinction of other forms of life asked nothing of her? What kind of person, with the power to help in at least a small way to avert harm on a scale never before seen on Earth, would turn away from the chance--indifferent, unknowing, or self-deceptively in denial?

"To recognize oneself as part of the world, created by and creative of a rich and beautiful network of lives, is part of what it means to be fully human. The virtues that express that humanity have to do, at the very least, with compassion--an empathy that extends beyond one's own time and species--and with an equally broad-minded sense of justice. This is the strength of character of the person who will bravely, stubbornly, lovingly act in defense of a world he will never know."

From Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson (Trinity University Press, 2010). Bold emphasis added.

"That this beauty shall remain..."

"Some people say that we live in two worlds--the world of what is and the world of what ought to be. But a full appreciation of the beauty and wonder of the world closes the gap between what is and what ought to be. If this is the way the world is--beautiful, astonishing, wondrous, awe-inspiring--then this is how we ought to act in that world--with respect, with deep caring and fierce protectiveness, and with a full sense of our obligation to the future, that this beauty shall remain."

From Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson (Trinity University Press, 2010).