Kissing the Earth

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“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

So wrote Thich Nhat Hahn.

Pause for a moment and think about how precious the Earth is. In all the discovered and known universe, it stands alone as a planet on which life flourishes, including a species capable of self-awareness, compassion, worship, intellect, and love. This is not to suggest such things are not possible or do not exist elsewhere – chances are they are and do. But if they do, we haven’t yet learned of it and that suggests that what we have here is pretty special. Literally one in a billion. And it has taken even what we know now to exist on this rare Earth 13.7 billion years to get here.

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

I don’t know if you are paying attention, but there are reports out of Europe of the Rhine, the Loire, and the Danube running dry in places. Lakes Mead and Powell are sinking to record lows, threatening the Colorado river and its ability to provide water to a large swath of the Southwest. And China is seeing crop yields fail in massive areas as they are experiencing heavy droughts that persist year after year, each day setting new records for sustained high temperatures.

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

Cyclones in the Pacific rim, wildfires in Australia, drought in East Africa, floods in South Asia, aridity in Central America, hurricanes in the Atlantic all currently threaten large populations. The Earth has reached a one-degree lift in average temperatures, halfway to the apocalyptic figure of a 2 degree shift that permanently alters the ecosystem and threatens its continuance in the web of life that has sustained it over billions of years of evolution.

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

Climate change and climate disaster are no joking matters. These are dire circumstances that demand immediate action and singular resolve. As I have been saying for a decade, if we don’t solve this justice problem it will solve all other justice problems for us. In his book Climate Church, Climate World Jim Antal makes the bold and prescient claim that saving mother Earth is the vocation of the Church. It has become our reason for being. We are stewards of God’s creation. That does not give us access to dominion over, but calls us to care for. Capitalism’s authorization to grab what you can when you can, to see the Earth not as mother who feeds all but as commodity that satiates lust and greed is going to kill us all. The more biblical notion of stewardship is an invitation to sustain and not to ravish.

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

There is a line that is oft quoted, but whose origins seem to be somewhat disputed. Nonetheless, I will repeat it here: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Every day I ask myself what are we leaving behind for our children and grandchildren? What tortures will they face because of our acquisitiveness and lack of restraint? What can I be doing today as caretaker of the Earth they will need to live to ensure they have a planet safe to inhabit?

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet on this, our journey Into the Mystic.