Happy Earth Day

I love this time of year when the plum tree outside our bedroom window blooms. In the summer when we sleep with the window open I often am awoken by rustling in that very tree, and when I peer out I find bright raccoon eyes peering back at me. We share the plums. Actually, they get the lion’s share because picking the tree requires a ladder or sharp claws, and simplicity wins every time.

This is what’s blooming in the front yard, along with lavender, rosemary, and some rogue tulips.

Earth day is celebrated in over 192 countries now, according to Wikipedia, but I wish it were more. More countries and more celebration. I asked my boys when they got home from school if they discussed Earth Day and both said nothing was mentioned. Sad. They have a captive audience at schools, surely someone cares enough to explain what Earth day is…? My older son told me this weekend that I was an “Earth Helper” so he must have gotten that from somewhere~ I had assumed school, but maybe not.

I had a strange thought today that I’m not even sure how to put into words, but I was thinking about Earth Day and the Earth and just how insanely we take it for granted, and I wondered, if just maybe humans had started off as Earth worshipers instead of Sun worshipers if perhaps we would have evolved with a greater respect for the Earth. I realize there was a time when people did worship the earth in ways, Gaia and all that, but we seem, as a species, to always be looking up and out, as though there has to be something bigger and brighter out there…

And we forget to look under our own feet, where amazing things are happening.

I guess I just thought if religions got involved in being conscious of how we treat the earth, something good might happen. People might listen more, and if all religions started working towards the same goal, maybe there wouldn’t be so much to fight over. I’m not saying we should replace all religions with Earth centered gods or anything, but it’s something all religions could get behind and it would be a good thing, for many reasons. A shared, concrete mission instead of endless squabbles over this and that. Not that being a conscious earthling requires religion at all, it’s just a thought I had…that maybe when the future species of the future world look at our human limitations, they will see our tragic flaw as our first instinct was to look at the glory of the sun instead of the soil between our toes.