Lament for the land . . .
Today is Freya's day. The mailbox fills as we approach “Earth Day”
Today is the 185th anniversary of John Muir's birth. The naturalist was born on this date in 1838 Dunbar, Scotland.
Plants squeal or "cry" when stressed or thirsty. Research suggests "noises" emitted from the plants "were particularly obvious for plants that were stressed by a lack of water or recent cutting." Animals like moths or bats may even be able to hear these "distress cries" at the ultrasonic high pitched frequency, further inducing an awe-like wonder for the way plants and animals interact in our world.
The land’s lament speaks a foundational ecological truth: when one part of creation goes awry, the whole suffers. The land’s grief at what the people have done points to the fundamental reality of our interconnection. Perhaps it is the boundedness of our bodies that makes it so easy to overlook the truth of our connectedness. We appear so discrete, so unitary, but we are not. The fabric that connects all of creation is badly torn: torn by manifold injustices wrought and perpetuated by the exploitative systems in which we live, torn by ideologies of scarcity that teach us to love too narrowly and too little. To mourn is to speak that truth to the lies that prop up the denial on which the status quo depends. – Fr. Richard Rohr
Amid the present ecological crises, we need poets and artists to free themselves and us from the fictive constraints of sterile individuality. We need musicians to sing the songs of every small being. Orpheus asks us all to remember, as he did, that if we believe the stones can dance with our songs, they will dance, that our beliefs can open unexpected doors. The vibrations of every melody continue throughout the universe having emerged from the Orphic world of mycorrhizae and vegetal roots. – Sophie Strand
Rain
A voice is heard.
Bitter weeping
for the children of the earth.
She refuses to be comforted
for her children
because they are no more.
Soothing words and “can’t we all
just get along” are moral outrages
in Creation's distorted face
whose tears fall like acid rain.
— jb 4.21.23