Earth Day

While Aunt Flo does her best to ravage my body today, I am taking the higher road to help her sister Mother Nature. Mother Nature is known by many names depending on your religious beliefs and societal background. Some people think of her simply as a living machine, a planet that hosts life, but other's see her more as the mother of life holding us all to her bosom, an entity of massive proportions. She is known by many names including but not limited to: Earth, Mother Nature, Gaia, Mother Earth, etc. Her images surround us via a photograph of a still lake, a child cuddling a small puppy, a fertility goddess from ancient eras. We see her best after the rain, when the world is sparkling and clean, the pollution cleaned from the air. We hear her sighs on the wind, her lusty cries through a new born babe, and her mourns in the haunting howls of a dog. We smell her scent in a spring flower and the freshly turned soil. We taste her wealth in a sun ripened tomato and tender green beans. She shares with us all that she is, just as we share and provide for our children. We are all hers. Whether she as an inanimate object was created by God, or whether life was breathed into her by a gaseous explosian, does not matter. She, the provider or life, the spirit of earth,inanimately or real, exists. She exists.

It is a pop culture movement to preserve the Earth and reverse the damages done by our generation and the generations before us. In the past century our strides in technology and advancement in science have wreaked havoc upon our planet. Each generation has a segment of society that pleads Earth's cause but this time around, they have made great efforts to change the minds of the masses. Our new badge of success is driving a hybrid car and eating organic foods. Starbucks are being replaced by Whole Food Stores and California pizza shops. While some people are attendant to the movement only for the status symbol it affords them atleast they are making less of a mark on the planet's surface.

Preserving life, preserving Earth and the spirit of Mother Nature is not a status symbol or a popular cultural item. Unlike Disco, the movement will not just end with a memory of go go boots and a fondness for black lights. Our children will not find a box in the attic with Recycling stickers and think, "our parents were so wierd with their hybrid cars". We are destroying that which keeps us living. Every thing we have, everything we do is related to the earth. This magnificent unimaginably fragile machine of nature that provides life and reclaims us in death.

No matter what your feelings towards political party affiliations, the pressures of celebrity icons, and the fragility of our existence period, your decisions today will still be here in 100 years even after you as an individual are gone. What we leave behind us, is what our children have to live with. That is the biggest problem I have. I want to leave the world in a condition that my children will not suffer, and that they will not worry about what they will be leaving their children. My native American ancestors knew their relationship to the earth and the fragility of what Gaia could give and take away. The hippies of my parent's generation knew that we were on a downward slope if we did not slow down. Yes, they learned this through sex, pot, and Rock and Roll but they knew deeep down a great cause when they acidicly tripped over one.

So today, Earth day, I will not preach to you about recycling, going green and pollution. You already know it. I will leave you with this: Make a concious effort to leave this world a better place for the sake of our children.