This week our world leaders will come together to talk about climate change. They will talk about the policy and the science and make agreements they alone cannot keep. They will provide sound reasoning and a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.
But who has time for these grand ideas in our lives? Climate change is hard to grasp in general and especially when we are occupied with the tasks of everyday life like raising children, fighting traffic, and working. The destruction of the planet won’t happen for at least another ten years so we can think about it later, after getting the kids to school, after the massive project at work is done, after we retire.
In this way we’ve lost our spiritual connection to the earth and when we think about buying less and using less to lessen the effects on the planet we only think about the loss and the sacrifice. We don’t consider that we have something very valuable to regain, our spiritual connection with the earth and by doing so reclaim our deep primal connection with our bodies and our first love, our mother.
We have replaced her with 1500-thread count sheets and nested mixing bowls the color of robin’s eggs. We dress ourselves, our homes and our children in her gifts without looking behind us to see the destructive force of our desires. The guilt is staggering and we hold our breath waiting for the end that is sure to come from such savage selfish thoughts. This anxiety propels us to keep shopping and buy more, but we are mere shells without our mother. We know in our bodies and in our mind below our thoughts that she has created us and can destroy us and even our fathers cannot save us. But without our mothers, creativity is replaced with consumption where we try to possess what we cannot create all the while we dance on a stage desperate not to fall off.
We can and must face these destructive impulses, because when we do we will feel better and realize that our primal connection with the earth and our mother is life affirming and regenerative. Our terror at our own destructiveness is a denial that we are part of nature and do not and cannot control the natural rhythms which include life and death.
As we accept this, as painful as it might be, we can begin to learn to live within our bodies and feel safe in knowing that life and death cycles are the natural order and our safety actually lies in our embracing these cycles rather than resisting. Lucretius, the Roman poet and philosopher, said conquer your fears, accept the fact that you and all things you encounter are transitory and embrace the beauty and pleasure of the world. There really is no escape from the constant making and unmaking and remaking of forms.
I pause on my drive home from work, stalled in traffic and watch as a hawk flies overhead. I have much to learn from the hawk that flies along the wind currents and eddies and glides along the warm and cool drafts in synchronous rhythm with his wings.