More and more, I am finding a deepening love and concern for what is happening to our beautiful planet. The poet Reiner Maria Rilke (translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows) phrased it beautifully in his Book of Hours which has been on and off my bedside table for several years now:

Dear darkening ground,
you’ve endured so patiently the walls we’ve built,
perhaps you’ll give the cities one more hour

and grant the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor—let their work
grip them another five hours, or seven,

before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.

Just give me a little more time!

I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they’re worthy of you and real.

And I continue to be very curious about how mindfulness can help in that quest to love the things as no one has thought to love them. It seems to me that a lot of the current climate crisis can be met by looking deeply, acting mindfully and lovingly. And so I find myself wondering… what is my place in the family of things, how am I connected to others? How can I contribute to a healthier thriving planet on a day-to-day basis? Where do my clothes come from, who has grown my food and where, what are the conditions of their lives and how is their environment treated, what resources are used to package my food and what happens to it after it has served its purpose? What are the lives of the animals like that are producing the eggs and milk I consume, and how is the animal agriculture that I’m supporting with my purchases contributing to climate change?

This topic occupies my bedside table at the moment: Stephanie Kaza’s Mindfully Green, Thich Nhat Hanh’s Love Letter to the Earth, Joanna Macy’s Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy.

I find I’m having to work hard at staying connected and balanced in the midst of the amount of suffering I see when looking more deeply at the interconnectedness of all things and therefore, my contribution to it. It’s easy to fall into overwhelm and then shrink away in apathy, distraction and numbness, or flip the other way into black and white fanaticism and deadly criticism of myself and others (and it’s not hard to see how harsh criticism then flips me back into apathy). It’s taking all my mindfulness and then some, to inch towards where it hurts – while also consciously directing my gaze to the deep gratitude and my love and sheer beauty of life.

I find Joanna Macy’s wise voice a continuous inspiration and encouragement. In a short video she talks about Embracing Suffering and ends with saying in such a definite and knowing way that “despair is the covering of our love for our world, and we crack it open by speaking it so that our love can act. So the key is not being afraid of our pain for the world. Not being afraid of the world’s suffering. And if you are not afraid of it… then nothing can stop you.”

And not only can nothing stop you, but it allows you to live as Hafiz described:

One regret, dear world,
That I am determined not to have
When I am lying on my deathbed
Is that I did not kiss you enough.

Indeed!
So may we all live in a way that allows our self, our fellow beings and this precious planet we call our home to be well and flourishing…