First of all, I apologize to anyone who has tried to visit www.TheEarthConnection.org in the last few days.  The site had a problem which, fortunately, is now solved.–AM

     I am posting below two very short excerpts from the book The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot.  These paragraphs are filled with the author’s love for the natural world, a world made all the more precious by the repetition of the seasons, year after year.  Elliot’s love of nature, deepened by her childhood experiences, makes a powerful argument for getting today’s kids outside.  To fail to do so, I think, is to deprive them of experiences that will nurture them all their lives.–April Moore   

     “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it–if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass–the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows–the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops.  What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, loved because it is known?”

     “Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass today might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.”–George Elliot

     Wendell Berry is one of my heroes.  He writes lovingly and insightfully about the natural world.  In this short excerpt, Berry helps me to think of soil in a new way.  Soil seems humble;  after all, it’s dirt.  But what a powerful life force it is!

     “The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil.  It is very Christlike in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness.  It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness.  It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it.  It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility.  Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise.  Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future.”

                          –Wendell Berry, Recollected Essays 1965-1980

     I know this is not nesting season for robins, but I was so charmed by this short video I received the other day that I want to share it.  It amazes me how the baby robins can hold their mouths straight up and open them so wide.  I guess the chicks have evolved to maximize their chances of getting the food they need.

     Please click and enjoy.–April Moore

Life in the Nest of the Robin

     This touching little tale is from Teaching Your Children About God by David J. Wolfe.  I imagine that anyone who loves nature can relate to it.

     “There is a wonderful Chasidic stoary about the child of a rabbi who used to wander in the woods.  At first the father let him wander, but over time he became concerned.  The woods were dangerous.  The father did not know what lurked there.

     “He decided to discuss the matter with his child.  One day he took him aside and said, “You know, I have noticed that each day you walk into the woods.  I wonder, why do you go there?”

     “The boy said to his father, “I go there to find God.”

     “”That is a very good thing,” the father replied gently.  “I am glad you are searching for God.  But, my child, don’t you know that God is the same everywhere?”

     “”Yes,” the boy answered.  “But I’m not.”" 

     When I am feeling angry and distressed about what’s going on in Washington, the best antidote I know is to go down into the woods.  I know that even a little forest time will rejuvenate my spirit. 

     The other morning was no exception.  I walked from our house down into the woods and eyed one of my favorite resting spots—a glade (isn’t that a great word!) where long, dry stalks of grass leaned this way and that.  I chose a reasonably flat spot among them and laid down on my back. 

     Every time I lie down in the forest, I am amazed anew at how good the ground feels under my body.  Silently, it seems to impart sustenance and strength.   

     Enjoying the firm earth beneath me, I looked up.  Mostly I saw the highest leaves of the tallest trees, gathering around a small space of sky.  And in that blue opening, a wispy cloud hurried east.  A hawk, wings spread, glided through, disappearing again behind the leaves. 

     Those leaves are a wonder.  The farther down the tree trunks, the darker green the leaves.  These leaves live in the shadow of their ‘higher-ups.’  The higher the branches, the lighter and brighter their leaves.  These are the ones that receive the most direct sun.  And as those high-up leaves rustled in the breeze, they shifted about, trading translucence for shade and back again.  Some leaves were partly shaded and partly shining at the same time. 

     I closed my eyes.  The sounds of the living forest pleased me.  From up the hill came an avian chortle.  It must have been a wild turkey.  The chortles continued, each one fainter and more distant, until they died out completely.  A woodpecker pounded its beak against a tree somewhere to my right, another off to the left,  here and there, sometimes muffled, sometimes pronounced. 

     After a little while, I sat up and looked around.  Murmuring a word of thanks, I stood up, and began walking back up the hill to the house.  I was lighter, my anger subdued.  Once again, the forest had calmed and strengthened me.—April Moore   

     During the summer months, it feels natural to me to awaken early, unlike in the winter, when I only want to burrow more deeply into the cozy warmth of bed.  But on these summer mornings, it is a delight to get up, step outside, and feel the morning’s sunny warmth.

     I very much like Mary Oliver’s poem below, on the joy of greeting the sun early in the day.–April Moore

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who made the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light –

good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.

~ Mary Oliver ~

the view from our deck on this July morning

     I am grateful to Barbi Schulick for her permission to publish this lovely piece she wrote about her son’s thrilling experience with a pine siskin.  I have always longed to have such an experience myself.  Enjoy.–April Moore

     When he was a small boy, my son Geremy loved small creatures.  

     He’d take joy in catching a cricket in his cupped hands, then make a show of letting it go, hopping when it hopped, following it into the tall grass until he lost sight of it.  He traveled our yard with his head down, his big dark eyes hunting for anything moving at ground level.  I was forever piercing holes in jar tops to supply airflow for his spiders and their prey.  

     Soon he moved on to toads, and he had an eye for them—locating one hunched and brown among autumn leaves, scooping another out from the dirt behind the front steps.  He kept two as pets:  “Toader” and “Toaderette.”  When they peed in his palm, he’d yelp and toss them to the kitchen floor.  I constructed a chicken wire cage for them in the backyard, digging it two feet under so they could hibernate for the winter.

     When Geremy was eight or nine, he discovered birds.  I didn’t fully witness his love for them emerging, didn’t notice the first moment he maraveled at a chickadee cracking a seed against a branch or caught sight of the flash of red inside a blackbird’s wing.  But more often, it seemed, his gaze focused upwards and out came the binoculars, field guides, birding journals.

     Geremy was a thin, slight boy with a shy sweetness that placed him barely on the edge of his grade school’s in-crowd.  His lack of competitive spirit confined him to the bench in Little League.  He was one to do puzzles, to painstakingly sort and categorize his baseball cards, to read the Nintendo guideline booklet cover to cover, and to watch birds—for hours—outside the kitchen window, keeping track in his journal of how many goldfinch came at what time, whether they were male or female, whether there were babies, and describing how they scattered with the arrival of a blue jay.

     I remember a spring when a flock of pine siskins frequented the feeders.  Geremy loved how miniature they were, even smaller than juncos and cipping sparrows.  The thin, brown-speckled wisps of their bodies balanced on legs slighter than toothpicks.  He longed to know them better, and so after school each day, he stood on the deck in front of the feeders, holding black oil sunflower seeds in his outstretched hand.  

     At first his arrival sent dozens of birds away from the feeders ands nearby bushes, flapping their tiny wings in alarmed retreat.  But gradually the group swooped back, in what seemed a corporate decision to ignore the small human holding out seeds.  Geremy stayed put, applying his trademark patience, moving only to wave off a mosquito now and then.  And I’d watch, wishing with a mother’s fervor that a bird would come to him but never surprised that one didn’t.  Eventually I’d announce dinner, and he’d plod in, dragging his feet, vowing not to give up.

     The afternoon the pine siskin perched on his hand, I was cooking something demanding:  a sauce that mustn’t boil, a stir-fry to constantly stir, food that should be eaten right away, and so, as I turned off the stove burners, I yelled:  “Geremy, come in now, it’s dinner!”

     Then setting the table in a flurry, I yelled again:  “Geremy, Dinner!”

     And while pouring drinks:  “Geremy!”

     “Quiet!” came an urgent whisper from behind me.  I turned to find my husband staring out the glass swing set door at Geremy on the deck.  There, our little bird of a son was standing straight as a soldier, one thin arm shooting out at a perfect right angle.  As if in salute, his palm was upturned, the long fingers flattened together to form a platform for a tiny, brown pine siskin that stood equally erect and looked back at him.

     I studied Geremy from the kitchen for those three, four, maybe five seconds, and although he appeared so still that even his breath was halted, I could detect a gentle tilt in his stance, his head and torso reaching delicately towards the bird at the edge of his unmoving arm.  It was a yielding that spoke of reverence, recognition, of the sort of hospitality a flower might offer a butterfly.  He had become a place for a pine siskin to rest.

     When the bird finally flew, Geremy’s breath shuddered through him, returning in a grateful rush.  He turned to look at us.  Sweat had formed on his upper lip, his cheeks were flaming, and I saw wisdom in his young eyes.  Through the coming weeks, he would describe over and over how it felt to be so close to the bird, to feel it buoyant, almost weightless, on his fingers.  And though he’d try again to woo one, he’d never be successful, so that those few seconds with a pine siskin, his siskin, would be held in memory and heart, the way one remembers words from God issuing through a breeze.

     I thank John Cochrane for sending me this delightful poem by Mary Oliver.  I love the feeling of sweet safety the poet imagines the snake experiencing upon escape from an encounter with a human!  –April Moore    

 WATER SNAKE
        by Mary Oliver

I saw him
in a dry place
on a hot day,
a traveler
making his way
from one pond to another,
and he lifted up
his chary face
and looked at me
with his gravel eyes,
and the feather of his tongue
shot in and out
of his otherwise clamped mouth
and I stopped on the path
to give him room,
and he went past me
with his head high,
loathing me, I think,
for my long legs,
my poor body, like a post,
my many fingers,
for he didn’t linger
but, touching the other side of the path,
he headed, in long lunges and quick heaves,
straight to the nearest basin
of sweet black water and weeds,
and solitude

     This Monday, July 11, is World Population Day.  The purpose of this annual observance, established by the United Nations Development Programme in 1989, is to raise awareness of global population issues. 

     This year’s World Population Day will call public attention to the fact that this year the human population will cross the seven billion mark.  Sometime in October, the seven billionth human inhabitant of our planet is expected to enter the world.  Never before have so many humans been alive at the same time. 

     I find the seven billion figure sobering.  It is more than double the world’s population of 1970, the year I started college and began learning about population growth.  At that point, the world’s population was 3.4 billion.  And although population growth has slowed from its 1960s peak of 2% per year, with a global doubling time of just 35 years, the human population is still growing. Today’s annual growth rate of 1.14% may sound negligible, but it means a global population doubling time of 61 years.  Population experts project a population of 13 billion by 2067 if the current rate of increase continues.

     Figures in the billions can be hard to grasp.  But when they’re broken down into smaller increments, they become easier to understand.  For example, every day, there are more than 200,000 additional humans on the planet than there were the day before.  That’s right; the number of births minus the number of deaths mean a net daily growth rate of more than 200,000.  Every year there are 78 million more humans than there were the year before.  Another way to think of that figure is to imagine adding more than 25 very large cities to the planet every year.

     I know that some people believe population growth is not a problem, but to me the difficulties posed by our increasing numbers are obvious.  The growing demand for resources puts greater pressure on our finite planet.  And the Green Revolution is over;  it’s doubtful that we can make more big strides in increasing food production.  And then there’s global warming.  It is changing weather patterns in farming communities all over the world. 

     But it’s not just a matter of feeding all of us humans.  Our growing numbers are stressing ecosystems worldwide.  Many, many species have gone extinct or are in great decline because more houses, more shopping malls, more human activity in general, is destroying wildlife habitat.

     In its effort to increase public awareness and understanding of global population issues, the United Nations has launched a global campaign called ‘7 Billion Actions.’   With the motto, “Seven Billion People Counting On Each Other,” the campaign is working to get governments, corporations, schools, non-profits, and individuals to take action to address the seven key challenges that the growing human family faces:  environment, poverty, gender equality, youth, aging, urbanization, and reproductive health.  Despite the seriousness of these issues, campaign organizers are hopeful.  Because our modern technologies enable people to be more connected, and because the world’s young people are using these new technologies in creative new ways, new possibilities exist for education and action, oganizers say.  

     ‘7 Billion Actions’ has suggestions for everyone.  As one of the world’s seven billion human inhabitants, you might want to check out www.7billionactions.org to find out what you can do to help address the challenges posed by our growing human population, including the challeng of stabilizing the human population.–April Moore  

     With the Fourth of July just a few days away, I reflect on the fact that independence and individuality were once prized values of mine.  But now I think it is much more important to acknowledge–and celebrate–our interdependence.  If humanity is to survive and thrive, we need each other.  And we need to stop degrading our planet. 

     The following piece, by Shane Claiborne and published by The Huffington Post, offers 30+ suggestions that are good for strengthening our human community and also for healing the planet.–April Moore

     Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of us all being bound up in an “inescapable web of mutuality.” He talked of how we have encountered half the world by the time we have put on our clothes, brushed our teeth, drunk our coffee and eaten our breakfast, as there are invisible faces that make our lives possible every day. That’s why I’ve always struggled with “Independence Day.”

Patriotism can be a dangerous thing if it leads to amnesia about the dark patches of our nation’s history. And it can leave us shortsighted if our nationalism prevents us from seeing pain or hope beyond our borders. As an American, and especially as a Christian, I am convinced that a love for our own people is not a bad thing, but love doesn’t stop at borders. Love is infinitely boundless and all about holy trespassing and offensive friendships.

We are taught to celebrate independence. But independence and individualism have come at a great price. In the wealthy and industrialized countries we have become the richest people in the world, but we also have some of the highest rates of loneliness, depression, and suicide. We are rich, sad, and lonely. We are living into patterns that not only leave much of the world hungry for bread and starved for justice but also leave us longing for the good life and for meaning and purpose beyond ourselves.

The good news is that we are not alone in the world.

This year, let’s celebrate Interdependence Day — recognizing the fact that we are part of a global neighborhood. Let’s appreciate all the invisible people in our lives, and let’s lament the fact that the human family is terribly dysfunctional.

It’s not about being anti-American but about being pro-world. It’s a beautiful thing to realize that we need each other and that we are not alone in the world. So, I’ve worked with some friends to brainstorm great ways to celebrate “Interdependence Day” this Fourth of July. Here’s what we came up with:

1) Track down old teachers and mentors. Let them know the influence they have had in your life.

2) Babysit for someone for free, especially someone that might really need a night off and not be able to afford a sitter.

3) Try to go a whole week without spending any money. If you have to, barter or beg a little to make it through.

4) Hold a baby goods exchange where parents can bring toys and clothing their kids have outgrown and trade them.

5) Attempt to repair something that is broken. Appreciate the people who repair things for you on a regular basis.

6) Look through your clothes. Learn about one of the countries where they are manufactured. Do some research to discover the working conditions and commit to doing one thing to improve the lives of people who live there.

7) Look for everything you have two of, and give one away.

Dig up a bucket of soil and look through it to see the elements and organisms that make our daily meals possible.

9) Spend the Fourth of July baking cookies or bread. Give them away to the person who delivers your mail or picks up your trash the next time you see him or her.

10) Host a rain-barrel party and teach neighbors how to make and use rain-barrels to recycle water.

11) Spend a day hiking in the woods. Consider how God cares for the lilies and sparrows — and you.

12) Gather some neighbors, and plant a tree in your neighborhood together.

13) Hold a knowledge exchange where you gather friends or neighbors to share skills or something they are learning.

14) Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, remember the folks who made it possible for you to it it.

15) Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.

16) Try recycling water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don’t have clean water.

17) Leave a random tip for someone cleaning the streets or the public restroom.

18) Write one CEO every month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their companies. (You may need to do a little research first.) Consider starting with BP.

19) Wash your clothes by hand and dry them on a line. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.

20) Learn to sew. Try making your own clothes for a year.

21) Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week (take a multi-vitamin). And remember the 25,000 people who die of malnutrition and starvation each day.

22) Begin a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college, you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know his or her family and learn from each other.

23) Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house, or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.

24) Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask forgiveness.

25) Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back to that shelter and eat or sleep there and allow yourself to be served.

26) Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of clothing being sold.

27) Experiment in creation-care by going fuel-free for a week — bike, carpool or walk.

28) Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don’t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read together, or play board games.

29) Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can buy happiness.

30) Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.

31) Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food. Visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.

32) Mow your neighbor’s grass.

33) Ask the next person who asks you for change to join you for dinner.

34) Invest money in a micro-lending bank.

35) Start setting aside 10 percent of your income to give away to folks in need.

36) Write paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or whom you should say “I’m sorry” to.

37) Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.

38) Go without food for one day to remember the two billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.

Add yours to the list.

May we celebrate Interdependence Day today and everyday. It is a gift to be part of this inescapable web of mutuality.