A child was lost in a vast Iowan cornfield. Family and friends searched all day and through the night, to no avail. Another day and another night they searched. On the third day, someone said, “Let’s join hands.” A single column of hundreds of people, hand in hand, moved across the field. They found the child. She was dead. And the grieving mother said, “Why didn’t we join hands sooner.”
The earth is dying. Around the world, people have been searching for a long time to try to keep it alive.
One day, a homeowner turned down the thermostat in winter. Later on, she resolved not to use plastic bags. The word got out and others in her neighborhood followed suit. Then all but one household sold their snow-blowers and shared the remaining one. But it was not enough.
Next, her town banned single-use plastic bottles. Nearby, a developer started building green houses. Other towns banded together to protest a proposed gas pipeline scheduled to run near the river. The state introduced new green energy policies. But it was not enough.
One day a large automobile manufacturer announced it would stop building fossil fuel burning vehicles in five years. In other countries, companies began building wind farms. But it was not enough.
One day, almost 200 countries signed an agreement to reduce their overall carbon emissions in the coming years. But it was not enough.
Volunteer groups headed to disappearing wetlands and began planting grasses and reeds to protect shores vulnerable to storm surges. Across the planet, biologists and conservationists teamed up to draw attention to the interdependence of species, advocating to save large ecosystems and watersheds.
And still, it was not enough.
Then, one day, a small boy heard a faint voice. Weak and dying, a grieving Mother Earth whispered , “Why didn’t you join hands sooner?”
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway, as Mother Theresa is reported to have said. We are the earth and only now are beginning to wake up to what that means as a species in an ecological community of many other species and forms. All we can do is all we can do, releasing attachment to the results and opening to the mystery that brings beauty and meaning right beside anguish and despair. How did all this begin and how will it end? We have no way of knowing, and yet we can still join hands and find love and gratitude in moving through the moments of this life together, not separately, and in awe of the opportunity to live at all.
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