Mother Earth’s Malady

Mother Earth is wicked mad and we can’t blame her. We have defiled her oceans and polluted her skies. We have had conferences and conversations, instituted restrictions and regulations and still… and still. We sh*t where we eat. Shame on us. Shame. Shame. Shame.

 The coronavirus – COVID 19 – has us huddled in our homes, hoarding food and toilet paper, shunning our neighbors and blaming our government. A government WE elected (Okay- not all of us elected him, but enough pulled that lever to change the direction of the world.) If we are assigning blame then we all need to line up and swallow a tablespoon of this bitter medicine.

 We have enjoyed the fruits of our labor on our planet with no sense of consequence. We rely on an excess of disposable goods to make our lives easier, more pleasurable, decreasing time for chores and making more time for recreation and personal enjoyment. We use harsh cleaning chemicals in our homes that seep into our waterways, put synthetic substances in our food, and use non-biodegradable products for our convenience. We have not been careful stewards of this planet and this planet is kicking back.

 Richard Powers wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Overstory about the communication between trees. Patricia, an esteemed environmentalist, is delivering a lecture to colleagues. “This isn’t mystical,” she says. “The ‘environment’ is alive – a fluid, challenging web of purposeful lives dependent on each other… And our part… we have a role to play in the Earth organism.”

 I am not a scientist by any means, and I wangled my way out of high school chemistry by convincing my guidance counselor that Earth Science would help me more in life after high school than the periodic table; truth be told- I only paid attention to the parts about growing vegetables. But I have been paying attention a lot recently. As a gardener, I see the effects of stewardship. It takes constant care to help things grow. And if not care, at the very least, protection.

 I can plant a tomato seed and walk away. If I am lucky and the right amount of rain falls and summer is hot and sunny, I will have tomatoes for my table and enough to put up for the coming winter. But if there is a drought and I don’t supply water, or if blight sets in and I don’t prune, or if the aphids come and I don’t spray, my plants will shrivel up and die. I have an obligation to protect that which gives me sustenance. Gardening is not a selfish endeavor, (except perhaps the hoarding of that first perfect tomato- I earned that!) It requires effort and sacrifice. It is a mandate. You sow, you water, you protect: you reap.

 So what do my tomato plants or Richard Powers’ trees have to do with the coronavirus and where we all are now, sheltering in place? This is a catastrophe of our own making. This is the Earth pushing back. Mother Nature screaming at her selfish, entitled brood: I can’t take this anymore! GO TO YOUR ROOMS AND DON’T COME OUT UNTIL I SAY SO.

 I admit I don’t know squat about viruses or microorganisms, but as a lay person it is pretty clear to me that our Earth has thrown us a mutation. She has sent us a new plague to put us in our place and is letting us know we are but small creatures she allows to live on her skin- parasites who live off the fruits of her benevolence.  We have stopped bringing her the joy an offspring provides. She is ashamed of us and banishes us.

 It is my spirituality, my religious conviction. I believe in the complete co-dependence of humans and the Earth. My miracles are the miracles of seed to sunflower, bulb to tulip, embryo to infant! What I fear more than some angry God, is the Earth’s retribution for breaking our contract with her, for denying her the right to clean air, pristine forests, and pure water with which she renews herself.

 It should not be lost on any of us that the least affected by this virus are the children. They are the innocents. They are the hope of our Great Mother Earth. She is telling us in no uncertain terms that she has no need of the rest of us.

I read this morning that the skies over Wuhan are clearing from the pollution that has long suffocated that city. Fish can be seen swimming in the canals of Italy for the first time in years.

Our Earth is taking time for herself, sending us off to stew in our rooms while she pulls herself together and can once again mother her badly behaved brood. Will we be better behaved after this punishment? Have we learned anything at all?

Patricia, the environmentalist in Powers’ story continues: “Whole ecosystems are unraveling… Biologists are scared senseless [and] Life is so generous, and we are so… inconsolable. But nothing I say can wake the sleepwalk or make this suicide seem real. It can’t be real, right? I mean, here we are, all still…” Still what?? Can we finish this sentence by saying we will change? Will we just move on and forget, resuming the habits of consumption without replenishment that have defined the past? For those of us who survive physically unscathed (and I have no promise of that, being in the high- risk age group) what lessons have we learned?

 Both Patricia and the Greta Thunbergs of the world ask a question we all need to be asking ourselves: “What is the single best thing a person can do for tomorrow’s world?”

 Please, for my children and your children and our children’s children: use this time to come up with a good answer.