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Friday, April 22, 2011

Happy Earth Day!

[From the BP oil spill to the nuclear reactors in Japan, our Earth bears the wounds of our human mistakes. It seems now, more than ever, it is imperative that all of us do what we can to balance the damage done. This piece sets the pace for Starhawk's novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, and seems to me a perfect and poetic call to action. Blessed Be.]

                                                              Declaration of the Four Sacred Things
                                                                                 
   The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.
   Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.
    To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.
     All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.
     To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.
      To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.

2 comments:

  1. Without air there is no life, without water there is no life, without earth there is no life,without us she lives on forever!The Earth doesn't need humans to continue her legacy. Modern day humans have forgotten or have become confused as to who needs whom, that with all our technology and weaponry we will never conquer the earth. She will shake us off like a dog shakes off fleas, and she will flurish. One of my favorite sayings is this, "Water is patient, water always wins!

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  2. As a child, I remember weeping over the fate of whales being killed and desperately wanting to believe when I grew up I could do something. Then, I believed only grandiose actions would matter; now I realize it has to begin small. How do we show respect for our bodies? How do we show respect for our little plot of land we call home? If we all began there, think of the ripple effect ...

    sigh ... respecting ourselves, it really seems to come back to that ... when we truly believe in our own goodness, then we cannot act otherwise.

    yes, i do believe the Mother is fed up with our disrespect ... she's been pretty patient and I hope forgiving ...

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