Our earth is a beautiful planet with stunning vistas and breathtaking views. Poets wax poetically about its splendor, and painters and photographers have made careers out of earth’s many faces. It feeds, houses. and provides us with everything we need for life. It is our incubator and our sustainer, and it is also tumultuous.
Earth goes through upheavals and cycles, major storms, volcanic eruption, earthquakes, and weather that can be terrifying. Earth gives and takes away. It is nourisher and destroyer, moved by forces we don’t fully understand that have to do with its interaction with the solar system of which it is part and also within its own environment.
We humans accept the fact that earth has seasons and that there is no constancy that we can expect from our earth home, and therefore early on we sought to “tame” earth to do our will. However, as we have moved along through time we have seen that this is not easily accomplished. In most cases, we fail, as with one swift motion, earth can topple our best laid plans. Therefore, we have an uneasy alliance, being reminded from time to time of the true raw power and nature, and unfortunately not understanding the mechanism that makes earth tick.
In looking at life as one system of energy, we continuously forget that the tumult of earth is also the tumult within every living thing on earth. We have times of great abundance and times of lack. There is too much water or too little…tropical lushness and dry deserts. The paradox of opposites abounds on the planet, and for some reason, human beings do not recognize that just as earth is tumultuous, so are we. And so is all life. We come in to this place where we are subject to all the laws of nature. We have lives that reflect joy as well as sorrow. We have sickness and we have health, and into each life a little storm will appear from time to time. It is not a constant, and we are always surprised when it shows itself exactly as it is. Suddenly, we blame God. Before, when all was well, God was good. When things are bad, God is unloving and doesn’t care, or doesn’t exist. Our childish projections of good and bad to God or any Creator are really illusions that we play with. The truth is much more interlinked with the earth and all the rest of life on the planet.
We are indeed part of the tumultuous earth, and our own journeys are ones in which we are learning, unfolding, and growing in to ourselves. We have peak experiences and moments of isolation to temper us and test our mettle. We are weeded out as strong plants or weak plants, and always the focus of life is to bring the sustenance to the strongest within the species, regardless of emotional wants to the contrary. Life supports many, but it also retracts and seemingly takes away so we cannot get attached to a particular way of life that will last forever and ever. Our very act of aging and dying proves that over and over again...so let's recognize the gift of life and the challenges that come with it. Let's count our blessings and appreciate the good, while understanding that the opposite is also part of a life legacy. When we overcome the need for everything to be "just so" we can have a more compatible attitude about our lives and the life of our planet. We don't need to fight so hard to keep things the same. We can bend, yield, and move with the flow rather than struggling upstream. Everything is subject to change and the unexpected...but in the meantime let's find the joy of being here!