(Sheet music in various formats is available for paid subscribers, and can be found here.)
With the Paul Winter Consort I was a part of creating a big choral work called the Missa Gaia/Earth Mass. James Lovelock had recently written his book the “Gaia Hypothesis” He used this Greek goddess Gaia, kind of a Mother Earth figure, to personify for us the idea that the Earth is one living thing. There’s this one living organism, and we are all a part of that one body of life. The semantics of this has been debated by scientists but I think we accept it now as more than poetry.
There are now three times as many people on the earth as when I was born, and a quarter of the insects, some say 40% of the nature we had. Coinciding with my lifetime has been a war on the Earth unprecedented in all of history. Who could think that we could go on this way? We’re in what scientists are calling the “6th Great Extinction” Yeah, the asteroid took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (the 5th), but there’s been no species that poisoned themselves and the Earth before.
I read that when we were kids (I’m so old) people bought between 5 and 10 articles of clothing a year - cotton, wool, leather shoes - now with what is called “Fast Fashion” young people buy between 50 and 100 articles of clothing a year, and it’s mostly plastic. Wool, cotton, leather even, will degrade and finally go back to the earth. Plastic does degrade too, but it never goes back to earth.
“Oh, I give my old clothes to charity,” you say. Salvation Army, Goodwill only keep a small part of that. The rest gets bailed up and gets sent around the world to poor places that are being poisoned by our excess. Want to imagine where all the plastic running shoes are? – mountains of them, decaying? Plastic decays into microscopic, tiny shreds micro plastics, nano plastics. They become more a cloud - in the entire ocean, now in the air, in everything - yes in everything. It’s a new ingredient in the mix, that keeps adding up and scientists are calling this the “Plasticene Era.” (More eras, they keep coming). Of course, we have an administration that hasn’t even accepted that we’re in the “Anthropocene Era” – the “human caused” era.
We know now, we’re related to everything and we poetic people love to say how everything is connected. All this stuff we’ve created has made its way into us too: Strontium 90, DDT, PCBs, BPA (Bisphenol), PBDEs (Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers), Perfluorinated Chemicals, Teflon. Then – good old Formaldehyde, Asbestos, Heavy metals, and lately PFAS - polyfluoroalkyl substances. Now in all of us, in our water, air, and our food.
The human race has evolved into something new in the last century. We were getting bigger, living longer, healthier, but we’re so smart now we made all this stuff that is killing us - more danger to us than terrorists or invading armies.
There’s only one solution, “Stop what we’re doing.”
This is hard for me, because: I know what’s good for me, what will make me live longer, happier, but I don’t necessarily do it. Why not?
I must be an addict. - I must be wounded, alienated, torn from the very interconnectedness that would heal me, filling the emptiness with any kind of diversion and immediate gratification while the spirit of life on Earth is dying.
Well, that would be a discouraging place to stop. Where is the healing, for the planet, and for me?
Here’s what keeps me going, reminds me of what to get up for every day. Everything that is me, our Mother Earth modeled a long time ago.
* The circulatory system, the water cycle of the Earth.
* The breathing system, the lungs of the Earth are the green things flowers and trees, they breathe out and we breathe in.
* The digestion of the Earth, the soil – I know, Entropy, everything breaks up everywhere, but let’s say figuratively things go back to the Earth.
* The heart of the Earth – Not just because I’m romantic about trees, but I am, the jungles and the rainforests, are the pump that sends the water back to the clouds.
Mother Earth has had all this going for millions of years before us. By the time we took our jangled masses of protoplasm and left the ocean and began to think we were separate, we had this model, and from whom? From our mother. We are made of her and we’re constantly changing places with her.
If there’s a brain of the Earth, maybe we could be it. We’ve been able to learn, develop language, save wisdom in traditions, books, computer software. There’s hope for us.
Then, the conscience of this Earth? We’d better be that too. This healing will require a spiritual backbone of some sort. Gratitude and responsibility for something larger than ourselves, for all that feeds us, for another day to be together.
I never got it about the bearded old man in the sky. Much closer to home, I do get it about this very round woman in the sky. And I’m comfortable with her having a feminine aspect, for she is our Mother. And we are made in her image. A little less spherical, perhaps. But that’s the idea. Is she a deity, a goddess? That’s beautiful imagery but I’m more of a realist, she’s our ancestor.
So everything I do in my life better be to build and maintain this sustainable living Gaia, Mother Earth, Mother Nature or, I’m in the way. There’s no description for what our job is now, short of “healing.” Our job and our children’s children’s job, the whole future of humanity’s job – is to heal the Earth, and each other.
I wrote this song in an effort to say that everything is connected, we’re all one. And it’s big.
The Oneness of Everything
Far beyond the grasp of hands, or light to meet the eye,
past the reaches of the mind
There find the key to nature's harmony
in an architecture so entwined.
Like the birds, whose patterns grace the sky
and carry all who join in love expanding,
The message of peace will rise in flight
taking the weight of the world upon its wings,
With the oneness of everything.
Peace is in the dance of trees who stir before
the first breath of wind is yet perceived
Trust in the song, becoming one with the dance,
and all mysteries can be believed.
Like the sorrow of the clouds, whose tears
fall caring on the soil undemanding,
Lessons of love are giv'n that we
might rejoice in the music they bring,
Of the oneness of everything.
From the chords that sound of molecules,
spinning billions to a cell, the call resounds afar,
To the sun who warms the dancing earth, and whose song
holds it close on the journey of a star.
Songs of lives long past who touch our own
are written in the earth forever giving.
And now to maintain the harmony
gives to us all lives worth living,
For the oneness of everything.
Still we seek to find a truth that we might understand
and reduce to terms defined,
Vast and immeasurable time and space
all so overwhelmingly designed.
Oh passing years, just might I know the faith
that winters in the heart to be reborn in Spring.
To hear and to feel the pulse of life
enters my soul as a song to sing,
Of the oneness of everything.
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