Earth Week Sunday

 This week is called Earth Week. 

The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970, and it still remains a big event in the environmental movement. Interest and participation in Earth Day has increased and spread around the world, with millions of people taking part. 

I do many things everyday in my life to help the earth: I live in a small house; I walk and bike, and work at home; I buy used stuff and buy locally; I use the library instead of buying books; I compost, recycle, and grow my own food, and I work with other climate activists to help change the way we use carbon in our community.

This week I plan to post an agenda of activities for each day, to show my dedication and love for the earth.

Agenda today:

1. Watch videos

2. Earth Week petition walk
3. Finish Braiding Sweetgrass

4. Consider the Loving Earth project

1. Watch videos:

Interfaith Earthkeepers (which I've recently joined) has a page of short environmental videos, and I plan to watch one each morning. Today I watched this one from Connect4Climate, called "Three Seconds", the #Film4Climate 1st Prize Short Film Winner. 

"Come on, Mom, let's go!"

2. Earth Week petition walk:

I know I will be out walking every morning with my girl Sadie!

Each day this week I will repeat this prayer of petition:

That the Earth be cared for, I pray. 

That we learn to live simply and lightly on the Earth, I pray. 

That we stop poisoning the soil and seas, I pray. 

That global warming is halted and reversed, I pray. 

That protection of the Earth becomes the political priority, I pray. 

Amen.

3. Finish Braiding Sweetgrass:

I've been reading this book for several weeks now, and I'm nearing the end, so this week I will give attention to the last chapters, and the questions and themes.

Braiding Sweetgrass is by Robin Wall Kimmerer, “a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation”. It's an epic book, traveling all over our country and addressing plant, animal, and human life on Mother Earth, and their intertwined and reciprocal relationships with each other.

I'm on the last section, Burning Sweetgrass:

“A Sweetgrass braid is burned to create a ceremonial smudge that washes the recipient in kindness and compassion to heal the body and the spirit.” 

And I just finished the chapter called "Windigo Footprints". 

The Windigo is a legendary monster of the Anishinaabe. It looks like a ten-foot tall man, with yellow fangs and a heart made of ice. It is a human who has “become a cannibal monster,” and whose bite transforms victims into Windigos themselves.  

The chapter draws parallels between stories of the Windigo monster and the selfishness and greed of humankind today. Kimmerer states that “we seem to be living in an era of Windigo economics of fabricated demand and compulsive overconsumption” ... “Our leaders willfully ignore the wisdom and the models of every other species on the planet—except of course those that have gone extinct. Windigo thinking.” 

4. Consider the LOVING EARTH PROJECT: I'm organizing involvement in a fiber arts "craftivism" project for my Meeting community: The Loving Earth Project was set up by a small group of Quakers in Great Britain, and aims to help people engage with environmental breakdown without being overwhelmed.

"Climate break-down and species extinctions are happening all over the world. We hope this project will inspire people to make connections and change our habits, to live more sustainably for the sake of love. A traveling exhibition is helping to illustrate what people are doing to help care for what we love.

Today I will consider these questions:

Is there something, someone or somewhere that I know and love which is endangered by environmental break-down? 


This could be a place, a person, a species , etc.

How does my lifestyle contribute to that threat? 


What could I do, or am I doing, to help reduce that threat? 


What steps have I already taken? What is the most radical thing I could do , whether by myself or with others? What’s the tiniest thing I could do?