earthlings

I celebrate the earth. I heed its aches and its groans. I honor its excellence and its glories. And I celebrate us, for being of the earth. When we pause to ponder our elemental origins, we are where we belong.

Most of the stuff that makes us human is elemental. We are woven together from portions of earth and sprinkled with consciousness. In the Hebrew book of beginnings the creature that represents the start of humanity is called adam. In that poem adam is less a proper noun and more a matter of fact. Adam follows from the Hebrew word adamah, which means earth. In the poem, in the beginning, humans are called, simply, earthlings. I love that.

You and me, in our very bodies and minds and spirits, are a composite of wildness and culture, navigating a world that is made up of equally complicated and beautiful things.

One of the gifts of being human is that our love is as vast as our imagination is lithe. When you stretch your imagination you are also strengthening your capacity to love. We are mammals with imagination; with the capacity to wonder what will come of us and of the world and of those we love.

So as we ponder our elemental origins and celebrate our earthy home, let’s also imagine better cultures, more gracious norms, generous institutions, just systems, rectified wrongs, deeper calm, and an abundance of collaboration. Having spread already on the whole earth, having touched the sky, may the next frontier we claim be the frontier of compassion.

And let’s not be timid. Let’s not be fooled into thinking that our intentions are sufficient. Let’s have the dreams and do the work. May our wildness be the muscle that gives shape to our imagined world.