Earth
Dayle in Limoux – Day #32
August 6, 2022
BBC
‘The Notre-Dame Cathedral is on track to open its doors to worshippers and the public in 2024, says France’s culture minister.
The 13th Century Paris monument caught fire in April 2019, sparking a vast outpouring of emotion.
Since then, a huge restoration project has been carried out aiming to restore it to its previous design.’
Wonderful news! In time, too, for the Summer Olympics in Paris.
UN
Today, remembering the anniversary of Hiroshima, particularly poignant after the startling reminder from the UN chief that humanity is ‘one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.’
“It is totally unacceptable for states in possession of nuclear weapons to admit the possibility of a nuclear war,” António Guterres underscored early on Saturday in Japan at a ceremony marking the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Land grabs, borders, and bored male leaders who are pained by their quest for power and greed and violence.
From Dorothy Day:
“Mr, Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; “jubilant” the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.”
—Dorothy Day, editorial following Hiroshima bomb [Posted on social media by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books]
‘God is that which promotes life, evil is that which destroys it.’
-Albert Schweitzer [1875-1965]
‘Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ –Bhagavad Gita
D I V I N E F E M I N I N E 🥀
‘There is no day on which I grow not
Finer and more pure,
For this world holds no nobler lady
Than she whom I do serve and I adore.
And these – the words I speak –
Come singing from an open heart.’
-Troubadour Arnaut Daniel, 1180-1200
(Translation by Henry Lincoln.]
‘Throughout history, the quest for beauty, loe and truth has struggled to survive amid the quest for dominance and greed. During the medieval era, the dominant powers of church and state burned the last Templars. They burned thousands of Cathars, and they burned Joan of Arc, who tried to liberate her people from foreign rule. They even tried to ban the poetry and songs of the troubadours. But the spirit of truth would not be silenced and rose again and again, from the dust and ashes, rising from the half remembered promise patterned in the blood, held in the heart. Always they return, with the flame of hope for a better world filled with compassion, beauty and a song of love returning to the land […] a new earth and return to Beauty.’
-Ani Williams, harpist and singer, who has recorded more than two dozen albums of original sacred music based on ancient spiritual traditions.
Bonne nuit.
🌙
COP26 🌏
November 6, 2021
‘Earth, isn’t this what you want: an invisible arising in us … what is your urgent command, if not transformation?’ -Rilke, Ninth Duino Elegy
For centuries we have been content to patch up holes temporarily (making ourselves feel benevolent) while in fact maintaining the institutional structures that created the holes to begin with (disempowering those on the margins). Now it has caught up with us. —Fr Richard Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation
The cosmic common good provides a larger moral perspective, but it also exhorts us to “sink our roots deeper” into our native place and to work for the good of our place on Earth. —Daniel Scheid, theologian
Washington Post
“The bipartisan measure to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, ports and broadband connections won passage after liberals allowed the vote. The package, crafted by Democrats and Republicans, fulfills a major campaign promise for President Biden. It cleared the Senate on a bipartisan basis in August.”
The infrastructure plan costs $1.2 trillion over eight years, with $550 billion in new spending:
- $110 billion for roads, bridges and other infrastructure fix-ups. Of that, $40 billion is new funding for bridge repair, replacement and rehab.
- $73 billion for electric grid and power structures.
- $66 billion for rail.
- $65 billion for broadband.
- $55 billion for water infrastructure.
- $21 billion for environmental remediation.
- $47 billion for flooding and coastal resiliency, as well as “climate resiliency,” including protections against fires.
- $39 billion to modernize transit — the largest federal investment in public transit in history, according to the White House.
- $7.5 billion for electric vehicles and EV charging … $2.5 billion for zero-emission buses … $2.5 billion for low-emission buses … $2.5 billion for ferries.
‘We are but one thread within it.’
August 2, 2021‘To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee.’
-Emily Dickinson
“I used to think that environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are
- selfishness
- greed
- apathy
and to deal with these, we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
-James Gustave Speth, environmental lawyer and advocate
Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
World Resources Institute
Since 1989 David Suzuki has been calling for action and urgency.
“Transformational paradigm shift:
That respect for nature and interdependent with it must be our top priority.”
Nature was our touchstone and our reference pint and dictated the way we interacted with it. But as economics and politics have increasingly come to dominate our decisions and actions, we have lost our sinse of place in the world and our reverence for nature.
-David Suzuki
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
-Chief Seattle, 1854
…and remember.
April 29, 2021
Never let the fear of this world distract you from the immense beauty, infinite mystery & deep love all around you.
-Jennifer Rose
I
N
H
A
L
E
Our Planet. 🌱
April 3, 2021
How can we not do everything in our power to keep her safe?
G
A
I
A
[200-year-old Wisteria in Japan.]
?
April 1, 2020oof.
?
Gaia didn’t take long to show us how quickly, how fine, the planet will still be once humans back off…or leave.
HUFFPOST
Killer Whales Take Advantage Of People’s Social Distance To Visit Quiet Vancouver Shore
The visited the normally bustling industrial area with some of their young.
‘Killer whales aren’t often spotted in the Burrard Inlet because it’s an industrial area that can get quite loud. But social distancing efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19 seem to have had a side-effect: they’ve made the fjord quiet. People in Vancouver noticed a pod of orcas, which included babies, taking the opportunity to visit the uncharacteristically quiet waters of Indian Arm and marvelled at the sight.’
GLOBAL NEWS
Coronavirus clears beach for endangered sea turtle hatchlings in Brazil
SCIENCE BUSINESS
After Europe ground to a coronavirus-enforced halt, images captured by one of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Copernicus satellites showed huge reductions in nitrogen dioxide concentrations over Paris, Madrid and Rome from 14 – 25 March, compared to the same week in 2019.
The same is true for China, where the Copernicus satellite recorded a dramatic fall in NO2 released by power stations, factories and vehicles in all major Chinese cities between late January and February. ESA also observed a decrease of around 20 – 30 per cent in fine particulate matter, one of the most important air pollutants, in February 2020 compared to the previous three years.
On an individual level however, the coronavirus lockdown could inspire climate-friendly actions, according to Wouter. “This could be an opportunity to see how we can re-organise our activities to benefit the climate. Home office and teleworking, for example. There are a lot of conferences held every year leading to air traffic and emissions. We can use existing technology to replace these and combat climate change,” he said.
Those campaigning for strong climate policies could also learn from the cooperation seen between experts, politicians and the public in the coronavirus crisis.
“It’s remarkable that you see this union being formed between scientists, policymakers and the public. People are asking for strong policies and, based on scientific evidence, policymakers are taking action,’ said Thiery.
CNBC
Clear water is seen in Venice’s canals due to less tourists, motorboats and pollution, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues following the country’s lockdown within the new coronavirus crisis.
FORBES
The COVID-19 crisis has led to an unprecedented drop in global air traffic amid government-imposed travel restrictions and airlines reducing or ceasing flight operations. According to flight tracking website flighttrader24, commercial air traffic shrunk 41% below 2019 levels in the last two weeks of March.
And, the goats.
THE GUARDIAN
Mountain goats roam the streets of Llandudno, north Wales, on 31 March. They normally live on the rocky Great Orme but are occasional visitors to the seaside town, drawn this time, it is thought, by the lack of people and tourists due to Covid-19. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶
Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.
︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶
Make of us a garland.
August 31, 2019
Rilke:
We are not poor. We are just without riches,
we who have no will no world:
marked with the marks of the latest anxiety, disfigured, stripped of leaves.
Around us swirls the dust of the cities,
the garbage clings to us.
We are shunned as if contaminated,
thrown away like broken pots, like bones,
like last year’s calendar.
And yet if our Earth needed to
she could weave us together like roses
and make of us a garland.
For each being is cleaner than washed stones
and endlessly yours, and like an animal
who knows already in its first blind moments
its need for one thing only…
to let ourselves be poor like that…as we truly are.
-The Book of Hours III,16
“…a discovery that respects the hiddenness and in communicability of each one’s personal secret, while paying tribute to his presence in the common celebration.”
-Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration
‘…at one with the earth.’
November 4, 2016
Once for each thing. Just once; no more.
And we too, just once. And never again.
But to have been this once, completely,
even if only once: to have been
at one with the earth,
seems beyond undoing.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
I enter every meeting with another being saying to myself, ‘If I only have this time on Earth with this person, if I may never see them again, what is it I want or need to ask, to know? What is it I want or need to say?’ Honoring others in this way has opened me to wisdoms that would otherwise run silent beneath my time on Earth.
-Mark Nepo
❥
September 10, 2016
Mark Nepo.
November 15, 2015‘Only when we can accept that we are fragile gusts on this Earth, only then will we be at home where ever we are.’