The planet is sick, and so are we. When we work to heal the planet, we work to heal ourselves. Not just literally, as in, “if I don’t mindlessly pour leftover paint into the ground outside my house, I can grow cleaner food than I can buy at the store.” I mean spiritually, as in, “I come from this earth. Without my clothes on, every part of me is as natural as the sun.” Tending body and planet is also metaphorically healing, as in, “when I am conscious about the earth around me upon which I depend and its current state of precarity, I can become conscious of my own current state of anxiety as a reaction to extreme imbalance.” Then, I can work toward the reparation and restoration needed for both to heal, but we will never be “healthy” as long as our Gaia is gasping for air, melting and freezing in a desperate effort to recalibrate.
When I suck down fossil fuels to get somewhere, through the gas straw, it is emotionally akin to sucking down caffeine to get through an overly stressful day, with both the caffeine and the gas extracting resources from the earth to force my body into unhealthy habits. When I spray pesticides onto lawns it is akin to spraying chemical laden shaving cream on my legs. When my dryer vent pumps Fabreeze into the air it’s similar to me spraying chemical-based perfume over my skin. These things cause havoc, and yet so many mindlessly engage in them.
The other night, as I got out of my car, I looked up at the starry night sky, as I often do as a homesteader who is hyper aware of indoors vs. outdoors: I saw a long, perfectly aligned line of lights moving across the sky. It stood out in the sea of chaotic wonder that makes the actual sky constellation– as being an aberration. I called to my partner. We both stood there gawking…what the actual F&%$@??? A quick googling found this was some kind of Space X starlink thing, while I just stared, mouth agape, watching its kite tail be swallowed by the black night. It made me so profoundly sad. Where a previous inhalation of night sky beauty meant solace and comfort, I felt personally violated. A grounding gesture gone awry.
I cannot discern between earth body and my own body. They are one. I marvel that sixty one-75% of our bodies are water, and 71% of the earth body is water, and how we are indeed made from the same stuff as stars, and how I feel profoundly at home out in nature in a way four walls could never make me feel. That is, until a bit of plastic emerging from earth kidnaps that peace and I instead feel like I’m drowning in a sea of forever chemicals. The constant feeling of trespass and violation is from my own body serving as a conduit for poison just as the earth body is doing the same, whether we like it or not. Whether we like it or not, when the chemical burden on the earth becomes catastrophic, it is reflected by similar devastation upon humans.
Planet healing is self healing because we are not separate from the earth. The hair that comes out of skin is akin to the grasses emerging from the earth. The soft rolling mountains mirror my hips and belly, my thighs are like tree trunks, my heart beats like the waves beat onto shore… rhythms that make our connection to earth indisputable. We sacrifice this connection not for a better well being of us all, but for the ridiculous concentration of wealth to the .0001 percent, who somehow believe that endless supplies of phantom money will make them untouchable by system collapse. But that will never be so. The earth does a fine job of shaking us off like fleas, whether through a pandemic like covid, floods or fire. She will be fine, she will finish the job if and when she needs to. But that is not her endgame.
The earth loves to be gently scratched by us, held by us, honored by us, loved by us. She supports us because she loves us. When I dance for an audience made of rocks and trees I feel more deeply received than when I do so for a room of humans. She is our great teacher because everything about her sings love. She sings love through the stars,clouds, rainbows and creeks. She sings love through the mushrooms, leaves and weeds. She sings love through incredible people. She keeps singing even as we cover her pores with concrete. And when we work to heal her we are working to heal ourselves and our legacy of traumas and trespass that define our age of precarity. It is only in moving from a culture of extraction to one of reparation that we can pursue this reciprocal healing. Afterall, without a planet we cannot fight any of the ‘isms’ that infect us. So there is but one priority my friends. We cannot allow further trespass of our planet, our very selves. We must draw the line. It is our remaining hope.