Commitment and self-discipline. April presented two opportunities to practice my commitment to the earth.
On April 12 our family attended the B.R.O.K.E sponsored rally against Kinder-Morgan's proposed pipeline expansion in our city. There are dozens of reasons I am against this expansion but the first one is that our earth cannot sustain the practices of extracting fossil fuels. This pipeline will transport oil across our backyard to buyers in foreign markets, navigating tricky waters with tankers that could spill and destroy wildlife and precious natural areas. We already live with the risk of the current pipeline's potential hazards let alone adding another. This type of thinking about our environment as an extraction field needs to be stopped.
On Earth Day I visited Kyan's classroom and read "Earth Mother" by Ellen Jackson. It is a wonderful story of the gentleness, power and wisdom of nature's cycles. The kids were very engaged by it and we followed up with learning the first verse of The Earth is our Mother chant. And to end the lesson we talked about what each of them could do to take care of the earth using this sheet. I was happy that the kids responded as they did. And despite being busy in other things I was glad to mark the day for the kids and myself. I plan to do this each year as long as Kyan's (and eventually Elliott's) teachers are on board. This work is about my spiritual path and in a future post I'll expand on where these values are building from.
Around home our interest in birds continues to be enhanced by our bird feeders. Elliott built a nest for our little eggs one morning. Spring brings forth so much life and newness that it spills over in the boys' faces. The inspiration of it seems endless.
