Kindness and quiet acceptance left the polite room. Ridicule, name calling, vile memes, and accusations based on anything but rational thinking has found and magnified its voice as it prefers to shriek and howl into a reverberating hallow chamber.
It’s as if we’ve been gifted with a reminder that what we have on this planet is delicate and beautiful. That’s how […]
I am much like you.
I’m a gadabout
dressed in threadbare wings
still fluttering from
flower to flower…
The human-made threats like habitat destruction, development, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and invasive non native plants, are outside of a butterfly’s adaptability. This is where you and I must step in if we wish to continue the soulful joy of butterflies in the sky.
All the scientific concerns about a changing global climate was as inconvenient as a rattlesnake in a living room — not to mention those pesky rules and regulations that disallowed bold and rampant pollution and the raping of the earth’s forests.
And life’s serendipitous imp flew with me from the California coast to our landing in the Sonoran Desert last October. The objective was to physically heal. I’ve spent the last four months among saguaros, palo verde trees, wild coreopsis blooming next to chaparral and creosote shrubs. The massive structure of the Mayo Clinic outlines the horizon to the east. Westerly is the opened desert where coyotes and rabbits play hide and seek, and concludes my days in neon orange and purple sunsets.
But what nature insists on showing us, just like the flowers I captured during my January walk through the desert, is how nature keeps giving sensual delights despite the constant assault that you and I place upon it. These are simple things that unite us. These a pleasures that we can easily have in common. These are treats that come for free. These leave permanent moments while the effort to divide us is impermanent on every level.
At a time when our 24 hour news cycle broadcasts little joy, the enthusiasm of the volunteers who came to do nothing but pick up other people’s trash and garbage, shed a certain kind of light to blot out all the negative headlines of the day. At our locale, most volunteers were locals— some partnered with a friend or family, and some represented local groups. Visitors from Livermore and San Jose, (both cities about 200 miles north of San Simeon) also joined in the effort to keep our wastes from slipping into the Pacific Ocean.
And our planet’s modifier is in trouble. It’s a Neptune 911 crisis. What can we do to combat our ocean’s struggle with marine debris, hypoxia and acidification? The answers are found in university labs, recognized in world organizations, and ignored by feckless politicians and leaders.
–As seen on Thrive Global by Charmaine Coimbra “Compassion is a more empowered state and more than an empathetic response to […]
