Pardon me. I have never bothered to talk with you since I was born 79 years ago. It’s like a flower never talking to its roots and like a cloud never talking to the ocean. Like CNN broadcasting silence.

Why does the cat have my tongue? Why do I never talk to “You,” the elephant in my living room? You’re not invisible. My bed rests on you. I walk and drive on you. My heart pumps your living water.

You are talked about, but not talked to. I say, “Good soil, lovely tree, beautiful sky.” My amnesia is like never getting beyond “Hey, listen up about the woman I married” while talking to my wife.

The Bible models second person avoidance. “Let the earth put forth vegetation. Let the earth bring forth living creatures.”  English usage since the time of Shakespeare has named you, but has kept you in a first or third person jail cell.

Our culture knows, religiously and scientifically, that we earthlings live, and move, and have our being within your global sphere.  You’re the awesome birth mother of me, and the flowers I tended and the pizza I ate today. Isn’t it enough that I have done Earth Day every year since 1970 and Earth Hour the last Saturday in March for three years?

Why do I need to be personal with You? Why converse with You? What cultural taboo will I shatter if I say, “Mother Earth, You are dear”?

image source

For 365 days he and wife Michelle and child Isabella, living in New York City, produced no trash which was not composted, purchased no food except that grown with a 250-mile radius, used no carbon-based transportation (cycling and walking), and used no paper products, including toilet paper. No TV. No fast food. No meat.

I see and hear this boyish person, Colin Beavan, at Illinois Wesleyan University. Two thousand students at IWU, among 30,000 nationwide, have read his book, No Impact Man (2009), as part of their summer reading assignment. Illinois Wesleyan, along with many institutions around the world, have committed this semester to using his principles during No Impact Week.

About 30% of Americans suffer from depression or high anxiety. No Impact Year, for the Beavans, meant life slowed down, the kitchen table became the center of a social network, and they became happier, with less anxiety.

The meaning of ecological crises is not to live small, with self-denial, but to address the big question, How can I help build healthy community?

Photo below comes from Colin’s appearance at Illinois Wesleyan.

Photograph by Joe Grabill

Thursday, the evening before, a misshapen bird careens, like a drunk, in a first floor bedroom and in the kitchen. Flap. Scratch. Bonk. The bird’s beak is turned up, rather than forward. It frantically swoops into a living room wall, trying to get a toe hold. How did this invader get into the house? It panics as we chase it. Finally we get it out the front door. I follow. It crashes into a bush on the north side, and I’m afraid to get too close. It’s ugly. After I am convinced it has left the yard, I go back in and insist we carefully sweep the first floor and get all the feathers out. They’ve contaminated our space. I carefully feed feathers to the flames at the back fence in the black night. Only a complete incineration will rid us of the spirit of the ominous intruder.

This Friday evening feels tense, and not only because of the obsessive cleansing and burning of the night before. Doris is pregnant with our first child, to be born in September. Will we have a healthy baby? I remember the birth of my mentally retarded brother. The strange, foreboding personality of an ex-Marine, Ron, rooming on the second floor, infects the house. He’s not a Christian. I am very worried about my sister Jan who lives with us and is showing interest in Ron. I don’t want her to date a non-Christian. Friend Kan Ori from Japan, also rooming with us, is facing his doctoral prelim exam like I am. Some of the peers of Kan and I are having nervous breakdowns as they seek to make sure they’ve memorized everything. Will I pass? Will I be the first in my family to get a PhD? Will I survive the alien environment of secular study, outside the cocoon of my Bible college undergrad community?

Ron and I talk in the living room this evening. With a Bible, I tell him how to accept the Lord. He seems interested. After we agree to meet again, I get a nail and a hammer, intending to wedge a loose screen into place in Jan’s room. While working, I feel claustrophobic. It’s muggy. In gray shorts and white T-shirt, with the nail in my mouth, and my hammer in hand, I begin a walk, announcing, “I’ll be back soon.”

My sandals flip flop. Sun is dying. Spring semester has ended. Feeling generalized anxiety, I head north on Jefferson Street toward the railroad viaduct, and then west on 10th Street. I am now talking earnestly to God about being in a strange land, no longer surrounded by family tradition. I need direction. My walking goes into auto pilot. “God, who are you? Show me who you are.” My meditation intensifies. Cars recede into a dream. Night closes in. A vision develops. I will crumble my troubles by circumnavigating the city of Bloomington, like Joshua encircled Jericho and its walls came tumbling down. God talks to me. “Taste me in the shower dripping down your face. Smell me in the ionized air. Feel your legs. Hear me in the breeze. See me in the shadows.” God and I are having a power talk. The house troubles I have left are now a couple miles away as I circle northwest Bloomington. It doesn’t occur to me that my parting word about being back soon is not true. Time disappears. I am marching with God’s drumbeat into freedom from anxiety. Flip flop.

Photograph by Joe Grabill

Rabbi Jesus in the first century knew snakes and doves as neighbors and teachers, as discussed in chapter 8 of my book, Green Kingdom Come. The Bible states clearly that the neighborhood of creation includes “every green herb.” Genesis 1:30.

So, how do I name who is my green neighbor among the species of the world? By looking up any of 1.7 million species listed in the first data base, Encyclopedia of Life, which is seeking to identify every living species on Earth, including  hibiscus, peregrine falcon, and bulrush. Now for the first time in history, all of us 7 billion folk in the world can open a window, 24/7, on the biodiversity of, for, and by the world.

Stewart Brand writes in his new book, Whole Earth Discipline, that the pocket calculator potentially has made us all math literate and the DNA barcode process in Encyclopedia of Life bio-literate. Now we have every opportunity to meet and to love our green neighbor as ourselves and to be full time university of life students.

Bulrush

Hibiscus

Peregrene Falcon

Author: Stewart Brand