Wonder in Green and Blue, by Melissa Carvill-Ziemer

I used to think that I grew up without enough. But as my global consciousness has grown I’ve come to see that what counts for poor in the United States is wealthy by the standards of many other places on the globe. I didn’t know that at age ten. At ten I knew that a month’s worth of food stamps wasn’t always enough for a month. At fourteen I understood that finding the right clothes for high school was both financially impossible and very necessary. At seventeen I learned that the advantage of having an old car is that you are exempt from emissions testing. Then, at twenty, I was surprised to begin a crash course in middle class culture. I learned about cocktail parties and teas, vacations and housekeepers, how to distinguish quality from K-Mart. These were the lessons I learned from daily life. I carried the complexity into my college classrooms where I specialized in the study of three social and cultural identifies – gender, race and class.

At age twenty-two my primary socio-political concerns were about the quality of human life and the struggle for social justice. My ecological concerns were of the reduce, reuse, recycle variety. I didn’t litter and I turned off the water while I brushed my teeth. I don’t think my concern or commitment extended much beyond that. I was not worried about fossil fuel depletion or global climate change. I wasn’t worried about air pollution or even about the extinction of species. All that began to change the summer after I graduated from college. For reasons I still do not fully understand, I decided to go work on an organic farm on Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. On that beautiful island off the coast of Massachusetts, nestled amidst the immaculate homes of the very wealthy, my consciousness was changed.

Solviva was a small operation, mostly growing organic greens for local shops and restaurants. But the woman who owned the farm had big dreams and an educational mission. When I first arrived I was in no way enamored by her project. My bed for the summer was to be in a small room off the greenhouse with only a wall separating me from the chicken coop on one side and the donkey stall on the other. We would use composting toilets we cared for and turned ourselves and take short showers with water heated by solar panels. The other farm workers would stay in the barn, a few hundred yards away from the greenhouse. These were people in their twenties and thirties who seemed like they were still hoping for the chance to be hippies. The first time we sorted the chicken eggs, one of my coworkers happily rubbed the contents of the broken eggs into her dread-locked hair proclaiming them a great natural conditioner. I was sure these people were out of touch with the real world. I felt lonely and out of place and not a little scared of the farm animals and the dark night sky. I thought about leaving. Somehow I felt that I had to stay. By the time the summer ended I had been changed. I knew that I could not return to my plans for my life. I tried. I reported for the job I was to begin in September. But too much had been planted in me that cried out for nourishment. By October I resigned from my job and returned to the little island to continue the education I simply had to have.

The seeds that were sown in me at Solviva are still growing and changing me ten years later, helping me more fully understand who and whose I am. I am waking up to the nature of existence. I might describe the change in the words of Joanna Macy as “a shift from the isolated ‘I’ [of human centered and privileged existence] to a new, vaster sense of what we are.” Despite all of the very real and significant differences in human being, despite language and culture, skin and gender, we humans are one species. We are one species among many and yet we have exceptional power. We have used that power to exercise dominance over the earth. We scarcely recognize each other as relatives, never mind the animals or the trees. We humans have been taught to believe that our needs and purposes are of utmost importance. We don’t know how to listen to the earth. Though we are all children of this planet, we seem determined to disinherit ourselves and go our own way. Trouble is we can’t and the harder we try the more we hurt ourselves in the process. That is what I started to learn at Solviva and its what I have been trying to learn ever since.

I think the hardest part for me has been learning to see. When I got to Solviva, I insisted upon using a flashlight to walk between the barn and greenhouse at night. I was afraid of the dark. One of my companions regularly urged me to turn off the flashlight and find my night vision. The first time I tried was a night with no moon but lots and lots of stars. I was shocked to discover a night sky I scarcely recognized. Even though I was sometimes still afraid, I wanted to know that sky. I practiced walking in the dark. My second winter on the island, my practice paid off. One overcast night I was walking home alone after a winter solstice service at my Unitarian Universalist church. I was feeling inspired to embrace the growing dark of winter, feeling inspired to embrace the dark silence of winter within myself. I walked as a meditation and a prayer. When I reached the edge of my mile long dirt road, the streetlights gave way and I gave in to the completeness of black dark. With not even starlight to guide, I walked. Half way down the road I felt compelled to stop and wiggle my fingers in front of my face. Nope, I really couldn’t see my hands even an inch from my eyes. This was dark! And then, right there, something happened. I might say I surrendered – surrendered to the dark, to winter and wind, to the raccoons and the deer moving slowly amongst the woods on either side of the road. I might also say, though, that I was invited – invited by the universe to embrace death as part of life, to trust even though I cannot control. And there, in the dark, cold of winter, one of those Solviva seeds bloomed and I was cracked open with new life.

And with that new life came new vision. I began to see that our excessive lighting of the night skies is just another one of the ways that we distance ourselves from the wisdom of the earth. With day comes night, but many of us don’t really know who we are in that dark land. Very scarcely do we have chances to know what a black night means. Light pollution makes it difficult even for those who don’t live in cities to see a truly dark sky. I follow that thread and find a vast web, much of which we chose not to see. We are protected from the wholeness of the universe. In this country few of us have chances to know the lives of wilderness animals. We do not regularly see the drama of hunter and prey, nor do we see the way limits to resources rule the survival of species. And so we forget our own limits. We forget that the resources of the earth are limited. We are so intoxicated with our power to create that we forget that the earth does not belong to us – it is not ours to control.

What makes me fear is that we try. We try to control the processes of human food production and distribution by relying heavily on manufactured chemicals. I am afraid and at times downright obsessed with worry about the environmental toxins lurking in the air, the water, the soil and therefore the food that sustains our being. Some moments I am angry. Learning about the latest news of deforestation, oil spills and genetic engineering can make me furious with our arrogance and willful ignorance. But mostly and most profoundly I am sad. I am sad because I love the earth and I see her pain. I am said because I love the people of the earth and I see that we are hurting ourselves. I see that the world is not a just place and that some people, especially poor and indigenous people, suffer first and more often the consequences of our environmental degradation. Most deeply I am sad because the global environmental crises are almost completely a result of human choices, human values, human greed, human beings.

The writer Arundhati Roy asks a question I think we would all do well to meditate upon – “how can you measure Progress if you don’t know what it costs and who paid for it?” Embedded beneath the monetary costs of any human initiative lie costs that are extremely complicated to tally. How do you measure the value of human life? How do you measure the value of the planet? What costs do we think are just and who gets to decide? Ultimately these are moral questions. They belong in the realm of religion. Here we attempt to ask and answer questions of ultimate significance. In our liberal religious tradition, each of us is authorized to attempt an answer.

My answer is that the value of the earth is primary. We did not create ourselves. Though we know not exactly how or why, we know that we were created out of the raw materials of the universe. Our lives take their shape in a creative world of color and sound, shape and texture. We were born into a living, evolving, astonishing universe. These lives were bestowed upon us as a gift. Our privilege and our great responsibility is our freedom to choose how we will spend them. I believe that while we are free to choose otherwise, our collective calling is to spend our lives creatively, in harmony with the universe that gave us our being. Discerning what that means for us is part of our spiritual work.

For several years my work involved food. When I grew up I learned to purchase the food that was the least expensive. We ate store brands and whatever was on sale. In college I was introduced to fancy food. I learned what was meant by the term “good taste”. Then I went to Solviva. Many of our conversations on the farm centered around food – who grows it and how and who buys it for what price. I didn’t know what to do with my education in the politics of food. The more I learned about the exploitation of the earth, the more I learned about the exploitation of the workers who grow the earth’s food, the worse I felt about my participation in a corrupt system. I felt I should buy mostly organic food, but a) I didn’t feel I could afford it and b) it felt disloyal to my family and the values with which I was raised. Eventually I decided I needed to try to live in alignment with my adult values. I buy mostly organic food now not only because it is better for my own body, but also because it is a way I can say that I will not have people or the planet poisoned for my benefit. I know that purchasing organic food does not make me morally virtuous, nor does it solve the problem. Even in our world of excess food production people still starve. And yet, my choice feels to me like one very small way I can try to live in closer harmony with the universe.

In their book of the same name, Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry tell The Universe Story. They trace the unfolding, what they call “the primordial flaring forth” of the universe to the present age. Everything that has ever existed, they explain, is derivative from the creative, destructive, primordial energy of the universe. Our solar system, the earth and all that exists upon this planet derives from that creative, destructive evolving energy. That is our source and to it each of us will eventually return. It is not fully knowable and yet it reveals itself to us each moment we are awake. Swimme and Berry name this mysterious universe with which we are so intimately involved as the “primary revelation of the divine”. And this, they maintain, must be the basic concern of religion, “to preserve the natural world as the primary revelation of the divine.” For what is at stake, “is the meaning of existence itself. Ultimately [what is at stake] is the survival of the world of the sacred.”

For me this rings true. Yes. All I have ever known of the divine has been revealed to me in this life, through this body, on this earth. Yes. I derive all meaning from what I experience of life on this planet. Yes. This earth is sacred. That is one of the few things I know for sure. And so I am broken hearted about the environmental assault under way on our planet. I know that I have a lot of company. The whole world round there are people who say no to the assault on the earth. The opportunities for political and social organizing for the earth are vast. And organizing is a great way to channel fear and anger. But I don’t think it is the best salve for sadness. Our sorrow is a spiritual ache. Our sadness for the earth is fed by our sense of helplessness. We wish we could stop the assault. Our sadness is fed by our shame. We know we participate in the hurt.

But we also know this. The earth is with us. For as long as humanity has existed, the earth has been our home. She is still here welcoming us, blessing us, inviting us to wholeness. And we know this too. The earth is amazingly resilient. She is the master composter and the ultimate architect of delight. I remember one spring morning when I was running in a trash strewn Chicago park. My eyes were focused on the litter – so much trash tangled in the banks of the pond. I looked out over the fields to survey the litter there and a patch of purple flowers caught my eye. There they were, hundreds upon hundreds of little purple flowers, growing up between the wrappers and cans. My vision shifted again and I realized that these patches were sprouting all over the fields creating a sea of violet against green. And then I saw the geese and the nesting parrots (its true – bright green and wild) and the weeping willow gentling down to kiss the water. Where before I had seen only trash, suddenly there was beauty and therein lies the wonder.

Our sadness can teach us but wonder can heal. We cannot live in sadness forever and neither is that what we want. We want to live. So let the colors passing through us open our hearts. Let the earth bless us, crack us open and leave us in awe at all that is Life. When I surrender to earth I am grateful for my life and grateful too for yours. I am grateful for trees and lakes and bears and stones and filled with amazement at all this beauty. There is much about human existence that adds to the wondrous creativity of our universe. Our stories and our art, our music and dancing are nothing less than blessings. Our courage and compassion have the power to move even the most hardened of hearts. Our celebration of life might just be a manifestation of the universe shining with delight.

Like the universe itself we of the human race are endowed with creative and destructive impulses. We all know what destruction looks like. These times in which we live make it impossible to hide. But so to do we know creation – firmly planted in the human spirit, creation blooms everywhere, even in the midst of devastation. My prayer is that we nurture creativity – that we use our power to bless. My prayer is that we choose life – for ourselves, for our children, for the sake of existence. My prayer is that we choose Life – for that is what hope requires. My prayer is that we choose Life.
May it be so.