Honoring My Home — Planet Earth

We Breathe As One: An Ode to Our Beautiful Planet on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day

It’s not my home. It’s our home. Our magnificent planet, sharing her abundance with us in every moment.

While every day is a day to cherish and revere our home planet, today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

In honor of this anniversary, I would like to share some of my short writings inspired by my love affair with the beauty of the natural world — one every day for the next 7 days.

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Nature breathes life into my soul as we dance together on this eternal journey, exchanging the building blocks of life, constantly shape-shifting matter into what has never been before.

The fabric of existence interwoven so neatly that its perfection would be silly to deny when every part of the whole has within it the code to re-create itself — a hologram within a hologram – reflecting itself through itself to marvel and smile at its own glory

We breathe as one. The orange tree outside my window and I replenishing one another with each exhalation. It breathes out and I breathe in its essence. I breathe out and it takes in my essence.

Oxygen and carbon dioxide dancing to life’s rhythms, appearing to happen independently, yet the only thing that separates us are labels. The entity I call “self” and the entity I call “tree” are in truth one co-dependent system.

My awareness merges with the rain as it relieves the clouds of their heaviness and washes out the streaks of doubt that have clouded the light of my soul.

My own unfolding is as boldly magnificent and as complexly simple as the manifestation of a lemon out of a tiny blossom, the birthing of a kitten out of a chance glance of two Greek cats, or the fusion of hydrogen atoms inside the core of our Sun.

Nature merges into me as I merge into it. Every old cell in my body gets lost in the crevices of the infinite. Every new cell emerges out of the intelligent interaction of life’s elements. Every apple I consume takes on a new form as it shapeshifts into the cells of my skin, into the neurons in my brain, into the twinkle in my eye.

And here we are.

Nature and I holding hands, knowing that we are one unit simply appearing as two.

Inhaling love and hope. Exhaling fear and doubt.

Sending out our intention to all the world: May humanity’s expression of love remain as unconditional as that of nature’s love for us.

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Today, may we remember that this is our only home — our pale blue dot. No one has said it better than the wonderful Carl Sagan.

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” — Carl Sagan

If just looking at nature isn’t enough to take our breath away, contemplate its intelligence through its complex designs and patterns. Eliot Kersgaard has a wonderful way of explaining life’s beautiful universal patterns:

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” — Carl Sagan

Today, let us remember what it’s like to stand in awe of life’s beauty. Let us remember that we are just as much part of it as the wave is a part of the ocean. Thank you mother Earth — you are so deeply loved!