To Newborn Baby Skyla
A letter for someone born now living in an entirely remade world
What a wonderful world!
Welcome to Earth, Skyla, If you are reading this in twenty years, forty, or even sixty, I know you probably question many of our choices.
I know that much of the planet has become unbearably hot, stormy, and you have lost so many gorgeous creatures and regions. At the same time, amazing technology and tools that open up the universe to find more life, more meaning, more truth, and more wonders await.
Astronomy is just one such tool.
This month, we eagerly await the launching of the James Webb telescope on December 22. For your brave, new world, there are so many astonishing things yet to learn. We hope with so many tools engaged, that you and your children will find your way back to the connection to our planet, greenery, health, love, and life.
Please know, Skyla, that a few of us already mourn those organisms we have driven to extinction. And, the biomes and systems that support them. Many of us fear for the suffering of those you likely have lost: the majestic polar bears, the purposeful penguins, the elegant albatross, the magnificent leap of whales, the stupendously beautiful snow leopards, the wild wail of wolves, and the music and magic of insects and birds. Elephants are enchanted and sensitive, for example.
I so sincerely hope that you are able to see an entire herd of them, meandering as they do, in long trails of steadfast, cooperative, and reliable forage that creates the forests and plains.
Who are we?
You will have books and recordings of our times. Literature, music, dance, art, and poetry will steer you to find many answers — much about our human frailty — but also our occasional magnificence.
About me, you will know almost nothing, but know this: one pair of humans longed to hold a beautiful baby like you in their arms. I had hoped to strap her, papoose-like, on my back to walk among the emerald trees and gushing flowers that were so splendid; too spell binding to be real. We could not have kids, however. We settled, instead, to claim all life as family.
It is not the same as holding a human baby.
Sorrow is something you will surely experience, but know that, grief too, is an abiding outcome of love. And we love life. Our childlessness resulted in a passion to give our energy into raising awareness, and protecting diversity.
What is diversity and biodiversity? It is that which begins with a spark and evolves into consciousness; it’s the only way we know of for the universe to begin to be self-aware. Due to this, life created you and me, and love, allowing me to speak to you across time and space.
Our modest efforts were tiny fragments of a global Gaia movement, the results of which we sincerely hope are not just planted promises, but blooming bouquets and banquets that you can see, taste, smell, hear, and touch.
Family matters
Just after you were born, Kentucky was hit by dreadful destruction due to the climate crisis. I thought of you, and your future.
In truth, Skyla, I will probably never meet you. So many of us human beings will not make it through a severe bottleneck that we are creating in our waste and haste. And, although we are only distantly related by marriage, (biologically through my nephews and nieces) we are still more related than you know.
Trees, for example, share about one quarter of all our DNA. We are related to every living being and have more in common with all our kin, than we have differences. Science only discovered this recently enough that although it is considered common knowledge to you, it was thought in historical, and even in my time, that somehow humans were above and beyond other organisms.
We now know the wonderful truth. We all, in fact, belong to the world, not it to us.
We are all together in exchange of water, air, materials, minerals and more, all made in the image of God. This, in my humble opinion, what God is: the Creator and Creation. Beauty and inspiration, biology and psychology. Teleology and ontology. Dendrology. Life.
How I wish I could read you a bedtime story about trees, Skyla!
There is nothing more noble, true, and sublime as trees in a forest. They evolved many millions of years ago and learned wisdom and unfolding senses long before our kind discovered their gifts of food, shelter, water, shade, and even writing on the paper legacy they gave us. Being kin with one will make you very proud, for they are a species to inspire us to be sharing and caring, aware and awake.
Your ancestors found a way to harvest them for warmth and food. We later began to burn the carbon they stored in the Earth eons ago when they ate light from the sun and turned it into fossil fuels. Longing for prosperity and a strange asperity toward nature did the rest.
Who we really are
Therefore, I want to tell you I am sorry for all the waste and destruction we set in motion by our assumed hubris and hierarchal tendencies. We now know that all humans should be equal, and that all other organisms of the biosphere not only complete us, but in a very real sense are us.
Truly, no being is alone, for we all dwell within a vast tapestry woven together with strands of star light and genetic code.
Little baby, what a miracle you are! Know this and celebrate. Never give up.
With this in mind, I know you and yours will know both pride and humility in equal measure. If so, you will walk among the trees, and I hope you can imagine what once was, in order that a billion, billion seeds will be planted both in imagination and consciousness, and then, in the recreated soil of fertility, they will sprout.
When buds open to the limitless sun, you will know which way to go; toward clarity, enlightenment, resilient healing, clean and green wellness, and more.
Imagine mining the sun to make air, water, shade, and more trees, too.
You will bend then, toward our sun and all the other stars that shine over you every single day, even when you cannot see them to wish upon them. And in the stars, and their inspiration, you will find not only the sacred light you seek, but also our destiny.
