Dear Earth, you are burning & I am small.

If I returned home to a fire in my living room, I would race to the fire extinguisher. If my children were starving, I would steal to feed them.

Dear Earth, you are burning. You are melting, and choking, and being poisoned. Your children are dying. Your animals are being wiped out. I am so small. I am so selfish, and limited, and weak. Where do I begin? How can I rest when you are in such pain? How can I bear it?

When I am aching with the pain of the world and the insufficiency of my response, I remember what Jesus said. He promised that his yoke is light. He promised that, if we follow a spiritual path, we won’t be asked to carry more than we are able to carry.

What stops me from going crazy is asking the Buddha (my Higher Power, the Universe, God, you) to tell me what to do next. If I left it to my various parts, I would flip between manic activity and numb denial, overwhelm and torpor. I would spend all my rest days soaked in guilt. I would judge everything I did as not enough, pathetic, cowardly, lazy. I would burn out or retreat into comforting fantasy.

Mostly, dear Earth, you tell me to do very ordinary things. Listen properly to that person’s fears. Write this. Give the cat his medicine. Go to that boring meeting. Pull weeds from the vegetable patch. Sometimes you tell me to get arrested, or to speak up when I’m afraid to. Nothing you’ve asked of me has been too much. You often say the world ‘gentle’ to me. You often remind me to rest.

Will we put out enough fires to save you or, more accurately, to save us? I don’t know. Some days I am pregnant with hope for our future. Some days, I think it’s more realistic to accept that the human race is in their end-time.

And if we are doomed? Firstly, I want to do what I can while I can. Secondly, I trust that even if I did drive myself beyond my breaking point, I couldn’t save the whole world.

As I type this, parts of me don’t believe it. ‘You could too save the world!’ they say. ‘If you do more! Get more people on board! Work harder!’ I thank these parts of me for their incredible dedication, and for how massively hard they work. I appreciate their service. I get that it’s frightening for them to accept my vulnerability and dependency. I send them lots of love.

Dear Earth, please show me what to use my limited energy on today. Please forgive me for the paltriness of my efforts in the face of your great suffering. Please help me remember that your yoke is light, and that you want me to be happy, and to know myself as beloved.

Bowing before you with gratitude, beautiful Earth.

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Gratitude for photo by Eugene Shelestov from Pexels