By Linda Wiggen Kraft
We celebrate Earth Day* once a year, but earth day is really every day. Earth is our Mother, our home, our every thing. By saying it is our every thing, it is recognizing that it is our physical place in life, and also part of our psyche and spiritual knowing.
Before the first celebration of Earth Day in1970, before the attitude of conquer the earth became the mindset of humans, earth day was every day. Earth and all creation was not seen as outside of us as an oject. It was seen and loved as both within us and outside of us: alive, animate and conscious. To help heal the world today we need to live with that daily awareness within our body, mind and spirit. Today our personal gardens and public gardens can help us in this quest.
How we view, live and react to our world starts inside of us. For many it is a spiritual connection we feel with creation as nature. Creator is seen, felt and know in creation as it is expressed from the largsest infinite universe to the smallest micro particle. Biophilia means love of life and living systems. It describes the necessary unfolding of our deep attraction and connection to nature rooted in our human psyches, which was established in the long evolution of humankind. Without that unfolding we are not fully developed humans. Today much of the world does not experience the unfolding of biophilia.
Gardens and nature connect us to to the unfolding of biophilia through a sense of wonder, awe, reverance and love for nature. The love of flowers can open our hearts. Perhaps in the long evolution of humankind, flowers that later brought fruit attracted us to their beauty and nourishment so both could continue on. Flowers also attract pollinators that find their nourishment and carry pollen where it will ensure continued life of the plant. Other insects, birds and wild creatures are also part of the garden and its community of life that gathers there. That life isn’t limited to what we call animate, it is the life force pulsing through the earth, stones, soil, sky, wind and water. All of that is a living system.
The physical work of healing our Mother earth needs the foundation of biophila, a restoration of knowing that nature is alive, animate and conscious. It also needs scientific knowledge of how the community of an ecosystem thrives. With the integration of mind, body and spirit in fully knowing nature we can heal the earth. This healing begins at home with our own gardens, and is carried into the gardens of our neighborhoods** and the world.
*Come celebrate Earth Day at The Healthy Planet booth in Forest Park, April 22 and 23rd, 11 am to 5 pm.
**In Forest Park there is an opportunity to help restore and re-weave the web of life in a 5 acre native savanna (grassland with scattered trees). It is the Kennedy Woods Savanna plug planting event on April 29th from 10am -12 pm. Fifteen hundred native plant plugs will be planted. Application at www.earthmirrors.com/events
Linda Wiggen Kraft is a landscape designer who creates holistic and organic gardens. She is also a mandala artist and workshop leader. Visit her blog: CreativityForTheSoul.com/blog or on her website: CreativityForTheSoul.com. Call her at (314) 504-4266.