EARTH BURNS LOS ANGELES!
Why would we never see this headline?
The Earth is left out of our reporting of the apocalyptic fires in the city of angels. The headlines scream “Wind whips…” or “Fire spreads…” as if the disaster is self-generating.
No, the Earth is the cause. The Earth is the original prime mover. And the Earth is coming! It is the Earth that swelled the rivers of the Blue Ridge Mountains with a year’s worth of rain in one day. It wasn’t Hurricane Helene.
We have a troubled relationship with the Earth. We are divorced from the Earth, most of us, and have been for centuries. We don’t even want to begin our sentences with the Earth. We don’t want to begin our talk with the Earth. But if we can’t talk about the Earth, then we can’t talk about ourselves.
EARTH BURNS LOS ANGELES! EARTH DROWNS NORTH CAROLINA! EARTH BURNS LAHAINA! EARTH FLOODS PAKISTAN!
If we don’t accept the Earth’s role in the 19 straight months of the 100,000-year heat-wave. then.we are ignoring our own life. We are the Earth. We frame this California disaster as a conspiracy of wind, fire and drought so that we can stand outside of it; spectators not participants, victims not perpetrators. We are the Earth. We’re doing this.
If the human race isolates from the Earth, then humans eat the Earth alive. Look at how we report Los Angeles. We spray the flames with numbers. Body-count, billions of dollars lost, number of buildings lost, percentage of fires controlled and the dead creep up to 24. We are imprisoned inside our own data.
If we are the Earth than we are a creator of disasters. With our exhaust pipes and our shopping and our wars. But if we are part of the Earth we are also in a position to change the Earth. That’s the good news. We have a view to change. If we change ourselves we change the Earth.
EARTH LOVES LOS ANGELES. EARTH COMFORTS SURVIVORS. FIRST RESPONDERS FALL IN LOVE!
The Earth of the disasters is the Earth of springtime flowers and love. Love is the strongest force that the Earth (and we earthlings) brings to reality, more powerful than the virtual reality of data. Love is our path back to cities that don’t burn and rivers that stay under the bridges.
We can love so much that the rest of the Earth loves with us. It’s hard to imagine, of course. Hard work, radical truth-telling, kindness.