Our world is fast and loud. Seems like all the time accelerating and everyone vying for a spot where we can be seen or at least noticed in the midst of all the chaos. Our children are growing up with a terrible sense of urgency as if everything they do had to happen yesterday in order for it to mean anything, as if, at fourteen, or seventeen, or twelve, it is already “too late.” Everyone spends all their time looking up or ahead or into the future, wondering what’s next, what will happen, what can I make happen today, or worst of all, what should I be doing next? We are bombarded with social media messages so carefully tailored that they reflect and reveal the precise workings of our brains and sometimes, (and this is terrifying) our most private thoughts. Privacy itself has become such an outdated, even obsolete concept that many of us, old and young, claim to be “ok” without it. Reallly?
Evil power mongers march through peaceful countries and people die. Powerful countries abandon weak ones and people die. Wealth distribution and therefore food distribution worldwide is corrupt and people die. War goes on and people die. Gas prices, food prices, housing prices skyrocket. people die. We continue to tap at little screens we carry around in our pockets and think about being as famous as Kim Kardashian.
And yet…the earth waits. While we jump and holler and fight and scramble for more and more, the earth turns on its axis and the seasons unfold and she waits. As we do our best to destroy her oceans and air, her forests and animals, she only waits. Offering up moment after moment of beauty, Our world is fast and loud but these are Earth’s quiet gifts we can choose to accept or ignore as we wish.