The world news today is so disturbing. I feel so anxious. I’m sure this is what most in people in the world are feeling right now. I haven’t wanted to use this site to write about politics, and I will try to hold to that. So I’m going to give a quote from a wonderful interview that I read this morning, linked off of an article in today’s online NYT, already lost in the war news — “Using Science and Celtic Wisdom to Save Trees (and Souls)” about the scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger and her mission to plant native trees to help protect against climate change (and to save our souls). She was an inspiration for a character in Richard Powers’s book The Overstory — and it was an interview with Richard Powers, talking about that marvelous book, that I went on to read.
I realize this is a bit convoluted, attributable to my current state of anxiety.
I loved and was moved by The Overstory. People doing their best in the face of insurmountable forces, people who would give their lives to protect the environment. I particularly loved the character who was based on Diana Beresford-Kroeger. I keep thinking that if everyone read this book, there might be some hope.
Here’s what Richard Powers said:
“To live on this primarily nonhuman planet, we must change how we think of nonhumans. They are not here merely to serve as our resources. They are intelligent agents, deserving of legal standing, creatures that want something from each other and from us. They, much more than we, have created this place. We are not their masters; our dependence on them should make us more like their resourceful servants. They are gifts, and all of us know how sparingly and reverently a gift is best used. As a friend puts it: How little we would need if we knew how much we have.”
As the Hawaiian saying goes, He ‘ali’ika ‘aina, he kauwa ke kanaka! — “Land is chief; we are its servants.”
Blessings.
Raven, Tell A Story 