All In It Together

This morning's sun got us up before six, buckled into our snorting chariot, roaring back to Monterey County.  There were what seemed to be a pounding river of cars -- but that insults all great beautiful rivers -- nearly each carrying one single human being.  Hundreds of thousands of automobiles thundering along cement pathways laid down over thousands and thousands of acres of land.  All of us were driving in ease and comfort, listening to our radios, separated from dirt, cold and other humans, secure to the utmost within our individual encasements of steel, plastic and glass.  


How detached we all feel from the earth as we drive, leaving vaporous stinking trails of exhaust wherever we go.  We hear an announcer summarize the day's news in soundbites, and we have a vague sense of dismay and fleeting concern for what amounts to being the consequences of our gluttonous self-centered demand for comfort and high living:  Pollution everywhere.  


I am as guilty as you are; make no mistake we are all to blame.  There is very little that I do in my day that does not extract a toll on the environment.  Especially insidious and subtle is the invasion of plastics into my home and my community.  We lived just fine without so much plastic for all of human history.  It's really not necessary; it's very seductive stuff.

Our lives are so out of balance with the checks and balances of nature that only the word horrific pertains.  What a trade-off we have made.  An exquisite gem of a planet unequaled in all of creation in trade for humankind.  Is God weeping now?