FLYING HOME

I was sitting on the cliff today watching sunset over the water at Larsens; orange, pink and yellow clouds behind dark purple stormy ones with a back drop of baby blue, spread over the dark water swells with puffs of white waves. All that colour punctuated now and then by flocks of Boobies flying home (sorry, that's their name). They are black and white seabirds that nest in the trees of a bird sanctuary just up the coast, and every day at sunset they fly home after a day of fishing. And it occured to me that we have lost our sense of "home". I was reflecting on that word because I had just seen a film about our Earth and what is being done to her that is the most unbelievable, astounding, stunning, important film. It is called HOME, and is on Youtube. The photography is National Geographic quality, and it tours the globe showing the state of air, water and food in hundreds of Nations. It will blow your mind. EVERYONE needs to see this film so we all know what we are facing. The images of Nature are so GORGEOUS, and the statistics are staggering. Please, please watch it.

Today was one of those big swell days when TONS of garbage is washed up that is floating around in the ocean. Too much for me to pick up in one day, but I got some of it. I always feel relieved that at least that much won't wash back out with the next high tide. There were people there that came to "use" the beach for the day, spread out their towels or beach chairs right beside the trash washed up, and then left without picking up a single thing. Why? They have lost a sense of the Earth being home. If someone had dumped trash on their bed and they didn't know who did it, would they lay down on it or clean it up? Of course they would clean it up. Even more alarming is the people who come to the beach and bring trash that they leave behind. Do they butt out their cigarette butts on their living room carpet and just leave them there? Again, of course not. It is home. But they do it every single day down at the beach.

We have lost a connection to the Earth as home. And yet the Earth is inside us! We are all made up of the air, water and soil of this planet. If we don't have air, we die. If we don't have water, we die. If we don't have food from the soil, we die. You have air, water, and soil inside you right this moment as you read this. It doesn't get more connected than that! People say to me they aren't as connected to the Earth as I am. Yes, you are. We ALL have it inside us, equally. We all take it in every single day. But it is not a conscious connection. If it were, we would act very differently. No-one would dump trash in their own home and then lay down in it. When they are at the beach they don't think they are "home".

Anderson Cooper aired a documentary on t.v. called Planet in Peril that highlights a few of the things happening to our Earth. One of the segments was on human-made chemicals that are now inside us. As we have been pouring these chemicals into the air and water and soil, we are pouring them into ourselves. Only recently have we been discovering that they are not just poisoning the Earth, they are poisoning us. There are roughly 82,000 chemicals not found in Nature that have been created for use by us. Guess how many have been tested for safety. Go on, guess. I'll give you a moment.......200!!!!!!!!! Those zeros are correct. Not 20,000. Not even 2,000. And of those 200 the ones that are proven to be hazardous are banned. Like DDT. And yet they are still finding DDT in our bodies because it gets stored. What about the other 81,800 that have not yet been tested? Why are we waiting until they are? What we are doing to this Earth we are doing to ourselves. We are connected whether it is conscious or not. When someone proves it is toxic, it's too late.

So we have got to come back to a sense of home. A planet that is so connected to us she is inside us every moment of every day, and what we do to her we immediately do to ourselves. And it has to happen swiftly. We don't have time to crawl home or even walk. We need to FLY home. Just like the Boobies, every single day.
Thanks for listening.