Because no other planet that we know of has such an abundance of delights as ours.
Such different beings living in every corner of this mass of rock, water, air.
Big, small, hairy, naked, spiky, smooth, beaked, mouth-y, hard, soft, colorful, grey, slow, fast, lonesome, social, timid, feisty.
Breathing carbon dioxide, oxygen, appearing not to breathe at all.
Nowhere else have all these infinitesimally small possibilities come together quite like this.
It’s dizzying the gift we have been offered.
If you’re looking for heaven, it’s here. Hell too.
On this beautiful gem of a planet.
Every medium teaming with life.
Life sliding, swimming, swirling, crawling, pecking, pouncing.
You couldn’t have invented these creatures in your wildest dreams.
Amphibians? Got that. Snakes? Them too. Sloths? Real.
Where else? In what other cosmos?
Unrepeatable, unfathomable, irreplaceable.
Precious beyond measure.
Ours. To love and protect. To remember. To document. Admire and respect.
I didn’t know a being could move like that.
Look how it gets its food, with that marvelous, nimble tongue.
See how it carries its young.
1 in a million. Less. Way less. A chance flying by like a shooting star.
And here we are, having caught it.
What a snowglobe of magic we have on our Earth.
I don’t want to live on a planet without all this. Humans aren’t that cool or cute.
I only want to live with the others – all around. How boring, sad, grey, dull otherwise.
I want to consistently be humbled – reminded of my otherness – as I gaze at a being who functions on a whole different plane, with different priorities.
Cracking a nut, killing a gazelle, finding a warm puddle of water.
No job, no cell phone, no economy.
Just a fly at night. A flower to feed from.
This is necessary to remind us of our place.
Our place, no more deserving than any other creature.
Just one of the many products coming out of the gurgling mass of chemicals that was our dawn.
A beautiful, imperfect mess. But our mess, the only one we have.
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It’s important for me to remember that my deep grief comes from an equally deep love, a love that cannot be extinguished. I intend to delve into this theme in a future post.
If you’re interested in exploring the love that lives beneath grief, I invite you to listen to this podcast by Tara Brach. Warning: this is a tissue-heavy listen, so be prepared.
Ecological Morning 
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