Reflections and Hope for Earth Day

While searching for inspiration for this Earth Day blog post the more I read, the more depressed I became. I read so many articles of mass decline of species, of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases, of the deforestation of the Amazon, of increasing devastation resulting from a warming climate, of the destruction of the world's coral reefs, but that is not the story I want to share today. 

I want to share a story of hope and celebration. I find that hope in the beauty of our incredible life giving planet that gave birth to each of us and to everyone we ever have and ever will know. I find that hope in selfless acts of kindness. I find hope in reflecting on how this accumulation of stardust has evolved into the  Himalayan mountains reaching to over 29,000 feet high, the enormity of the 63 million square miles of pacific ocean, a 106 acre grove of aspen trees functioning as one living organism, human civilization, our ability to connect with people face to face on all corners of the earth at a click of a button, of technology that allows us to turn sunlight into electricity and the simplicity, yet awe-inspiring complexity of a beating heart that powers pumps our  lungs which pulls oxygen from the air that was fed by breathing trees and gives us each and every breath of our entire lives. 

Life on Earth is an awe-inspiring and beautiful miracle and we are so fortunate to experience it. I’m grateful to be sharing this trip through space with you on this spec of cosmic dust, our home, our life giving planet earth. 

I hope you will join me today, this Earth Day in celebrating our home, this planet Earth and I thank you for walking this road with me in helping to preserve this earth for ours and all future generations. 

I’ll leave you with a few words from Carl Sagan on our “pale blue dot”. “On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994