Look.
I am before you.
Now I am here:
I am making a statement
proclaiming a truth
nothing less than an outcry.
Listen.
I am speaking truth
crying out.
Listen:
Earth is dying
one-only Earth.
Earth is dying
ravaged, abused.
Not dying from old age
not expiring by the will of God
but perishing through
serial extinctions from
human misconduct
human mistreatment
from irreverence, disrespect
from the reinforced
excesses of cruelty, violence, greed
and our constant addictive, terrorizing
overconsumption. Earth is dying
being tortured
unto death. Spirit
and the spirits feel this.
We who are human having
set ourselves as
a breed apart warring
against everything that lives and is, we
are destroyers, unchecked
devourers going on and on
without shame, empathy, without compassion
We are Earth’s killers. Extinguishing
life. We are destroying the miracles
of life on Earth.
Listen.
I have not come with a voice
for argument
to choose sides in politics
either left or right
to split the venerable hairs of
religious beliefs and doctrines
to debate so to show
my cleverness or to parade and inflate
the shallow mirror and the
blown up shadow of my ego.
Debate can be
set aside for more settled times, until
after healing. Argument if
still wanted can wait
for a future date.
Better to let these
habits go. Better
to lay old habits to rest
sooner to be forgotten.
Time remains (a
slender voice, a fraction of
dimmed light) to
gather on common ground for
common evaluation; time
to share the task before
global crisis cracks us with
critical mass and the
world becomes cataclysmic imploding
over forced extinction. Wake up
out of somnambulance! Wake up
united out of the aggressive
false values wasteland
wreckage of generations. Come
together now, coalesce, advancing
the necessities of global commitment. Step
into the circle (the
medicine wheel) of globally real
time and
reality commitment.
Here is the truth
truth equally true for one and for all:
We cannot sustain a
floating world
fruitless and rootless
soulless and fated to crash.
We cannot inhabit
a dead planet.
You long to escape
the nightmare – be spared
saved from the apocalypse
mad humanity has become. One way:
wake up to responsibility.
You long for the restfulness of
comforting sweet dreams:
dream first with the Earth
in her beauty, diversity, in intimacy
and grandeur and Earth’s wild agony.
The pandemic of creaturely
suffering. The agony.
When balance through reciprocity
(tested sacredness of appropriateness) is
restored people will be
gifted with peace – peace
in the presence of planetary stability.
Are you afraid these
days, these latter days
seeking to find safety, desperate
to cling to anything
even a conspiracy of lies, wishing
to snatch hope – hoping for a
scrap, a rag of redemption?
The work of mending committing
to wholeness
is where the realities of hope
are to be found. Hope
actualized by doing. Now listen.
Listen carefully.
I cannot speak with you
more openly or
more honestly than I am
talking with you now.
Odds are
stacked against us
salt of the Earth having
lost our grit and taste
for the passion of life. Easy
then to be selfish
to play the game of madness
of the party fool addicted
to arrogance. But this is
ultimate, a clear and present danger; the
wrap around condition of
an existential threat.
How not to be in harm’s way
how not to be threatened?
Change. Change. Deep down
as well as outward. Become a lover,
not user. Love
is the medicine
to make hope tangible.
Love is the power to mend the
ailing, the broken
the afflicted world
to mend and to open
genuine possibilities of restoration
and actuals of renewal.
A Yes
to redeeming our children
from age-old ignorance
and from the evil history
of humanity warring
against creation.
If we continue in denial – watch out!
Beware
the wrath of the wounded
bear of Mother Nature. Beware
the vengeance
of the raging, wounded tiger.
Be on the alert and be prepared
for further consequences. Further
hardships. Beware!
Beware
the primordial dragons
of keystone elements and bad
tempered weather:
the underground
dragon of quaking and fire
the dragon of frenzied
air and atmospheres who
appears at the darkness of noon
as tempest winds and twisters
and swallowing haboob
the elder dragon of cursed
waters who is
flood and sea level surge
and the drowning terror of tsunami.
Look
I am here
as one among you as
one of us. Listen.
Listening is emergency.
Life depends on
what we do. And
doing nothing
assists the crime of
killing Gaia, making
the life haven of
Living Earth a
dead zone in the cosmic multiverse.
To talk in this vulnerable way
is difficult
and it hurts. So…
Set aside what you falsely
believe you must have (what you are
entitled to) to fill up the shallow
emptiness of your
person, to be free in this
landfill culture of
trash and bacteria and plastic.
To escape your
boredom, to run from the
interior of nothingness.
Attend with urgency and care
what you
and children
and grandchildren of the Earth
truly need. Answer
to what is genuinely required.
Choose the best for life.
Choose without violence.
Make your choice
the affirmation of a demand.
Make your demand
a blessing. Give
birth to trust.
There!
I have said everything
important
for an individual to say. I
have spoken openly
in the testimony of my heart.
In the honest witness
of my soul.
David Sparenberg is a world citizen, environmental & peace advocate & activist, actor, poet-playwright, storyteller, teacher and author.
