The 50th anniversary of Earth Day has come to a close. I found it a challenge to shift my focus from the immensity of the pandemic to the challenges facing our Mother Earth. During the past weeks I’ve been comforted by the guidance of the CCBS mission and the lessons of the medicine wheel. We are all on a lifelong journey “to discover what is real and true about ourselves and the world around us.” … to understand our inner Warrior, Healer, Visionary and Teacher.
Even amidst the tragic deaths of thousands, we have seen, like the cycles of nature, the miracle of renewal. We have witnessed the emergence of leaders, expressions of love and compassion from strangers, amazing creativity as people share ideas coping with the stress produced by the unknown… and the brilliance of scientists as they work around the clock to create treatments for this disease. We’ve seen the Warrior, Healer, Visionary and Teacher all around us.
The Earth Day celebration also highlighted an unexpected gift from the epidemic… a reunion with nature. In a recent interview in the Los Angeles Times, journalist Alan Weisman, author of numerous classics on the state of the global environment, said:
“People are suspended between terror and wonder. They’re terrified that this is all so fragile, but they also realize there are things we have been missing — the birdsong everyone is noticing, the beautiful skies — and that those things are important.”
One goal of the CCBS experience is to immerse our students in the wonder of nature and build a deep respect, if not reverence, for our planet. We are blessed to be able to keep our boys nestled in the woods of Cherokee Creek, away from the “terror” of the pandemic and surrounded by trees, birds, rivers and fishing, hiking, canoeing and playing outdoors! They are amazingly resilient… being rambunctious and yet, simultaneously, at peace.
We’re grateful to you for your trust in us. We all eagerly await the moment with you can have reunion with your son. Until then, take a deep breath and give gratitude to a tree for the gift of the oxygen we breathe. Take care of yourself and take care of the planet! Blessings to each of you…
THE PEACE IN WILD THINGS
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least of sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and like down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of the wild things
who do not tax their lives with for thought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
