My office window looks out onto an orchard. On this particular morning, my neighbour the farmer is spraying his trees with something toxic. He’s garbed from head to toe in impervious yellow plastic, and wearing a gas mask over his face, as he drives his tractor up one row, down the other.

            The spray, whatever it is, blasts the trees on either side. Turbulence swirls the droplets high into the air. They drift slightly in the light breeze, then settle back onto the trees. The branches, the twigs, the buds of new growth glisten in the morning sun.

            I keep my window closed. I don’t want any of it on me.

            I know the spray kills certain pests. I wonder what else it kills. How does it affect the bacteria in the soil, the worms, the fungi that serve as nerve endings for tree roots?

            Not all farmers use these sprays. I know other farmers who don’t spray their trees. They encourage worms. They compost their wastes. They thin blossoms by hand. But they pay a price for their commitment -- more hand labour, uncertain sales, lower profits.

            I can’t blame my neighbour for trying to grow perfect fruit. He knows how fussy consumers can be. I wonder why we consumers think that only unblemished fruit is worth buying. We pick through the bins in our supermarkets, rejecting apples that have a tiny scab, peaches with a small bruise, grapes with even a trace of shrivelling.

            Does it ever occur to us that a chain of consequences leads directly from our shopping preferences to a farmer swathed in a hazmat suit to protect himself from his own toxic sprays?

            Probably not. Yet that’s the whole point of Earth Day, marked around the world today.

Industrial toxins

            As you probably know, Earth Day got started in 1970, after Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson read Rachel Carson’s 1962 classic Silent Spring. The book documented how supposedly safe pesticides affected the environmental chain.

            I suspect that the most influential detail in Carson’s shattering analysis was the way DDT was decimating that American icon, the bald eagle. For the first time, Americans in general -- though not, apparently, their governments -- became aware of the connection between the environment and public health.

            Until then, images of smokestacks belching fumes, of pulp mills spewing sewers of sludge into rivers, were seen as symbols of progress.

            In the industrial world, we took too literally the biblical injunction to “fill the earth and subdue it, to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing…”

            In context, the message is more about taking care of the earth, looking after it, not about doing whatever we want with it.

            Because what we do to the earth, we do to ourselves. We are an inseparable part of the earth.

All my relations

            A new book by Nick Lane, The Vital Question,argues that we are all -- plants, fish, mammals, insects and even fungi -- descended from the same single cell. Geneticists have previously traced all human RNA back to a common mother (given the name Eve, of course). Nick Lane takes the relationship further; all living cells derive from an initial pair of bacteria-like things which, for unknown reasons, opted to fuse and cooperate rather than consume each other. And so, perhaps, an amoeba got a nucleus, and launched the process of DNA replication.

            The implication is clear -- we have an intimate relationship with all life around us.

            We are, of course, all stardust. The chemical elements of our bodies were formed during the collapse and explosion of ancient stars. Of ALL our bodies. There are no exceptions. Everything -- on earth, in the solar system, in the galaxies scattered through the universe -- consists of the same physical elements.

            We are all one. Whatever we do to bugs in an orchard, fish in the sea, eagles in the sky, or refugees in a ruined city, they are us.

            In another biblical account, when Moses encountered God in the desert, he was told, “You’re standing on holy ground.”

            I believe those words apply to more than a few square metres of desert surrounding a burning bush. This earth is holy ground. All of it. We tamper with it, devalue it, destroy it, at our peril.

            Earth Day should remind us of that awesome responsibility. And that awesome relationship.

            When we harm the earth, we harm ourselves.

            One day a year is not enough. Every day should be Earth Day.

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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

            To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

I started last week’s column with the claim, “There hasn’t been this much news about chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein didn’t have them after all.”

            Steve Roney, who lives in the United Arab Emirates, questioned that claim: “There have been many stories that maintain that, yes indeed, chemical and biological weapons were found. They just were not found immediately, and the media grabbed the story that there were none and never looked back.

            “Others maintained at the time that the bulk of Hussein’s WMD arsenal was shipped off to his Baathist colleagues in Syria, to dodge the inspections. Isn’t it interesting that Assad turns out to have a large chemical weapons arsenal? What does two plus two equal, again?”

James Russell also pointed out a deficiency: “I hate to say this, Jim, but you are historically wrong about the development of the nerve gases Sarin and Tabun. I remembered from some early reading that these were, in fact, developed by the Nazis – here’s a reference: http://www.neatorama.com/2013/09/06/The-Curious-Origin-of-Sarin-Nerve-Gas/

            “As I recall, the Nazis were preparing to use them when the Allies were advancing on Germany, but were bluffed out by Allied messaging that we had such weapons and in far greater amounts but would refrain from using them if the Germans did (don’t have as quick a Google reference for that, though).

            “That said, good column!  

Tom Watson mused, “I suppose it's hopelessly naive to think that we the public might start hollering about the terrible waste of money that our governments throw into perfecting ever more deadly weapons -- not only nerve gases but other weapons that leave people just as dead. On the other side, it doesn't seem difficult for us to holler about carbon taxes, and the waste in scientific research, and giving money away to people on welfare, and such other monumental issues.”

Bob Rollwagen also drew some wider issues: “As for people that make things worse, the chemical gas race looks like the atomic bomb during the Cold War or the current missile development by North Korea, a few in search of power at the expense of civilization and their own citizens under the guise of pursuing security from others. Sort of like world leaders who put up rules and walls to keep out unwanted people of other nations, colour or belief. Even like right-leaning individuals that support no public debt, regardless of the impact on the ‘have not’ because they ‘have’ and don’t need to help others. They have either forgotten why they ‘have,’ or feel entitled and blame the less fortunate for their own lack of health or housing. It has been proven time and time again that strong public social infrastructure brings all up while large private structures make a few very wealthy.

            “In Ontario recently, out of frustration, the government outlined what is needed to return to a strong middle class and better balance in society because they can see an attack by the right to continue the rapidly expanding gap between ‘have’ and ‘have not’.”

            “To get more specific, the Conservative leader is proud of his annual cottage party where he entertains 60 under-privileged kids in Muskoka for a weekend, while he publicly rejects providing proper daycare for the kids’ mothers so they can make a living wage and raise their family above the poverty line. Talk about people who work at making a bad thing worse!”

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the ‘Reply’ button.

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            My webpage is running again -- thanks to Wayne Irwin and ChurchWeb Canada. You can now access current columns and five years of archives at http://quixotic.ca

            I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols.

            Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca

            Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://wwwDOThymnsightDOTca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)

            Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>

            I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom

            Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.

            Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet