Circle of Life
This morning I read several beautiful essays and articles in Orion Magazine. One that particularly moved me was For As Many Days as We Have Left. It tells a love story but also deals with living in a time of climate change. It echoes many thoughts I have had about what is currently happening
In Our world
And it suggests that love helps us stay in the present moment instead of falling into fear and despair about the future. I would add that love helps us to grieve what is lost while loving what remains. If you have time to read this essay, I think you will enjoy it.
In the middle of writing this essay, I texted Mike the question “what does it mean to love another person in a dying world?” He was in Colorado, and I was in California. He texted back: Love provides respite from the suffering? Grounds one in the present instead of dwelling in the fear of the future? Provides a feeling of safety even as everything falls apart? Moving forward toward the danger together? There’s the difficult emotion that humans are driving this sixth extinction, but there is also the understanding that life will go on without us. Take yourself outside, my sweet, and look up at the moon and the stars.
— Pam Houston, For As Many Days as We Have Left
Squirrel Tracks in the Snow
I also found an article in Nature that talks about the concept of degrowth, ideas for restructuring economies to stop focusing on economic growth and start focusing on scaling down unnecessary production and improving environmental and social outcomes. It’s called Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help.
Researchers in ecological economics call for a different approach — degrowth3. Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal, scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being.
It reminds me that in the early 1970’s when I was in college I was inspired by E. F. Schumacher’s book, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Schumacher was a friend of an economics professor that I highly respected and his words rang true for me then as they still do today.
An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth —in short, materialism —does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.
― Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
I spent most of the morning playing around with my camera, inside on a tripod with closeups of calla lilies, through the window with long lens looking through the viewfinder of my camera for the first time since cataract surgery last week. I can see clearly through the viewfinder with my left eye with no glasses! Along with enjoying making the photographs, I played with lots of different treatments, combinations of images, etc. I am feeling full of gratitude and grace again/still. How blessed I am. And how beautiful the world is!
Enjoy your week friends. And think about what you can do to consume less in this season of conspicuous consumption.
May you walk in beauty.
Note: I cannot decide which of the next two photos that I like the best. Each of them appeals to me for different reasons. The second image is a monochrome with gold tinting created from a copy of the first image.
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