ePistle to the Earthborn

"Fog Forest, Orcas Island, Washington"

Beloved friends, born of this earth:
if we face endtimes, it is only by ourselves that we were undone.
This is not the will or work of God, that we betray our creation
and forsake stewardship for our home, our kind, our kin
- fish and bird, tree and flower, all of life interconnected.
Heedless of warnings, we recklessly destroy what we need to survive.
Can the air and water, polluted and toxic, sustain us?
We deplete streams, rivers and oceans, we destroy great forests
and tiny plankton that would render our air breathable once again.
No place has been spared from our carelessness, we despoil
even the wildernesses of deep seas and high mountains.
Is this our deepest nature, to irredeemably render
ourselves and our birthright into the wasteland of extinction?
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"If we will have the wisdome to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place,
Renewing, enriching it,
If we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
Then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live here."
Wendell Barry