The Living Earth - Our Home

Earth. "A grand oasis in the vastness of space,"

astronaut Jim Lovell called it.

Fifty years ago, on December 24, 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts took the first photo of Earth rising over the surface of the moon.

We've become accustomed to photos of Earth from space, and we hurry on, ignoring the familiar as we do. Even when the familiar thing is the most profound thing in the universe.

Earth. This planet of life. This place that we live. A tiny ball of life in the vastness of the universe.

We're alive at a time of great transition. Until recently, humans could exploit, extract, and develop at will and Earth's great resilience seemed to absorb the impact. But in the last century or two, the blink of an eye in the history of Earth, expanding human population, energy use and industrialization has moved beyond what Earth can sustain. Global warming is just one of the consequences. We're losing ecosystems and species at an increasing rate. Plastic pollution is found everywhere on the land and in the oceans. The air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat is increasingly polluted.

We can't take Earth's ability to support life for granted anymore. Earth needs us to change. Earth needs us to care. 

That's what ClimateYogi is about. We know we are interdependent with all life. We understand the ethic of ahimsa - non-harming, or more expansively, right relationship. We are committed to understanding our right relationship with the world and all its life, and living with integrity. Our practice helps us fully inhabit that understanding, so it isn't just ideas, it becomes who we are and how we live. We become change agents for the world.

Galen

P.S. Here's a link to a NASA video telling the story of the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo - it was truly serendipitous.