It’s not just practical and political action that’s needed if we are to deal with the challenges in Hard Rain. We’ve lost touch with the natural world and we need to reconnect. Not through photographs which, however beautiful, are just signposts to reality. We need to actually reconnect with nature. This is the first and last step to a sustainable culture we can all participate in.
The modern philosopher J. Krishnamurti points out that, “If you hurt nature you are hurting yourself”. The following quote from his book All the Marvelous Earth reinforces the connection between nature and human nature.
Mark Edwards
There is a tree by the river and we have been watching it day after day for several weeks when the sun is about to rise. As the sun rises slowly over the horizon, over the trees, this particular tree becomes all of a sudden golden. All the leaves are bright with life, and as you watch them as the hours pass by, that tree whose name does not matter – what matters is that beautiful tree – an extraordinary quality seems to spread over the land, over the river. And as the sun rises a little higher the leaves begin to flutter, to dance. And each hour seems to give to that tree a different quality. Before the sun rises it has a sombre feeling, quiet, far away, full of dignity. And as the day begins, the leaves with the light on them dance and give it that peculiar feeling that one has of great beauty.
By midday its shadow has deepened and you can sit there protected from the sun, never feeling lonely, with the tree as your companion. As you sit there, there is a relationship of deep abiding security and a freedom that only trees can know.
Towards evening when the western skies are lit up by the setting sun, the tree gradually becomes sombre, dark, closing in on itself. The sky has become red, yellow, green, but the tree remains quiet, hidden, and is resting for the night.
If you establish a relationship with it, then you have a relationship with mankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of the world. But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth, you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity, with human beings.
J. Krishnamurti
