Earth Day

Do you practice daily gratitude?

Do you practice appreciation for what surrounds and supports you?

Most don’t… But why not consider changing that going forward?

Earth Day reminds us to pay attention to how we use resources, but of course we need to do so every day, not just once a year.

We are inherently dependent on natural resources—even if modern life has us thinking we can handle everything on our own without the continued support of nature.

Many think of veggies as something we pick up at the store and forget to take the relationship all the way back to where it begins: Earth. Not just human life, but all life. When a growing vegetable is nourished, it will be able to nourish us in return.

Food is life. Sometimes it’s important to slow down and remember this fact, which we all know—but which we forget when we are rushing through the produce aisle. Maybe some of the vegetables look more spotted than the others: what does this mean? Is the perfect-looking tomato always the best tomato? Maybe some are less spunky because they weren’t irrigated well enough in the greenhouse or field. We pick and choose based on appearance and snap judgments, and we forget that this final display of a vegetable is the result of months of labor and decisions made by the growers. What growing conditions do you want to support?

Then there’s the journey each vegetable took to the store, all the hands that have touched it along its way to you, to offer itself up for your nourishment.

If you think I am personifying vegetables, it’s because I am: If we can develop a relationship to our food that is one of appreciation and gratitude, then we can nurture a similar relationship to Mother Earth—and maybe even to each other.

One of my hopes with the Path for Life online program is to give more people the opportunity to learn about what feeds us. I care a lot about this—a whole lot, not just about you and how you feel in relationship to your food and your Self, but also about the eco-sustainability of how we eat and live.

With every choice, with every bite, we can be part of this eco-consciousness, so that the care we bring to our relationship to all life might, one day, become second nature: as natural a way of being as the sun, rain, wind, and earth—for everyone, on a global level.