Blowin’ In The Wind

THURS., FEB. 13, 1992, 6:36 AM
FARM, STUDY

How many Teachings have I offered to you dealing with the environment or with an ecological perspective on life? You need not count them, but probably there are more than for any other single theme. You teach the environmental health course each Spring, and you do your bit in the Survival course each term. And so you attended the teleconference last evening, and you left wondering whether you should become more involved in the “environmental movement.” You expected that I would advise you, and, no surprise, here I am.

I shall repeat My most common theme: the earth cannot sustain the production and ideal lifestyle of your culture and the other industrialized nations, given the human population of the earth. I have created this earth with its various forms of life, and it is not pleasing to Me to see these life forms diminished. Yet I am reluctant to exert My will against the natural course of events involving humans and the earth. To stop the destruction of non-human life would require some world wide catastrophe for humans, and I’m not yet willing to cause such to happen.

I would urge a bit more involvement in environmental issues for you, but no great increase. Write a letter, as the conference suggested, and send a few leaf cards. This shall be symbolic action on your part, for I do not tell you that this will ignite the movement to better ecological balancing. These are important as symbols, but no more important than the letters to Nancy, Greg, and Terri…and your Christmas letter.

Continue your present lifestyle, with slightly increasing sacrifice. Consider ways to conserve energy, to recycle material, and to reduce consumption. You see that this advice seems to go against what seems best for your nation’s economy. It simply must reorganize, painfully, into some more stable, sustainable form, creating work that maintains life rather than work forms that are destructive. It is unlikely that this will occur peacefully and normally.

Continue to appreciate your good fortune, in relation to your work and your living situation. Yours is fundamentally a non-polluting industry, and it is unlikely that your culture will repudiate the need for education, even for health education. You enjoy what you do, partly because it is obviously important in the lives of some of your learners. You are paid sufficiently well for your work. Teach with a spirit of joy and responsibility, pacing yourself fin these last years.

On this Farm continue your clean-up campaign, and begin to plan for Spring and Summer beauty and vegetable productivity. Try for a bit more self-sufficiency, but you need not be extreme. Continue to be aware of how you balance sedentary activity with the more active, for the benefit of yourself and the Farm. You cannot stop the destruction of rainforests, even of hardwood forests in your region. You can maintain your own woods and the continued life of this place.

I shall not tell you what shall happen in the earth over the remaining span of your life. I cannot guarantee that you will be protected against harm, physical or economical. I am not orchestrating catastrophe, but I see such coming. It is not important exactly how this shall come or exactly what form it shall take. I am interested in how individual souls respond to their fortunes, be they good or ill. I am more concerned that your spiritual life be enriched than that you prosper in certain ways or that you be saved from particular difficulties.