Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.
– Robin Wall Kimmerer

Recently, beloved author Ann Pelo wrote the following reflection on why her book, The Goodness of Rain, is just as relevant today (if not more so), than when she originally wrote it:

The Goodness of Rain isn’t aimed only at sustaining children’s ecological identities. It’s for us adults, too.

In this time marked by climate and environmental disintegration, it’s tempting to protect ourselves from grief by walling off our hearts from the beauty and astonishment of the Earth. But “even a wounded world is feeding us,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass. “Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

To be in this sort of reciprocal relationship with the Earth asks that we show up whole-heartedly to the beauty and joy and woundedness of the world.

We open our hearts to cherry blossoms and sea foam, hummingbirds and hawks — and to clear cuts and coal mines, fracking and greenhouse gas and GMOs.

We honor what we cherish — and what we’ve lost and what we fear losing: meadow and rainforest, estuary, prairie, canyon, river, ocean, old growth, river dolphin, black rhinoceros, honeybee.

When we live in reciprocal relationship with the Earth, we re-ignite our hearts, re-locate ourselves in the world, re-sensitize ourselves. This is what it means to live in integrity as humans at this fragile time: to open our hearts to all of it—to love, to grief, to loss, to rage, to anguish—facing squarely into the wind.

My hope for The Goodness of Rain is that it sustains our integrity. Whether we can shift the balance of the crisis or not, we will stand in faithful allegiance to the Earth, full-hearted witness to joy and loss and, perhaps, against great odds, to redemption.

Ann Pelo