I grew up saying grace at every meal. It stopped making sense to me when I was 8 years old. I had made the PBJ, not God. Why would I thank God for something I clearly did?
Fast forward 28 years and I am nearly full circle–except now before I eat, I thank the bacteria, the soil, the lichen, the rocks, the trees, the water, the clouds, the wind, the sun, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe…
It is mind blowing to me that what I put in my body has taken literal eons of time. Life that emerged, lived, adapted, thrived, reproduced and died in timescales and quantities I cannot fathom.
One day for Earth is, well, a nice symbolic token. A gesture, or perhaps more cynically, a political and late-capitalistic ploy, to momentarily redirect our attention.
When it comes to grappling with the complexities of it all, the beauty and pain of the story, and the sheer weight of the earth in this particular time and space–I think the topic doesn’t need a day.
It needs a life long art practice.
Alexandra Ross 