Satish Kumar: One Earth

When I saw the NASA picture of the Earth, the magnificent Blue Marble, in December 1972 I fell in love with this iconic image instantly! 

And through this incredible image I fell in love with the Earth herself.

I realised that what I was looking at is a beautiful blue pearl in the cosmic ocean. A blue miracle in the cosmic mind 

 In that ecstatic moment I said, this is Gaia, my living goddess. 

This is Mother Earth, my beloved mother, and the mother of all living beings. 

This is our home, our only home, the home of humans, animals, mountains, rivers, forests, oceans, and trillions of life forms. 

This is the self sustaining, self managing and self reliant living Earth. 

Mother Earth sustains herself and nurtures all her children with food, water, air, and warmth. 

She provides clothes, homes, energy, arts, crafts, and culture to all without any discrimination or judgement. 

Sometimes we humans take our benevolent Mother Earth for granted. 

 Like naughty children we behave badly and act disrespectfully. 

We pollute the water, poison the soil, and contaminate the air. 

We waste energy and disregard the limits of our mother’s capacities and threaten the life of our own mother. 

We create conflicts and wars in the name of religion, political systems, nationalism, or some other superficial and artificial boundaries. 

Mother Earth has worked hard, over billions of years, to evolve and create biodiversity, cultural diversity, and truth diversity, but we humans turn delightful diversities into dreadful divisions and then fight over those divisions and kill each other. 

Through the image of the beautiful Blue Marble, our Earth is reminding us that we should transcend these artificial and superficial divisions and protect and conserve the wonderful diversity of life and at the same time celebrate the unity of life. 

After all, we are members of one Earth family. 

Mother Earth is certainly looking after us. Are we looking after our Mother Earth? 

Mother Earth loves us. Are we loving her in return? 

I am certainly in love with this magnificent Blue Marble. 

The Earth is the apple of my eye. 

I will do everything in my power to look after our Mother Earth.