Humanity’s Inherent Earth-First Value Preference

Photo by Amy Lenzo

by Leon Miller
It is possible to have a more advantageous view of nature by maintaining a perceptual focus on what enhances the human experience while avoiding that which diminishes human well-being.

Introduction
Humanity’s understanding of the nature of existence is primarily based on perception.  Humanity has long held a perspective on existence where nature and human culture exist in dichotomy.  But this perspective of nature has not always been the view through which humanity perceived and experienced the environment and is not the only view through which the nature-human relationship is based.  It is clearly possible and preferable to have a perspective that allows taking advantage of nature’s signaled opportunities for flourishing while avoiding what would diminish human well-being.  Being able to take advantage of this improved nature-human relationship is a matter of perception.

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Simplicity

by David Sparenberg

Photo by Amy Lenzo

Since Bach first made a fugue
the simplest melody of a flute
on a hill
has been looked on as poverty.
But a hill is not poverty.
Day, daylight, the sun, seasons
air
breathed through the flute player, sent
dancing through the wooden throat
of a finger-holed flute—
this is not poverty.  Go aside
‘til you find the paradise of simplicity.
Ask yourselves there in that
kingdom of God:
What is the worth of philosophy?
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Lead Us Not Into Extinction

Prayer Of the Animals
by David Sparenberg

haeckel's art forms from nature

Our kin,
who now possess the land
where once we roamed,
plentiful and free,
lead us not into extinction,
but deliver us from the devouring
dis-ease of human greed.

Give us this day
(even unto the seventh generation)
a belonging-place to be
what we are, and in harmony
with All Our Relations.

For yours is the power
to restore or further destroy
the Sacred Hoop of Creation.

Make a warrior’s choice
by honoring unity in diversity
of the Great Mystery.
Let Spirit guide you
back to Creator’s vision-dream:
We Are All One Family.

Canto

by David Sparenberg

We progressed until we reached the latest rung in the Inferno.  There before us were two seething pits of new made hell, carved like gouged eye sockets in the fearsome, rude desolation of blind punishment.

The first of such was as a lake, thick and deep with blood.  Over this body of violence an angry wind whipped in bursts of crazed fury and waved in rippling obscenities of gurgling cries, gagging groans and ugly screams of pleading agony.  Awash in the blood thick muck, swilling and knotted into fist sized clumps, circulated currencies of all the world—some nations contributing more to the horror, while others less.

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