Mockingbird, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, Wells Maine

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

The warm December in Maine (and the whole east coast) continues…setting all kinds of temperature records. If all the rain we are getting was falling as snow, we would already have huge snow-plow piles in every drive…but as it is, the fields are still bare, and the forests are still skeletal. Worse yet, the birches are already red at the tips.

I spent a few hours at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms yesterday, walking the trails to see what I could find. Not much was moving. In that, and nothing else, it was a typical December day. I did come on this lonely Northern Mockingbird and a few Blue Jays, and of course there were gulls on the dunes on the back side of the beach (the front side too, I am sure, but I did not get that far).

We were talking about all this, the unseasonable warmth etc., at dinner, and one of my daughters said, “yes, our earth is certainly deteriorating.” I replied, “Our earth is certainly changing…there is lots of evidence of that…but there is no evidence that it is deteriorating.” I am not one of those “climate change deniers” but I am also not convinced we fully understand what we are observing. Of course I do see that part of what is going on is very likely tied to our dependence on fossil fuels and our sheer numbers on the planet…but the earth is a living thing…incredibly complex…and with its own immune system and sources of healing. I think we know way too little to say that the earth is deteriorating…that it is sick. Changing, yes. Sick, maybe. Able to heal itself, undoubtedly. And we, of course, will be part of that healing. If we are part of problem, we are also part of the immune system. Hopefully the intelligent part…the creative part…the problem solving part. The part that embodies the creative love that created the earth and the universe, and that sustains it now.

And, of course, all the long range forecasts predict another abnormally cold and snowy winter for Maine this year. A month from now, things at Laudholm Farms might look totally different.

The generous eye sees hope, because hope is in the light that fills us. Like the Mockingbird on an unseasonably warm December day, we may be confused by the weather, but that dose not mean we are not storing up songs for the spring.