We live in a world with opposing and conflicting values. Climate Action, Earth Action and Environmental Action cannot be solved or invoked solely through the mind and intellect.

We need the heart … a place where decisions are birthed and shaped. Willing hearts coupled with the balancing of the intellect …

Fiction reaches into the heart … in places where Non-Fiction, PowerPoint Presentations, Research, Education and Symposiums do not. Story, through Fiction, often touches areas in the heart that meetings and communications, in various forms, cannot.

Non-Fiction and scientific factors are important, and worthy, but the heart must be engaged as well. This Series stands alongside these other valued areas of contemplation, research and societal engagement. This work is supportive and symbiotic.

When Seas Collide Series seeks to speak to the heart. It seeks to draw out several of the inner heart issues surrounding Climate, Earth, and Environmental Action.

Other issues are interwoven amidst the Story as well. While the Story is foremost about Journey (see the Essence post in Explore), it is multi-faceted. Action surrounding the Climate and the Earth is very much within the weaving of the Story. The work is not independent of other contributing factors such as socio-economic, scientific or political. Behind the scenes factors are in the threads of the Story’s pathways and passageways.

Our Shared Home

On one hand, we have valid, energized, and gallant desires to see our shared place of living, Our Shared Home, not slip further towards a cataclysmic ending.

The land, air, bodies of water and seas benefit all of us. We share our dwelling with the various living things and support systems in Nature existing well before our first cries as a baby.

Ancient and Indigenous cultures often understood this in ways we do not. They wove these truths into the story of their lives as they passed stories, know-how, and ways down from one generation to the next. Even our forefathers, on family farms, pursued these truths.

It is a Complex Home, but Interdependent and Important

Borrowing from Carl Linnaeus’s classification guide, Systema Naturae (1735), we move through elementary building blocks of Domains down through the Kingdoms all the way through to Species. The interdependencies and relationships between the various “leaves on the taxonomy tree” (species) are not trivial. They are all important in the wondrous dance and orchestra we see in Nature: Our Shared Home.

Our Shared Home – Protagonists

These individuals and organizations, protagonists in support of a a healthy climate, earth and environment, seek to maintain the well-being of Our Shared Home. They come from many persuasions, societies, and diverse backgrounds: personal, academic, philosophical and spiritual.

But …

Our Home is Not Secure – Antagonists

On the other hand, we have competing and conflicting interests that militate against the well-being of this planet we call Earth.  These interests often pursue wealth or other self-serving interests, but at the cost of the common good of humanity and Our Shared Home. While wealth is not intrinsically evil, proper use of wealth, and motivations for wealth, have moral aspects. Proper use of wealth, with correct motivations, has tremendous capacity for good.

Those in Authority Sometimes Side with the Antagonists

Not always—that would be unfair and unkind towards those with authority, and means, who actively seek to better Our Shared Home. Extremes do a disservice to all of us. Many branches of governments and organizations, globally, have made positive steps towards betterment of Our Shared Home.

But, often, we see other elements in motion militating against honorable objectives and plans. Frequently, inordinate passion for money, misuse of power, personal agendas and control shape policy and direction in our society. Capital is diverted towards areas that diminish Our Shared Home.  This occurs within countries and between countries.

Lip Service, or Minimal Efforts, are often seen in the Antagonists

Protagonists observing other motivations or contrary outcomes experience considerable frustration, anger, and a sense of injustice. Massive efforts in a positive direction are stymied by the Antagonists: stall tactics or toothless promises—clouds devoid of rain—march along with the progress and speed of pregnant turtles upon parched lands.

Accords and agreements rise and fall, or best efforts are thwarted once conference attendees fly home.

The machinery continues.

But the clock ticks … towards midnight.

The Earth Has a Vote Too … Through You …

We are but stewards …

Protagonists and Antagonists meet in various forms and venues.

The earth, trees, grass, and plants have no vote at these gatherings.

The seas, lakes, streams and rivers, and the air, have no vote at these gatherings.

Dolphins, seals, fish, and whales have no vote at these gatherings.

Polar bears, deer, and elephants have no vote at these gatherings.

Mighty eagles, or the humble sparrows, have no vote at these gatherings.

They can only vote, in a silent suffering, through imbalanced climate, global warming, and a breakdown of the natural order of Nature: Our Shared Home then suffers.

They vote through lost species.

Unlike the spawning salmon, which gives its life to go to its spawning grounds to lay its eggs to birth life, lost species do not reproduce life in their kind. Must they become the harbinger, the proverbial canary in the coal mine, to the loss of another species?

Us.

We, as Stewards of the Earth, have responsibilities to rule well and justly for the common good.

We must hear the quiet and unspoken votes when the Climate and Earth calls out to all of us.

When Seas Collide

What then, shall we do, to reach hearts When Seas Collide?

Stories touch hearts. The child within us all that delights in the hedgehog in the forest …

When hearts are touched, action naturally proceeds.