Earthrise Earthwise Earthbound

Good Friday is the day folks solemnly trek up Mt. Tapuchao. This season of Lent where the question of what the living of one’s life and the dying of one’s death is all about, I find my love interest these days to be Gaia, the Planet Earth.

The Earth Belongs to All is the theme of the times, COP21 World Summit in Paris made climate warming a top issue inviting all in mitigating the occurrence since it is too late to stop it.

We wrote previously how we got earthrise consciousness and earthbound commitment into our vocabulary. I got my students to hum the Cabaret movie song, Tomorrow belongs to me, turning it to a paean on the planet. The lyric goes:

A flower in Death Valley is greeting the sun;
a rainbow in Tinian stands tall.
We gather together to cheer as one:
our islands belong to all.

Oh brother, oh sister, humanity’s power,
let children be summoned to call;
come gather together to haste the hour,
the earth belongs to all.

The song after each stanza pitches higher with a young brown shirt straight out of Vienna Boys Choir singing in the movie. We do not cheer the Nazi’s Bundestag but we understand European history especially when it ran a global empire, and the axe wielders and musket shooters ran over everyone mid-18th century.

European royals sent minions along the Mediterranean coast in billowing sails, and navigated a globe awakening to national pride and identities. It also told of the Lent story, unfortunately, coached in the slant of European ecclesiology that was heavy on Aryan supremacy.

Somalia banned Merry Holly 2015 as incompatible to the Islamic ethos, and though at the core, we do not find that to be so, we do see the transformation of the Yuletide holidays into the commercialized grabbing of money on consumerism, mocking the innocence and poverty of the babe in the manger. Watching how sleigh bells ring the cashier’s till for transactions in stores made it clear that the world had gotten all the Christmas trappings without much of its meaty substance.

Lent 2016 to me is not a veneration of the Christ Jesus story from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the solemnity of the empty tomb. I see it as a metaphor to the earthrise consciousness birthed in ’68 over the lunar horizon, and my transformation to earthbound commitment in ’72 that provides the content of the season’s powerful story of practical hope, incalculable dreams, and very viable visions.

In some quarters, the emotive term of “love” has entered the language of relating to the planet Earth. It is the Passion week to love self, another, and other social others, all rich of imagery, but now, one loves the planet Earth.

Globalis in localis is my formula for earthbound commitment, to operate with a global context in one’s local situation. That is immediately Saipan and the CNMI to me for the next 16 years, while relating to Hanguk and Chiao Tian, Nippon post-’53 influences, and Dong Bei of China including Jiangsu north of Shanghai, the Hakka between Guangdong and Fujian, ‘Pinas of my birth, and the Austro-Polynesian Indo-Malay cousins of SEA-Pacifica, to communities in villages sensually, emotionally, cognitively, and willfully expending their lives.

The Earth belongs to all is, at bottom, the earth belongs to me. In Saipan, we add to the plethora of voices of Hindi-Bengali-Pashtun-Tamil-Sri Lankan along with the European accents from the Nordic Fjords to the Mediterranean villas. The world has shrunk a bit as the major tongues of the world are heard in the Paseo de Marianas. The reality of I belong to the Earth is a living truth.

Singing the earth belongs to all is not a prescription but a description of current reality. We had hoped that China would plan to discontinue coal use earlier than 2030 but the hum of their factories feeds outlets that provide us cheap goodies in stores. Ironically, as Chinese manufacturing gets more expensive, business will take their production elsewhere where other people are eager to be exploited for the extra peseta. The whole planet Earth fuels commercial China! Michael Jackson and his cohorts sang it well more than two decades ago: We are the world! Indeed, the Earth belongs to all.

The carbon monoxide on Beach Road and Middle Road is alarming. Care of planet Earth begins in our 5-by-12-mile land mass. Friday is called “Good” for good reason; the love of humanity has flowered into the love of Earth. A moment of silence while the faithful pray!