I pray for the earth’s healing, just as I also thank her— for pines, poppies, sparrows, and cottontails. In observing their beauty, I am restoring my own vitality, taking into my being their light and energy and balance. A cottontail knows how to be a cottontail. Hearing me, it dives into the underbrush. A cypress shares energy drawn from the sun. I lean my back against its trunk in wistful gratitude.

The afternoon passes. Before long the blush from the setting sun deepens the lake’s hues. Like pepper scattered in the sky, the starlings have taken to swirling. How do they swoop of one accord, a body of many? They must be attuned at a different level, synced in, like voices harmonizing and riffing and pulling together again.

Thank you, Gaia, for these daily miracles that offer their grace to me. Strengthen my desire to serve the whole—to cultivate an awareness of not just my collusion in destruction but also my participation in reawakening the truth that we are part of you, Gaia, one planet, Earth. In loving you and braving the consequences of defiance, we can we shift the consciousness of humanity, person by person. That is my prayer. That is my task.