During the 17th and 18th centuries, 75% of land in Vermont was deforested for agricultural use, notably sheep farming. This degraded the water, forests and plant and animal life. Even many abundant species such as deer and beaver became almost impossible to find. In time, the majority of settlers were motivated to move to other places and for many decades, the land was left uninhabited to regenerate. Local environment advocates helped protect this process. Today, the forests in Vermont have experienced great healing, and the state is widely known as the most environmentally responsible state in the US. If you hike in the many of the mountain trails, you will find traces of cabins and farming equipment that are overgrown by wildlife. Vermont is an example that even when environmental forecasts are bleak, healing is still a possibility.
As we come up to celebrating the annual Earth Day on April 22, many of us find ourselves struggling deeply with forecasts for our natural world and its impact on our own emotional and spiritual lives. Yet, perhaps even if we do not realize it much of the time, we are drawing on our resilience as individuals and communities. We are developing and maturing spiritually as we grapple with the environmental crisis. We are increasing in gratitude for the miracles of human and other life on earth. We are refining our capacities to think about spiritual questions about life and how to cultivate meaning within it. We are learning about how moral and spiritual problems in society are interconnected with human abuses of the natural world. Every effort we make to further develop ourselves and our communities in these ways matters and elevates reasons to hope that needed changes and healing are possible. And most importantly, we learn to appreciate that community can support resilience, be a much needed space to talk openly about the hard feelings, and also harness our collective wisdom to give birth to new strategies that can effect change.
"Humans, especially humans who persist in trying to transform the conditions of life, are remarkably resilient. We experience so much loss, pain, hardship, attack-- and we persist! Resilience is in our nature, and we recover from things that we would be justified in giving up over, again and again...Resilience is perhaps our most beautiful, miraculous trait." - adrienne maree brown
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