Terms that remind me to get my feet on the ground (which does not have to mean that one's head cannot simultaneously be in the clouds of imagination) are serving me well, keeping me in touch with Earth and ultimate, sensual reality.
Having just read an essay by Derrick Jensen that is to be included in a compilation of essays written by President Obama, among others, I am reminded that it is this basic disjuncture between humans and Earth, between humans and the real, that can explain in great part why our planet is in the trouble it's in. As Derrick says, our agreed-upon social constructs, cultural clichés if you will, have by their very nature of being ubiquitous, blinded us to the obvious: our planet will be killed if the current industrial civilization continues.
We don't want to believe it.
To use an ordinary example, I enjoy my hot baths more than most, I'd venture to say, yet these baths are obtained by turning on a faucet in my old clawfoot tub that is connected by pipes to a monster water heater that uses diesel from a big tank outside our house to fire it up. Every six months or so, we have to call a company to send a driver over in one of its big tank-trucks to fill 'er up. I don't need to go on, but it is in great part these sorts of comforts that keep people's feet from the ground because rather than knowing them as conveniences, we come to believe them necessities.
At the Anima sanctuary, I bathed just once in the five days I was there, and that one spit-bath I took, pouring water over my head with a pot over the kitchen sink while a fire crackled in the wood stove, was quite satisfying----not as pleasant as a hot tub, but still nice, especially when I was done. I had the same feeling of renewal.
Bathing took on more meaning when I had to heat a pot of water on the wood stove and then dole it out to my body in parts, slowly. With all of the conveniences we take for granted in our industrial civilization, we lose track of the effort and the costs paid for them. Just because they are easy for us doesn't mean they come without a cost.
