How do you love the Earth?

i love her with every beat of my heart, for every beat of my heart is hers, yours and all of the cosmos. i often just go out to secluded forests and preserves, rivers, empty lots with trees and life still growing on them and just lounge in a tree and feel her cradle me. i feel her pain too, and the immeasureable guilt of being part of a race much less society that has completely  parasidically devoured and disrespected her.

i just thank her with my atoms, my hands caressing the dirt. i pick up litter. i observe and meld with her hummm and my fellow creatures, and add to the harmony and stillness of us.

i take in her beauty and open my heart to the possibilities of living in harmony with her again, collectively, not just me or a few people i know, but all of us.

i love animals and plants with an the unconditional kind of love our mother has for us.

once when i was 20 i went to a gulf coast beach (port aransas, TX) in the middle of the night. my freinds and i delighted in the sand, fire, water and symphony of stars over head.

i stepped away from my friends and walked to the water and just breathed in the night. the was warm, humid, salty- just as i was thinking that a softy, sweet scented gust of wind whirled around me as the velvety sound of waves gently filled my ears.

in the moment i had a vivid vision of a mother cradling her child, loving it with all of energy and will, protecting it and comforting it in the only way she knew how, knowing she couln't do it all, but giving all she personally had and being contented and joyous in that knowledge.

my knees fell the the ground and i drank in the universal oneness of us all and my mother loving me the only was she could. love filled all my atoms and i was in a state of complete peace.

my friends and i devotedly watched the sun rise, in awestruck wonder of the explosion of color in the sky. then we looked around us-
 
the sunrise illuminated a littered beach. a dead gulf. ugly-skeletal oil rigs in the distance. black oil saturated sand undernea the human-sprinkled vaneer of clean sand. broken glass and even syringes could be found. the water, murky and void of plant or animal life.

it broke my heart.

i saw this beach, killed by humans. we collected all our things and all the litter we could around us and left.

but that moment. that complete cummunal with our beautiful planet. the fact that love is the driving energy of life-is life; even on such a beach this truth was made abundantly clear never left me.

how could i even begin to describe how i love our Earth.....it just increases everyday, and i greet her with open arms and respect for all.