Join Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen, World Environment Day’s Ambassador and honor nature today.

In case your busy life circumstances and the noise of our society or the fanfare surrounding the Queen of England’s Diamond Jubilee has distracted you, today is World Environment Day. This year’s theme is “Green Economy: Does it Include You?”  I know, I can relate, I’m trying to get out the door to keep this short and get to my job this morning—or rather keep it.

I stopped counting when I got to more than 80 posts to my home page just in the past two hours, not to mention my email inbox. Can anyone truly keep up with the onslaught of information? Sorting out what’s relevant versus the irrelevant creates an additional challenge. First and foremost, my “inner activist” drives me to share this information—actually broadcast it widely and urgently—as it feels like my true purpose, my real job!

I’m compelled to reach out to all you elephant journal readers with this appeal. According to NOAA’s Arctic monitoring station we just surpassed 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. I must hope, by now, you understand the significance of this abstract number. Do you?  If not, please, please, please get educated. Plato foretold “the price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

This atmospheric, staggeringly stratospheric, appallingly apocalyptic news makes me want to climb the highest mountain and pray to every deity, guardian angel, good fairy and Earth protector to help humanity wake up and change our ways.

I invite all “unrealistic dreamers” to believe that change is not only possible, it is essential for our survival. Together, let’s change the story from the little engine that could, to the “mighty engine that did.” If we believe it, we can bring spirituality, reverence and respect for nature to the top of our personal agendas and keep insisting that our “leaders” do the same.

Without intention, trust and faith in a bright future, we will surely drop into despair and resignation. As many astute observers agree: we survive through our stories, the ones we tell to ourselves and those we share with others. Stories can change us—what’s yours?

It takes engagement, it takes action, it takes courage to create a new story for our world. Energy follows thought, choose what you care about, be clear and do what your heart guides you to do. Bring forth tenderness in all your relationships, especially with loved ones and the Earth. As Edmund Burke once asserted: “No one made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”

Try this: spend 60 seconds every morning imagining a healthy world. Ask yourself what the world would be like if nothing was wrong and then make your contribution.

A long time friend shared this other—worldly recording and image with me today. Take one minute and 23 seconds to listen to the song of the Sun (Solar Oscillations) as Venus races across it’s face today and imagine the magnitude of this magnificent galaxy we are part of. Tap into the universal cosmic story that has brought you to this very moment.

Another friend, Brad Kahland who works tirelessly with challenged youth by introducing them to Nature, posted this on my Facebook page this morning, I was honored to work on this project:

Today, Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, and across the planet people are celebrating our Earth with the World Nature Quest—at sunset today, across the Earth people are sitting in meditation with prayers for healing and rejuvenating the Earth, visualizing the Earth healing, purifying, and then energizing. Feel free to join this global wave of connection and Earth celebration by going into a natural outdoor space near sunset, being quiet, and offering thanks to our generous Earth mother. For inspiration:

If you do nothing else today, to raise your awareness of the need to become a reverent crew member for our troubled Spaceship Earth, read this poem and consider what you can do.

Can You Imagine?

For example, what the trees do


not only in lightening storms


or the watery dark of a summer’s night


or under the white nets of winter


but now, and now, and now – whenever
 we’re not looking.

Surely you can’t imagine


they don’t dance, from the root up,

wishing
 to travel a little,

not cramped so much as wanting 
a better view,

or more sun, or just as avidly 
more shade –

surely you can’t imagine

they just 
stand there loving every 
minute of it,

the birds or the emptiness,

the dark rings 
of the years slowly and without a sound 
thickening,

and nothing different unless the wind, 
and then only in its own mood,

comes 
to visit,

surely you can’t imagine


patience, and happiness, like that.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Onward with courage