The Dedication:
Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Education (ANJEE) 2021 Conference
Opening Dedication
by Dr. Michael Lees
Good evening everyone and thank you for this honor and opportunity. I would like to open this dedication with a thought from our friend Carl Sagan: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. That’s educators and that’s students. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever has lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines; disciplines of schools of learning that include environmental sciences, ecology, chemistry, physics, and biology; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena” (p. 6)1.
I’m here, you’re here, we’re here on that pale blue dot. You, with all of your seven thousand trillion trillion atoms and a hundred-billion-some odd neurons. Also here are the plants, trees, bugs, birds, rocks, others of the mammalian persuasion, rivers, lakes, and oceans. All of which are participating in a dynamically ecological interdependent dance. Amazingly, the pale blue dot is spinning at 1000 mph, around a star at 67,000 mph, within a galaxy moving at 1.3 million mph. To this, all I can humbly say is welcome everyone to what we call life in the linear-marked time of 2021. Wow. What a year 2020 was. Our world, as we have known and know it, continues to adapt, change, and remind us of impermanence and uncertainty as it has done for roughly 4.543 billion years. 2020 was marked by ups, downs, lefts, rights, sufferings, joys, successes, and failures. A pandemic is ripping through our society on local and global scales. Our society has been wrought with collapsing social contracts, constructs, a failed leadership that has fundamentally harmed and altered the way we live, learn, and do life.
Meanwhile, the pale blue dot is constantly signaling warning and it’s other than human inhabitants a clarion call for help. A call for help that roars with quiet desperation2 in the background of anthropocentric human industry. Meteorological, biological, physical, geological, and oceanic forces in the form of hurricanes, fires, tornados, and climate change serve as stark reminders. As I read aloud the aforementioned statements and hear myself speak them, feelings of futility arise, but then I am reminded of Rainer Maria Rilke when he declared, “Here is the home and the time of the tellable! Speak out and testify. This is the time when the things we love are dying and the things we do not love are rushing to replace them, shadows cast by shadows: things willingly restrained by temporary confines but ready to spew forth as outer change of form decrees. Between its hammer blows the heart survives – as does, between the teeth, the tongue; in spite of all, the fount of praise.”3 In the mist of the great suffering, loss, chaos, and anarchy that encapsulated the year 2020 many people have been and continue to rise to the challenges at hand as we move into 2021. You, as educators, students, organizers, and advocates for the sciences and humanities are taking the hammer blows and in turn teaching from the heart with tooth and tongue. You have done more in 2020 than you may even know, or be aware of, in making a difference in the lives of many of the living beings on this pale blue dot.
When we are in the throes of difficult times and spaces it can be hard to remember to be gentle. To be gentle on yourself and others and most of all in remembering gratitude and thankfulness. Doubt floods in when difficulty ensues. Doubt leads to futility, resignation, apathy, no care, and lack of purpose. Remembering purpose in times of difficulty finds propping up when you remember to say thank you. Thank you for ALL that is life and everyone living as we support one another amidst the vastness of it all. The act of thankfulness represents an attitude of gratitude. An attitude of gratitude redirects human self-centeredness towards openness, kindness, respect, altruism, and care. All of which constitute the efforts of educators eager to teach and students hungry to learn. It is in this shared process of learning, that like a flower whose seed and roots receives water and then proceeds to bloom, so too does the human mind and spirit.
In the spirit and recognition of your efforts in trying times I would like to offer a few lines from a poem that I share with my students by Senri Yena:
Thanks to lamenting over the pain in the world,
I am able to become laughter when my life is happy.
Due to being struck and trampled upon and biting
my lips to control my temper, I fully realize how
precious it is to be born. Even if I am intentionally
tired of an ugly world…
…I don't care so much about anything else,
except love and sincerity, the sun,
and a little amount of rain from time to time.
If I have a healthy body and a little piece of bread,
I want to walk with a smile in great spirits.
I will do my best to work without complaining
about anything at all.
I always consider things by putting myself in another's
place without flinching, no matter how hard and
heartrending it is to live…
…In the morning the sun rises. I greet it.
I will do my best to live today.
In the evening, the sun sets.
Starting at the evening glow, I want to sit still...
…Within silver tears like pearls and laughter like the sun,
let's keep walking ahead each day.
Certainly someday, as I look back over my past,
I will quietly see my life with a smile.4
In closing I would like to ask everyone to raise your right hand over the top of your head right now. Stretch it out for as far as you can reach. Now take your right hand and drop it back behind your left shoulder. Hold that for one second, and now, pat. Pat yourself on the back a couple of times and give yourself kudos and thanks for the life you are living, the work you are doing, and the world you are seeking to prop up in uncertain times. Remember to thank the cosmos, the pale blue dot, or any creative forces you may believe in for the air you breathe, the water you drink, the Earth under your feet, and the fire of that star which supplies light and heat. Life is an amazing opportunity and as teachers, students, academics, researchers, organizers, and caretakers alike seize this day, this moment, and this brief spark of life, with our linear-marked time. Remember to thank yourself, everyone, and everything around you when you get out of bed, step out your door, and get humbly smacked in the face by life. That smack is actually a very beautiful thing. Our momentary lives are like a flash of lightening in the dark of night. That smack in the face is life letting you know that in this moment you have a pulse, and are indeed alive. The most important question for living then becomes: What are you going to do now?
Thank you everyone for all the work you are doing and for sharing in this moment of existence with me as the 2021 ANJEE Conference gets underway. I wish you all good things for the upcoming seasons of learning about what it means to be who we are as we continue to learn how to let life live us.
References:
1 Sagan, C. (1994). The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
2 Thoreau, H. D. (2004). Walden. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
3 Rilke, R. M. (Hunter, R. Trans). (1987). Duino Elegies. Eugene, OR: Hulogost.
4 Katagiri, D. (1988). Returning to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life. Boston, MA: Shambhala.