Today, well yesterday actually, was Day 26 in the counting of the omer. We are more than half way to Sinai. It is also Earth Day. A day when we pledge again to take care of the earth. One of my favorite things about my new life and new home is living adjacent to the wetlands. This is land that has been preserved by Cook County. When we moved in it was dry; we were in the middle of a drought. Since the snow has melted and we have had a bunch of rain, the wetlands is full. It looks like a lake or a pond. I think we could kayak on it. I love watching the colors change during the corse of the day. The light add a beautiful quality. I have loved watching the different wildlife that have come to visit. Deer, rabbits, a coyote, three raccoons and countless birds.
Last week we finally put up a bird feeder. I instantly felt closer to my mother. She was a big birder, always with binoculars, a bird book and her life long list. We went birding together at Point Pelee in Ontario, at Sleeping Bear National Lake Shore, in Acadia. The day she spotted a sand hill crane in the upper peninsula of Michigan was important–and the stuff that jokes became made of. She thought it was so big that it was a deer. Really. When a cardinal landed on the feeder I knew she was home. Oh, how she loved cardinals–coming from Saint Louis, the home of the Saint Louis Cardinals. She loved red. This was her bird.

Now lest you think this is all about my mother, it is also about my father. My father worked with Dr. Barry Commoner at Washington University in Saint Louis. Barry coined the phrase ecology and started the first Earth Day in 1971 so we have often joked that my father was one of the first ecologists. I remember reading about Barry in my Weekly Reader in Evanston and then having my father and Barry come talk to the class. Barry died last year. I didn’t know. But he left us this legacy: his four laws of ecology, as written in The Closing Circle in 1971. The four laws are:
1. Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.
3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, “likely to be detrimental to that system”
4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.

My father loved to walk in the woods and show us the patterns. He loved arguing. With the Field Museum in Chicago about one particular exhibit on evolution that they got wrong. With Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore about succession forests which he believed they got wrong. With my high school biology teacher who insisted on teaching creationism alongside evolution. But simply he loved the earth and protecting it for his children and grandchildren. Whether that threat was nuclear arms or carbon emissions. He worked to make this world a better place.

One day the first year after his death, my daughter was performing for the first time in the Nutcracker. She wondered if “Grandfather would be proud.” I assured her he would be. We went to the performance. Afterwards, just when we were driving home, there was something fluttering over the middle school roof and then landing right in front of my car. I had to stop. It was a ringed neck pheasant. That was his bird. Coincidence. I certainly don’t think so.

My parents were not so good on the trappings of Judaism. For them the history and the ethics were far more important. God was a struggle for them. My father could not reconcile what he saw in the microscope with what Genesis teaches. He could not reconcile the idea of an all powerful and all good God with the Holocaust. I never won an argument with him about God.

Yesterday we planted with our religious school students. They each went home with a planter made out of recycled newspaper, holding a sunflower seed. We planted a raised bed of early spring vegetables to feed the hungry.

Today I will fill the bird feeder, plant the peas and enjoy the sound of the birds in my backyard. They are soothing, calming and remind me of a simpler time. Unlike my parents, I will be reminded of the Nishmat prayer, translation by Anita Diamant for the Mayyim Hayyim CD Immersed. Somehow, when I am walking with the dog, this is the song that comes to mind. I may not sing as beautifully as the birds, but they are with me giving praise. My parents may not have been good at saying “I love you.” or “I am proud of you.” but they were. That’s what this Earth Day has taught me.

Verse 1:
If my mouth was filled with song
Like the ocean tide is strong
If my tongue could but give praise
Like the roaring of the waves

Chorus:
It would never, ever be enough
There could never, ever be enough
We will never ever say enough
To thank you, amen.
(last time – We thank you – amen)

Verse 2:
If my ears were tuned to hear
The Heavenly music of the spheres
If my heart could rise and reach
Like the crashing on the beach (Chorus)

Bridge:
So let us praise and let us shout
Breathing in and singing out
Hear the joyful noise of voices
Joined in song

For the gifts that came before us
And for all those yet to come
We thank you,
Amen. (return to Verse 1)