Care for the earth - the virtue of "husbanding"

"We won't have a society if we destroy the environment."

Margaret Mead

 River Reflections

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/river-reflections-lianne-schneider.html

The ninth heroic virtue Sam Keen lists in his discussion of the qualities of the men and women who undertake and complete the sacred quest to know and love oneself and journey beyond self into a life inspired by virtue, passion, compassion, service, wonder and care for all is an old-fashioned word seldom used today – husbanding.  

 

One of my favorite writer/poets, Wendell Berry, lives on a farm in Kentucky and he explained in some detail what the term means – and far better than I could ever do. “To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals - obviously because of the importance of these things to the household. And there have been times, one of which is now, when some people have tried to practice a proper human husbandry of the non-domestic creatures in recognition of the dependence of our households and domestic life upon the wild world. Husbandry is the name of all practices that sustain life by connecting us conservingly to our places and our world; it is the art of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains us.” -  Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: Writings on Farming and Food

Today, the reason this is a heroic virtue should be self-explanatory – every day we are bombarded by stories of how our foods have been adulterated, our water contaminated, our air quality destroyed, our rainforests disappearing, our oceans polluted…and so it goes, day after day. Conservation has been a watchword for decades and environmental protection had at one time achieved the status of a federal cabinet office. In recent years, however, the art and virtue of husbanding has been the subject of debate or downright mockery. We know in our hearts that we must stop the destruction before we ourselves are destroyed - and the real enemy here is greed.

I am not going to proselytize further - there is no one out there who is unaware of what is happening even if they pretend not to or are benefiting from the raping and pillaging of the earth. But I would say to artists, writers, musicians, sculptors and the like that this is one virtue that should come easily to all of us. Our life's work is about beauty or the loss of that, love or the lack of love - how better could we express it than through the arts which can touch people's souls and remind them of what must be protected if we are to survive. We can make a difference.

 

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretme157496.html#cX8fW3JWmiEYrErq.99

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretme157496.html#cX8fW3JWmiEYrErq.99

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretme157496.html#cX8fW3JWmiEYrErq.99

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretme157496.html#cX8fW3JWmiEYrErq.99