new moon, may 2025

Ecocide or eco-healing?

The moon is a wonderful messenger.

Earlier this year, I began “love god” with an inner commitment: after lunar new year, I would love god more by publishing a weekly essay on loving god, starting with the first new moon of the year.

Lunar new year is part of wisdom traditions whose customs I don’t know well: Chinese folk religion, Taoism, and Confucianism, for example. Using the lunar calendar as a guide was one way, however small, for me to further connect with diverse wisdom. And the new moon is a major element of Judaism and Islam, two traditions whose sacred texts I have studied.

In 2025, lunar new year was January 29. So I had until February 27 – one “moon” (one month) – to write and publish the first essay about loving god in our day. Plenty of time, or so it seemed. I put the project in the back of my mind. Time passed.

Then, one night, I was out for a walk. It was a routine daily walk for me, around the neighborhood, for exercise and mindfulness. Turning a corner, I caught sight of the moon. It was waning. Third quarter, maybe. It moved me. It was time to write.

I had never experienced that sensation. It was strange, a kind of cosmic conviction (as some Christians use the word), not by a friend or neighbor, but by a signal in the sky. It was a celestial gesture, showing me the cycle of time, reminding me of the lateness of the hour regarding my commitment to a new project.

I had not told anyone about my intention to link the beginning of “love god” to the first new moon of the year. I had only told god. And god, through the moon, was reminding me of my commitment. I had made an inner pact linked to nature, and nature was my witness. That was the strangeness of the sensation, the feeling of being watched by time, or at least caught and held by the moon, the night sky, consciousness, and conscience. The moon was my witness. If I did not keep my word, I would be ashamed in the presence of the moon and god.

That sensation is the essence of what I call eco-healing: the living link between human consciousness and nature consciousness, uniting us as one.

New moon = new routine

Each new moon I am making – or announcing – a commitment to a new way of living. So much of my life and our collective life needs to be reformed. Without some kind of regular time pressure we might go right on cooperating with individualism, racism/sexism, and capitalism, as if we could do nothing.

Yet in the face of unjust systems, multiple crises, and deep despair, what can we actually do? What am I going to do? I’m going to pray. Three times a day. In sync with the sun: sunrise, noon, sunset.

Does that seem unequal to the task? Wendell Berry, a modern-day prophet in many ways, says, “If there aren’t large-scale solutions to large-scale problems, it’s all about the small scale.” I was happy to hear Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today quoting Berry on a recent podcast with Comment magazine titled “Evangelicalism in Crisis.”

“The big scale problem,” Moore said, “requires a multitude of very small, in many cases, almost imperceptible ... small things.” Moore connected the observation to a classic Christian teaching:

“Jesus told the people another story. He said, ‘The kingdom of heaven is also like this. It is like how yeast works. A woman took the yeast and she mixed it into three large bowls of flour. Then the yeast went through all the flour so that it grew big.’” (Matthew 13:33)

The Buddha put it this way:

“Think not lightly of evil, saying, ‘It will not come to me.’ Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the fool, gathering it little by little, fills himself with evil.

Think not lightly of good, saying, ‘It will not come to me.’ Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.” (Evil in the Dhammapada, Real Buddha Quotes)

I have been doing a thrice-daily prayer for a while now, but I have not made it public. For the few people I have told about it, I normally just say I’m going to do some eco-healing. At home, to my wife and granddaughter, I say it’s time to pray. My granddaughter usually joins me. : )

So my new commitment is to informing coworkers and collaborators who might be affected by this routine. That’s all. I will just start saying what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.

This is more or less what I will say: Three times a day, I go outside to pray: sunrise, noon, sunset. I get in touch with a living being, usually a tree, and I take eight breaths with awareness of breathing. This is one way to implement eco-healing.

Sometimes I use these words, in sync with the breath, as part of the eco-healing daily prayer:

Touching life, I’m connected to life
Connected to life, I am alive.
Life is rooted in the earth.
The earth is rooted in the cosmos.
The cosmos is rooted in love.
Love and rootedness are one.

In an interview in The New Statesman, Robert MacFarlane, author of “Is a river alive?” says about ecocide that it has been “the work of many hands and many years to create this crisis, and it will be the work of many hands and many years to undo it.” He didn’t use the word ecocide, but I am going to start using it, as does Stop Ecocide International.

Finally, in case I was in doubt about the effectiveness of small scale action, today I attended an Ecodharma Exploration. Hosted by One Earth Sangha, it featured Kazu Haga. In a talk called “Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse,” Kazu remined the group that “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”

Surely our own hands continue to contribute to the crisis of ecocide. May those same hands, in touch with life, praying with trees three times a day, put an end to ecocide by embracing eco-healing.