Earth Day 2022, April 22; But Every Day in Current Ecological Breakdown
(The following is excerpted from my 2017 book, From Egos to Eden: Our Heroic Journey to Keep Earth Livable. Graphic by Hannah Johnson. Book available through Barnes and Noble or Powells.)
By Lee Van Ham
In the 21st century, no human can be deaf to this collective Call to Earth-centered living. The voice rises from our souls, and comes at us from Earth through her weather, oceans, and lands. Soul and Earth speak with one voice. They add resonance to one another like octaves played on a keyboard. Their resonance even lives in the construction of the words “ecology” and “psychology.” The “-logy” ending to the words derives from the Greek “logos,” meaning “word” or “voice.” Thus, ecology is the voice of the “eco-,” or “oikos” in Greek, meaning “house.” Because oikos refers to any house, from a personal habitat to the whole inhabited Earth, “ecology” is then the voice of Earth, our common home. Similarly, psychology is the voice of the soul. Though ecology and psychology are typically thought of as far apart, the construction of the words links them in the sense that they each have a voice. Their voices are like magnetic north and south poles in the anatomy of Call. Magnetic poles, though apart and different, cooperate to form unified electromagnetic fields which provide the energy for everything electric in our world. Ecology and psychology function like that in the anatomy of the Call; they energize our move into Earth-centered consciousness.