Guest Post: Earth Hour

This post is by my wife who writes her own blog at Living In Iowa.

 I firmly believe that we all have a spiritual connection to the earth. When the Buddha sat under the bodi tree battling Mara to reach enlightenment, Mara asked him, “Who will be your witness?” The Buddha pointed to the earth and touched it and the earth shook. “The earth will be my witness,” he replied.
 

The earth is an integral and foundation part of our lives—without it, we are literally, nothing. A while back I was thinking about the impact I want to have on the earth. We have an almost automatic give and take relationship with the earth. Plants give oxygen that we take and breathe in. We breath out and give carbon dioxide that plants take and breathe in. Unfortunately, this original balance of give and take has been thrown out of kilter by or current industrialized society. While thinking about my impact on the earth during my lifetime, I realized that if I continue to live in the way I am, I will mostly certainly take far more from the earth than I give.

So, I decided it was time to make an attempt to restore the balance. There are sooooooo many things we can to do restore and rehabilitated the earth. What is most important is to start with your corner. How are you consuming products and energy? How can you reduce your consumption of goods and energy? How can you give back? 

I’ve figured out ways that I can give back in my neighborhood include gardening, composting, recycling, buying local foods, and utilizing bike trails. I also participated in earth hour this year. Earth Hour calls on individuals, businesses, communities and governments to commit to developing a habit that is a positive action for the planet. To celebrate that commitment with the people of the world, Earth Hour asks participants to switch off their lights and anything else plugged into an outlet (within reason) for one designated hour ever year.

This year Earth Hour was planned for March 26th at 8:30pm. My Earth Hour habit that I am committing myself to is "Killing my TV" or yanking out the cable and only using my TV set to watch DVD's. As of March 26th, my cable can take a hike, and so will I...OUTSIDE.