There is a song beneath the soil. Ten million million voices raise their call in no human language. Life flows through the tangle of roots, mycelium, microbiota, and crawling burrowing tunneling life.
The song flows upward through trunks and stems and blades of tender grasses and races out into the air. It is picked up and carried on no human tongues. It is in the footfall of paw and hoof, it hums in the buzz of wings and the fluttering of feathers, it shines on scales and fins and slithering skins.
And if we are quiet and pay attention, sometimes we remember that we are part of this song as well and we have notes to sing.
The anthropocene is an experiment. What happens when we humans forget that the life around us is part of us? That these lives have no less inherent worth and dignity?
How many more singers of the earthsong will go silent forever?
Today, we are charged to remember. To know that as we live together in community, we are also in community with the silently singing lives in the vast congregation of the earth as well. The interdependent web of existence is no allegory. It is as real as the heart beating within our chests. We are charged to do what we can to help those who cannot advocate with human language, who cannot scream for help when they are suffering. We have a role to play in softening the blow of the Age of Humans. We have a voice that can help to shape the world to come. We are so charged in the name of the sacred song, the tapestry of life of which we are a part: let us remember, and then act.