The Writer and The Temple

—Green my life and remove my sorrows.

The picture is stunning. But it was the words underneath that caught my attention.The relationship between global warming and fiction writing may not present as clear.Yet one need only think of their surroundings or perhaps the setting of a novel or one’s own life to grasp the reason why writers by our very nature are concerned about saving our earthly environment from the clear and present dangers facing our planet. As I prepare this post for Blog Action Day, October 15, 2009, I realize that often our most beloved stories are rooted in settings that deliver just as much, if not more, life to the narrative than the actual characters. This is not to say that the earth is more important that human beings.

Yet physical setting and placement influence, determine, and say so much about what lives within its boundaries.

The earth is our home. Home and hearth hold a kinship much like in Jungian terms, the house symbolizes the human psyche.

Where one lives, the environ within which an individual breathes and thrives, reflects their personality, and how they feel not only about that environment, but also their attitude towards others, and their own being, and existence.

Perhaps that the strongest connection between the human individual and her or his environment is not something we can see, but rather our consciousness, the awareness that we are alive and kicking, thinking, breathing, acting and feeling–all aspects of life and living that the writer chronicles in the stories of our fictional characters, of those who have lived in the biographies we write, and of our own lives in the autobiographies we craft.

The human and their environment are like a soul and the body that encases the phenomena of being that has lived lifetimes upon lifetimes.  We are so much more than our bodies.

And yet every holy being needs a temple, a place of worship and wherein to come into awareness of its existence.

Green my life and remove my sorrows.

How much of what we feel or we fail to notice about the earth and the various climate changes taking place across the globe affects our emotions our outlook on life, and ourselves?

For the writer, this body formed of the earth from which we all come, and to where we shall all descend in transition to another life or incarnation, is our environment. It is the temple within which we not only dwell. It is also a living house that informs our physical senses, through which we intuit the world. It is where we encounter consciousness.

That the earth, and the stratosphere affecting our climate us are undergoing changes signifies we too are being transformed.

How much of climate change is man made and unnecessary?

How much is evolutionary and inevitable?

Who will we become at the end of this cycle of change?

What is our purpose now that change is underway?

These are all questions that the individual must at least ponder.

For the writer who is always pondering, we must write and chronicle as best we can, as truthfully as possible, all that happens in between.

What are your concerns about climate changes underway across the earth?

How do these changes affect your writing, and your attitude towards what you write?