MOSAIC FOR EARTH:
Text/Lyrics for World Premiere Livestream
Texts
1. Bless This World
Bless this world, O my soul. The stars and galaxies are clothed with honor and majesty.
Light wraps you in warmth, and the heavens expand forever and ever.
Your water is the beam of life; your clouds, like chariots, move water from earth to sky, and wings of wind carry them to distant regions.
Much of your work is unseen but always moving, the perpetual motion of flaming fire.
—Psalm 104:1–4, adapted by Dwight Bigler
2. The Mountains Rose
You laid the foundations of the earth; they will never be removed.
You covered the earth with deep water, which stood above the mountains.
Then Nature moved, the mountains rose, and the waters fled!
Nature’s power was on full display.
Waters run down the valleys, forming rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Water rises from below, forming springs and streams running among the hills,
Giving drink to every beast of the forest and every community in the land.
—Psalm 104:5–10, adapted by Dwight Bigler
3. There Was a Whispering In My Hearth
Miners
There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal,
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall.
I listened for a tale of leaves
And smothered ferns,
Frond-forests, and the low sly lives
Before the fawns.
My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer
From Time's old cauldron,
Before the birds made nests in summer,
Or men had children.
But the coals were murmuring of their mine,
And moans down there
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men
Writhing for air.
And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,
Bones without number.
Many the muscled bodies charred,
And few remember.
I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed.
Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,
In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our life's ember;
The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned;
But they will not dream of us poor lads,
Left in the ground.
—Wilfred Owen, Miners
4. Among the Branches They Sing
In the mountains and trees
shall the birds of heaven have their home,
among the branches they sing.
—Psalm 104:12
5. We Continue to Evolve
We continue to evolve and transform who we are in relationship to where we are. We do not live in isolation from the physical world around us. Nature beckons our response.
—Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land, 166
In Wyoming, a knock on your ranch-house door may be followed by the news that while you own the surface rights to your land, the federal government has the mineral rights, and it just sold them to an oil company. Within days, a road is cut, drilling begins, and the wellheads, compressor stations, and processing plants are constructed, regardless of your sentiments, livelihood, or well-being.
—Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land, 266
Sometimes a whole farm family comes awake
in a close dark place over a motor's hum
to find their farm's been rolled up like a rug
with them inside it. They will be shaken onto
the streets of Cincinnati, Dayton or Detroit.
It's a ring, a syndicate dismantling farms
on dark nights, filing their serial numbers
smooth, smuggling them north like stolen cars,
disposing of them part by stolen part.
Parts of farms turn up in unlikely places:
weathered gray boards from a Tennessee burley tobacco
barn are up against the wall of an Ohio
office building, lending a rustic effect.
One missing farm was found intact at the head
of a falling creek in a recently published short story.
One farm that disappeared without a clue
has turned up in the colorful folk expressions
of a state university buildings and grounds custodian.
A whole farm was found in the face of Miss Hattie Johnson,
lodged in a Michigan convalescent home.
—Jim Wayne Miller, Small Farms Disappearing in Tennessee
A true case of home economics would make sure the place called home maintains its health and stability.
We are a species that has evolved to find beauty in the natural world. We love what we find beautiful,
and we do not destroy that which we love.
—Erik Reece, Lost Mountain, 212
The bosses ride fine horses
While we walk in the mud.
Their banner is the dollar sign
While ours is striped with blood.
—From “I Am a Union Woman,” a folk song by Aunt Molly Jackson
We love what we find beautiful, and we do not destroy that which we love.
—Erik Reece
6. The Moon Waxes and Wanes
The moon waxes and wanes, a pendulum of nature.
The sun, fixed in its place, is constant.
We tilt, we spin, we orbit, measuring our days by sunrise and sunset.
We turn from the sun and darkness descends, and it is night.
Then all the beasts of the forest creep forth!
The lioness roars after her prey, hunting for their meat.
The lions gather themselves. They lay down in their dens.
The sun rises. Then humankind awakes, performing their labor in the day.
—Psalm 104:19–23, adapted by Dwight Bigler
In fact we light the night as well as the day,
forgetting the stars in the universe,
finding guidance in money, hunting lions for trophy.
We burn the bowels of the earth to ease our lives and increase our power.
We rip down mountains, we build our cities, we burn the oil and the coal and the plastic
and the forests, sucking the earth dry! Beware!
—Dwight Bigler
Be aware of what can never be tamed!
—Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds, 77
7. Once In His Life
Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can,
to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season
and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon And all the colors of the dawn and dusk.
—Navarre Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain
He ought to climb to the summit of a mountain being eaten by mining to see what can’t be observed from below— the systematic destruction of an entire biological community. To watch a 300-million-year-old mountain destroyed over the course of one year, and to view from a plane the number of mountains that have suffered the same fate, is to understand that this land is a badly wounded organism. That the land is one organism.
—Erik Reece, Lost Mountain, 210
We are slowly returning to the hour of land where our human presence can take a side step and respect the integrity of the place itself – paying attention to its own historical and ecological character beyond our needs and desires. This kind of generosity of spirit requires an uncommon humility to listen to the land first.
—Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land, 143
— INTERMISSION —
8. So This Is the Great and Wide Sea
So this is the great and wide sea, where there are innumerable creatures, both great and small.
There is that leviathan, who plays therein.
These all depend on balanced nature, that they may have their meat according to the seasons.
When nature provides, they gather and are filled with good.
When nature is disturbed, they are troubled and lose their breath; they die and return to the dust.
—Psalm 104:25–29, adapted by Dwight Bigler
9. For a Coming Extinction
Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day
The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours
When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And fore-ordaining as stars
Our sacrifices
Join your word to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important
—W.S. Merwin, For a Coming Extinction
10. You Renew the Face of the Earth
You send forth your spirit of life, and they are created. You renew the face of the earth.
—Psalm 104:30, adapted by Dwight Bigler
If we understood the natural world as a spiritual presence, we would also see that all living things are kin to us. If this realization led to a moral attitude toward the natural world, then our destructive behavior would change. We would change. We would become more fully human. And we would recognize the natural world not merely as a resource, but as something much more profound— what Thoreau liked to call the Poem of Creation.
—Erik Reece, Lost Mountain, 243
11. The Irony of Our Existence
The irony of our existence is this: We are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of evolution, a tiny organism on Earth. And yet, personally, collectively, we are changing the planet through our voracity, the velocity of our reach, our desires, our ambitions, and our appetites. We multiply, our hunger multiplies, and our insatiable craving accelerates.
Consumption is a progressive disease.
We believe in more, more possessions, more power, more war. Anywhere, everywhere our advance of aggression continues.
My aggression toward myself is the first war.
—Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land, 209
12. I Will Sing to Life
I will sing to life for as long as I live!
I will sing praise for the beauty of the earth while I have my being.
We must breathe nature’s sweet air and be glad!
—Psalm 104:33–34, adapted by Dwight Bigler
I do what I do for that which no longer has a voice. I choose to be their voice.
— Albert LeBeau
Parks are breathing spaces for a society that increasingly holds its breath.
—Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land, 88
13. Go Well
Whether you are a person of faith who believes the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, whether you are an individual who has had mystical experiences that link you to the network of eternity, or whether you are a fervent conservationist who wants to leave a legacy for your progeny, the Earth needs your devotion and tender care. Go well, do well, my children! Support all endeavors that promise a better life for the inhabitants of our planet. Cherish sunsets, wild creations, and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the Earth!
—Stewart Udall
14. When Women Were Birds
Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.
—Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds, 204–205