“This time of life is fraught with not only definite things, but shadowy things.” I wrote this to a friend whose husband has dementia, but it applies to life on this complicated planet. Only partially understanding it, we have laid waste to Mother Earth’s freely given gifts. We have stripped her down to her once graceful petticoat, which is now begrimed with toxicity.

Having been given the keys to the family car (yes, we are all related), we have ridden wildly and destructively over her fertile fields and majestic mountains. To us, nothing has been sacred, not the people or the animals, nor the plants and life-giving water that sustain us.

Too late to correct our now-fatal path, all we have to offer is fear and trembling and efforts that have come too late. We cannot bury her when she dies; we will all die with her.

The governments of man have sickened her slowly, one brutal regime at a time. They have ignored her melting ice caps and her rich forests, now plundered to the ultimate degree.

Man has forgotten how to look within, for what is outside of us has fascinated us too much for that. As a result, we have grown hard and fixated on our own guilty pleasures and instant gratification and we know how addictive that is. Man may take a rocket into space, but he cannot curb his insatiable desires right here on earth.

I have tried to improve myself as I strut and fret my hour on the stage, but it is not possible to get enough light to heal our planet. Perhaps we can find some time to spread a quilt upon the ground and look up at a sky that may darken at some point. Maybe we can sing a song or paint a picture or dance a little dance; then none of the darkness matters. The Bible says “Let there be light,” and we must find that light within our very own souls. It may too late to save the planet but it is never too late to love in spite of the shadowy things that we ourselves have created.