Our Return to Home

I don’t know how we lost it.

The connection between humanity and Earth, the understanding that to poison the land is to poison ourselves as the people who live upon it.

I’m not sure exactly when things changed.

When we decided that this world of ours is an enemy to be conquered, a village to be pillaged, an open invitation to take and take until the Earth has run out of things to give. When what once was a home became little more than a stockpile of riches to be mined and mauled for every penny it’s worth.

Somewhere along the line, it happened. Like petulant children slamming the doors to their bedrooms, we turned our backs on Mother Earth, locking ourselves inside cells of stone and steel that we hoped would shield us from the repercussions of our environmental ignorance. Our overconfidence led us to believe that we can exist without our mother’s love, and so we turned blind eyes to our place on the planet and reaped mindless damage upon this land that has raised us. Rather than embrace our interconnectedness within this earthly ecosystem, we’ve opted for isolation and accepted that which Mother Earth has provided without any thought of reciprocation or gratitude.

These days of selfish consumption have always been numbered, and they now dwindle more rapidly than ever. It’s time for a return: to caring for our planet, to connecting with the world around us, to accepting our place as children of the land upon which we walk. It’s time for a return to Mother Earth.

We joke that nature is healing, and perhaps, in our momentary absence, it has. As we focused on caring for each other these past months, we momentarily halted our seemingly ceaseless infliction of damage upon the Earth around us. Our efforts to heal one another led us away from our efforts to harm our planet; now, we must continue on this path of preservation in order to heal Mother Earth as well.

The prodigal children must come home at last, arms wide to embrace the mother on whom we had turned our backs.

I don’t expect us all to start hugging trees, 

donning flower crowns,

trading townhouses for treehouses and eschewing shoes to wander barefoot in fields of flowers.

But sometime soon, 

we’ll need to stop biting this hand that feeds us,

stop waging war against a planet that is predisposed to peace.

I don’t know when we lost it — that inherent connection to the Earth that is both home and helper, giver and guardian to us all — but I know it is not lost forever. There is still time to turn back from the damage we’ve caused, to reclaim our role as children and stewards of the world we inhabit. We were never meant to be vehicles of destruction, and we need not accept harm as our purpose on this planet. If there is a purpose to be had, it must be found in taking care of our Mother Earth, for only then can we ensure that we take care of each other. We as a people are only as happy and whole as the planet in which we live. 

For it is in healing nature that we heal one another; it is in healing nature that we heal ourselves. 

Strike Out,

Concept by: Kenzie Phillips and Isaiah Scarlett

Production: John Adkins, EJ Kelly, and Gaby Howard

Styling: Rose Hsu and Matthew Johnson

Makeup: Sam Bader

Photographers: Margi Antonio and Grace Beutter

Models: Claudia Interiano, Ibrahim Bah, Caroline Amrol, Geo Tabet, George Bivins, and Joshua Chun

Writer: Caroline Kranick 

Notre Dame