Earth Day is a day for action and also a day for us to celebrate the Earth and to reflect on our relationship with it. It is a day where we band together to clean up our litter, turn of our lights, and promote environmental awareness. At the heart of this day there is also something more profound than the actions and awareness taken on by citizens and groups. When reflecting on what the Earth provides to us it provokes a strong sense of gratitude. We didn’t earn the air we breath, the water we drink, or the energy provided by the sun. These are provided to every one of us with no expectation of return. Earth Day is also, therefore, a celebration of life. It is an occasion to be grateful for the qualities of our planet that sustain us and a reminder of how our actions affect those life giving qualities.

When Apollo 17 beamed down the first images of Earth in 1972 people describe a sense of awe at how blue our planet is. A blue dot in the vastness of space. Let’s show our gratitude to this blue dot and remember that we are all a part of it!