Heaven in a Wild Flower
Day Thirty Eight
The Green Desert Project is about greening the desertified grassland in Inner Mongolia and more. Designed as a climate mitigation activity to raise young people with greater sense of social concern and activism, it is goes beyond the act of tree-planting per se.
It is about environmental education, learning together how rising global temperatures are impacting climate change and how the strategy to plant trees can help stop the encroaching desertification in the Mongolian grasslands, create a great green wall to diminish sandstorms and promote a natural form of carbon capture.
Our afforestation efforts help restore forests, be it pine, fir or elm (the largest elm forest is said to be in Inner Mongolia) which is an effective way to cool the earth and help provide livelihood for those who can make a living out of the woods. Most importantly the 6 months of working together on the project have helped us reflect on how our urban lifestyles which have impacted the climate crisis.
When those of us who live in the city continue to consume energy and resources in a thoughtless manner, we are helping to accelerate the climate crisis. We deplete earth’s resources and unwittingly, develop a huge carbon footprint as a nation, contribute to releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and create a consumerist culture which generate an enormous amount of wastes.
Over seven hundred youth volunteers who have participated in our project enjoy the vastness of the grassland, have hopefully learnt to appreciate the variety of geographic landforms, experienced the process of planting and caring for the tree saplings, and developed a little taste for cross-cultural living. We learnt cross-cultural skills of living and relating among different ethnicities such as the Han, Hui and Mongolian communities. We learnt to appreciate the different food and lifestyles, along with the costumes and customs (like horse riding and archery) and became living witnesses of the rapid urbanisation process which is transforming villages, towns and cities.
One of the joy I have is to share with the youths stories from Chinese history and literature, along with poems from different cultures. Every participant on this journey has learnt to take time to read, recite and understand Blake’s poem “Auguries of Innocence” with the following opening lines:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
We take time to reflect on this poem after the trees have been planted at the Asian Journeys tree-planting base. With the teams sitting under the poplar trees, each participant would be given a wild flower from the grassland and have sand poured onto the palm of the hand. The wildflowers which are familiar sight in our daily trudge up the hill to dig and plant the tree saplings, and the sand which we handle daily would suddenly become the objects of our close scrutiny and reflection. Appreciation of the true, good and beautiful needs time and we make time to sit under the trees to think together.
We think about the ubiquitous grain of sand, common yet precious as it is a scarce resource in the tiny island of Singapore. We think about how we have to import and stockpile sand in order to build flats for our public housing. Some of us need the silicon on our glasses to see the grain of sand. In the age of computer technology, we realise the importance of silicon in our computer chips and how the innovation of the 20th century came out of the Silicon Valley.
As we examine the wildflowers in our hand, we begin to notice insects within the colourful petals and marvel at the beauty of nature. Our eyes of imagination open for us a new world of possibilities, as we share our dreams and hopes. Such experience of love and longings help us realise that we have yearnings for the eternal, which is beyond the temporal, beyond the fleeting present.
In Blake’s poem, his pretty phrases actually mask a rising rage towards humanity’s abuse of nature. This was prophetic since he was writing even before the Industrial Revolution began. He castigated our inhumane acts towards the beautiful creatures such as when we cage robins and doves which is enough to send heaven into rage and make hell shudder. If we show cruelty towards our pets and are uncaring towards our environment, then we are actually writing our own augury of doom.
Planting tree saplings are like nurturing young lives, which takes intentional effort, lots of tender loving care and immense love to ensure the roots are healthy and strong to go deep, while the stem shoots upwards towards the sunlight and spring rain. We hope that the experience of the Green Desert Project for the youths will not just be a happy “once in a lifetime” experience, but truly a transforming experience for a lifetime.
Eugene Peterson said, “Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.”
Journey with me as I reflect on life and hope in the wilderness over 40 days.
See previous day’s reflection on Horizon
