Visioning Statement
What do humans want? The right to live.
What does nature want? The right to live.
We all need the essentials of health. The pandemic taught us this. The health of all people was threatened. We glimpsed that there were essentials that we all needed: food, home, and energy to run things. When we could not gather with others, we re-learned our need for family, for friends, for community. The world reverberated with the bald truth that many people are resource rich while others suffer. Suddenly the people we often ignore were ‘essential workers.’ We re-learned how our global history can keep us apart and hold others in anguish and futility. We understood that we all needed safety, from the virus, storms and flooding, and wildfires.
We saw for a moment that when our lives were interrupted, when we had to slow down, then nature provided solace. Nature gifted us with joy, fresh air to breathe, waters that sparkled, and other beings’ movement to fascinate our eyes. We also saw that when we humans vacated the streets the hidden creatures ventured back. The skies cleared. We had an opportunity to see our Earth as the home for all life.
Now we are called to give back. We can take this new knowledge and re-create ourselves, our relations with each other, and our relations with all the life around us. It is our usual way to create new technologies to solve our problems. But if we look, we can also see the life- and health-giving power of ‘just the essentials’.
This exhibition reminds us of these essentials for health — Air, Water, Food, Shelter, Community, Safety, Energy, Biodiversity, and Purpose. When we assure ourselves that all members of the natural world — including humans — have these essentials, then we begin to have health for all. As we choose our ways of living to provide for the health of our Earth home, we find we are also choosing the ways of health for ourselves. As we connect with nature, with plants, with creatures, with stars, we find the power, the personal fortitude, and the energy to share our gifts and create ways to live harmoniously with enough for all, with health for all.
— Sara Lesley Warber, MD