From the author: the story behind Heaven on Earth
In 1987 my Dad called me in California from the East Coast to ask me if I wanted to write a biography for a called “Makers of America” series for young adults that a friend of ours was editing for Facts on File. During the 1970s I had come across sayings from George Washington Carver that must have come from a great and wise soul, so I said I would do him, and the editor agreed to add him to the series.
Dad contributed a book for the series called We’ll Stand by the Union, on Robert Gould Shaw, the white commander of the first black regiment during the Civil War. A book he had done more than twenty years earlier on Shaw would later become the background material for the movie Glory. He had told me of his disappointment that Shaw command of the assault on Fort Wagner turned out, in his opinion, to have been the only really notable thing in the life of an otherwise not-so-interesting character.
Reading through Carver’s papers on more than 87,000 frames of microfilm, visiting archives in the South and Midwest, and meeting people who had met or known him, I was ready for this to happen to me; but I found instead a spiritual teacher, a pure-hearted humanitarian who devoted his life to bringing a world that works for all. As I arranged my notes into clusters on education, farming, manufacturing, science, religion, medicine, and conservation, it dawned on me that I had discovered, in plain sight, one of humanity’s great teachers. His simple, clear advice was ahead of his time and, more often than not, of ours. His nature-based education is ahead of our “head-first” learning that allows us to get out of tune with our natural heritage. His use of industrial raw materials from soil, not oil (part of which was his peanut work) is a cornerstone of a sustainable economy, as long as it includes also his ways of making farm soils richer every year. His “zero-waste” way of life, modeled directly on nature’s way of doing things, is one to which we are only now awakening.
Carver kept me reminded of hard-to-hold truths:
- Only in service do we find meaning and joy.
- Hate in any form is bad religion.
- Abstractions unhitched from nature are dangerous.
- “Race” is ultimately irrelevant.
- World peace is linked directly to soil.
My gratitude to the Spirit for leading me to these truths was accompanied, however, by frustrated urgency to share them. Anxiously I watched humanity proving, terrifyingly, Carver’s saying, “It is a fundamental law that nature will drive away those who commit sins against it.”2 The results of ignorance of his advice to “talk to nature, and let nature talk to you” were too plain—a poisoned environment, global warming, “peak oil,” war, divisiveness, and fundamentalist fanaticism.
It is truths like his, I believe, that we need to internalize if we are to squeeze through the narrow gate to our survival. Yes, we need the harm-reducing technical fixes and every bit of self-help-mandating legislation; but meanwhile, we need to fix the fix into our attitudes. Carver has not, of course, been the only person to tell these truths; but he is the only one I know whose vision touched so many areas and who expressed it so clearly and early.
The truths we need take lots of reminding. To find our part in the solution we need to be rid of what Carver called the “I disease,” the attachment to the obstructive little ego; to bridge the mental gap between us and soil so as to value its role in our lives; to root out racial fallacies drummed in deeply. Heaven on Earth: the Life and Vision of George Washington Carver presents the story and teachings of one who can lead us into a wider world, whose greatest contribution awaits us.