The Canticle of the Earth by Stefano Mancuso: review by Serena Dandini

AND a beautiful day and for once we decided to walk to the location of an appointment. Luckily we forgot our cell phone at home or it lies unloaded in the bag and then we can lift our eyes from the screens that now perpetually capture our attention and discover the pleasantness of the sun warming our faces.

Thus we notice the blue sky and perhaps also the human beings who surround us not only as strangers but as companions on this strange journey on planet Earth. We shouldn’t always rely on chance to capture these moments of awareness and wonder that give meaning to life but “It’s not easy to rejoice in what you have if you don’t pay attention to it…”.

Stefano Mancuso, botanist and neuroscientist, reminds us of thisdirector of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology of Florence, in a small and precious book, The Song of the Earth (Laterza), in which he rereads for us the Song of the Creatures of San Francesco with a new and surprising perspective.

800 years have passed since this work considered the oldest poetic text in history but Mancuso, a great scientific popularizer, reveals to us that The Song it is also the oldest deep ecology text that reminds us all how to care for the wonders of creation and its inhabitants. Today, centuries later, we have acquired infinite scientific knowledge on the elements sung with so much love by Saint Francis but unfortunately we have also learned to modify them, pollute them, risking destroying life and beauty.

And what if that of Saint Francis, in addition to a great literary work, was also a message in a bottle left to teach the humanity of the future to respect and protect what makes our survival on this earth possible? Mancuso is convinced of this and retraces the splendid verses for us, recounting the necessity and power of all the elements listed by Francis in his precious recipe.

Brother sun, brother wind, sister water and mother earth… until the death that scares us and that we always try to remove from our priorities as frightened Westerners in search of eternity at any price. And instead, even the end must be accepted as an integral part of the divine engine, given that it is the only possibility that allows the continuation of our life cycle.

We hope that in this period of great celebrations of the poor man of Assisi we will be able to to finally also honor his great ecological soul.

All articles by Serena Dandini.