Care and Repair in the New Eco-nomy

Labor is older than memory. It has shaped the world we live in today. Generations have folded their efforts into the rhythm of factories and the soil. Each act threads the past into the present. Hands built, tended, and repaired before we were born. Before we arrive, the world has already labored for us. When I think of labor, I think of what we inherit. Each generation leans on the work of the last, threading continuity through time. To notice labor is to notice life, and to realize the effort sustaining us began before our first breath. 

A native Michigander, I value hard work. Labor is always on my mind, and I can’t stop thinking of the true leaders on humanity’s evolutionary path: those whose labor fills the cracks of broken systems. I’m thinking of those unseen, unthanked, and unrecognized. Their invisible deeds extend beyond humanity to collaborate with earth. Their quiet work with the soil enables our endurance, transforming their silence into our sustenance. 

The Joy Index would measure national progress. Community satisfaction, creative engagement, and laughter frequency would embed tenderness in the infrastructure.

Earth practices the same persistence. She labors endlessly for us. Always clocked in to the hidden shifts that keep the world intact—regulating the climate, cycling nutrients, and providing us the basics to participate in the planet’s ecosystem. Doing it all. Disguised as second nature. We never asked Earth if we could feed on its daily energies. Asking Earth’s consent was not part of the arrangement. We have likely overstayed our welcome. We don’t truly observe April 22. 

And how do we repay that labor? By mistaking exploitation as an achievement. Pillage. Progress. Perform. Contaminating Earth’s skin (soil) and veins (freshwater sources), and driving species to extinction. She gives. And we plunder Earth’s resources and claim her work as ours. The planet’s efforts are unnoticed, like domestic and other laborers who are incarcerated in the low-wage system. They are the invisible presence that keeps everything running. Everywhere, yet unacknowledged. Recognition is not enough; repair requires imagination. 

Rivers and Arteries

Recognizing Earth as another captive laborer calls us to redefine sustainability as liberation. Planetary care is inseparable from loving thy neighbor and ourselves. The ultimate act is to serve and protect. Protecting rivers as we protect our own arteries, and soils as we protect our own flesh, forests as we protect our lungs. Serve the sacred body. Honor thy labor and realize that abolition, justice, and planetary care are intertwined. Confronting segregation will provide the light we need to progress. Our responsibility to ourselves in this is as weighty as to our neighbors. 

We need to mind our business. Stewardship is taught in the book of Genesis. Harmonize humanity. Increase empathy. Fund the humanities. Commit to repair. Earth ought to be freed to renew sovereignty over its rhythms without humanity’s interference. Otherwise, we will meet the same fate as the honeybee.

Metrics of Rest and Healing

What would an eco-nomy built around care look like? I imagine buildings constructed to welcome all creatures. And extend safety to those who are building them, workers who are compensated for rest, healing, and wellness.[1] The land, too, shall rest and recover. Waters will meander and return. Breath will be shared between creatures. Corporate and governmental budgets will be required by law to fund ecological repair. Reroute funds and turn profit into public good. Compost this governing body. We can imagine ourselves differently if we imagine ourselves as one with Earth. Because we can create what is, once more. 

I imagine a society where care for the life around us is valued and rewarded. The Joy Index would measure national progress. Community satisfaction, creative engagement, and laughter frequency would embed tenderness in the infrastructure. Timesheet reparations would be respected. The liberty to pause would be protected in policy. Workers would be invited to nap, enjoy a full lunch, and begin their workdays later to access life’s simple pleasures. The well-being of their labor would be felt in the homes they return to and in the quality of their health. 

Breathable Air, Slower Mornings

This eco-nomy would ask people to be. To breathe. To Sabbath. To live. These are not earned. These are not indulgences. These are not rewards. They are rhythmic seeds of co-creation. Rhythmic. Seeds. Of. Co. Creation. If we are serious about sustainability, we must take our bodies seriously. Design a system that honors our labor. This means living wages. Breathable air. Slower mornings. An acknowledgment that time, health, and safety are conditions of employment. Community-led policing. Restitution for centuries of unpaid labor. Embrace systems that let all creation exhale. Hustle culture cannot heal us. Extraction won’t sustain us. Consumption is not salvation. What is? Reorientation. 

This is not utopia. It’s a blueprint. The power to create has not left us. Learn to listen for the signs of a different world, and be brave enough to build it.  

Na’I’Cesses (Icy) McKether ’25 M.A.R. is on staff at the Reparations Stakeholder Authority of Asheville (NC). Her fields of interest include environmental racism, abolition theology, Black liberation theologies, and research at the intersection of gender and climate justice. At YDS, her M.A.R. work focused on religion and ecology. She earned a B.A. in history at Adrian College.