It's early winter, climatologically speaking, in Vermont, which means I've been dealing with the stragglers from the autumn ladybug invasion. It's too cold for them to be safely relocated outside (they don't, after all, really want to be inside our dry, nearly foodless, excessively warm homes. They're just not very bright, and don't get it that burrowing deeper in some cases will get you worse, not better, winter digs). So, it's been the usual ladybug death watch here, watching them grow weaker and more desperate, and sweeping up the carcasses....
Until I realized it didn't have to be this way. Ladybugs are sold by the thousands to gardeners every year. That meant that someone, somewhere, was breeding these things. Which meant that somewhere out there, in the great body of information called the Internet, was information on how to care for ladybugs. And so I Googled.
What I learned was this: the species most often found in homes is the Asian lady beetle. Some find it a nuisance and consider it an invasive species. But since both I and my parrot are "invasive species" (this doesn't look like the horn of Africa, now does it?), we don't hold that against our mostly benign visitors. They are a very long lived species of ladybug, and can live for 2-3 years, occasionally reaching the ripe old age of 6.
Our homes kill them because they dry out -- they need a moist environment, and as everyone knows our homes in the winter are brutally dry. They prefer a good aphid, but they are omnivores and, in captivity, will thrive on a diet of raisins soaked in water till they are plump, then drained and chopped. Water should be provided in the form of a damp paper towel or cotton ball or a similar damp object, never as an open container of water, because our bug guests are not rocket scientists, and will drown.
Right now I have gathered 11 survivors in an old Lafeber's Nutriberry bird treat container. Peri had graciously agreed to empty the last of it for our guests, difficult a sacrifice as that was for my little glutton and food tosser ;) I ventilated the container with the sharp end of a compass, added a wet paper towel, and then added a helping of apparently delicious damp raisin (they were all over the raisin the moment I added it).
Most of my guests arrived in bad shape. For one, it was too late. The rest perked up after getting moisture and a bite to eat. I've noticed a pattern as I've added newcomers to my beetle bed and breakfast: after the initial shock, they go to the wet paper towel and bury their faces in it for a long, hydrating drink. Then, they head for the raisins, and replenish what must be an almost depleted fat reserve. And finally, the smaller males, now full of energy, chase the larger females around the container a few times before successfully mounting them and doing what comes naturally. Maslow would be proud.
I've also noticed that once I amassed a critical mass of bugs, the others still loose and lost in the house started seeking them out. One of my most recent additions I found running around the outside edge of the lid, apparently trying to figure out how all those members of her own species got in there. I of course opened the lid and demonstrated how it happens to my new guest.
I have not added, or even seen, a live ladybug wandering about the house for the last two days. In all probability I've gotten the last of them. Once they're all looking fit, I have a decision to make: refrigerate, or not? Normally, these bugs would go dormant during the winter, and successful dormancy would prolong their lives. But refrigerating these bugs is a tricky thing, given their tendency to dry out and that our refrigerators are designed to keep things stored in them dry. I've seen intelligent arguments both in favor of refrigeration and for leaving well enough alone.
So what does any of the above have to do with Hard Core Spirituality? We're obligated to care for each other -- even the lost little ones that others call "pests". This obligation is not theoretical, nor abstract, nor merely symbolic, and it is nontransferable (though efficiencies from division of labor still apply, and being honestly unable to help grants dispensation).
My houseguests are a reminder that a bite of wet raisin is often very much better than an uplifting lecture about how Spirit provides or a condescending lecture on how to responsibly overwinter in Vermont (trite sayings about teaching others to fish notwithstanding). If my "pests" survive, they will be a welcome gift to the community garden here in the spring. If they don't, they will at least have had a few more days of moisture and sweetness and running about mounting each other, and thus will have contributed a bug's worth of joy to a dessicated world thirsty for happiness.
What about 11 bugs in a bird treat tub isn't about Hard Core Spirituality?
Showing posts with label responsibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label responsibility. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Every thoughtful, moral, individual right now belongs in the streets
Across the world right now, and across the United States, occupations and protests against corporate domination and political corruption have broken out. The corporate media is not where to learn of this global revolution: your best bet right now is twitter and the hashtags #occupywallst, #occupytogether, and #globalrevolution.
I could certainly write something about why every thoughtful spiritual individual needs to get his or her duff off the meditation cushion, or knees off the kneeler, and if at all possible head promptly to their nearest available #occupation (by whatever name it may use). But Chris Hedges has put it as eloquently as it can be stated:
Go. Go now, or at least as near to now as is possible. If you cannot stay overnight, it is important to go for as long as you can. If you cannot go, collect supplies and donations for the occupiers, and if you cannot even do that, spread the word to those who don't know, or who have absorbed some of the lies they've heard about the occupiers. If there is nothing around you, organize your own #occupation. Age is no excuse-- the young have provided the energy and the joints that can tolerate a night sleeping on the sidewalk, but people of all ages are participating to the best of their ability. Do what you are capable of, now.
Yes, the outcome is uncertain, and no one knows how long it will take to expunge corporate power and reclaim democracy. Those are reasons to put one's shoulder more urgently to the task, not reasons to flee from it. You have a moral duty to participate. You have no excuse.
I could certainly write something about why every thoughtful spiritual individual needs to get his or her duff off the meditation cushion, or knees off the kneeler, and if at all possible head promptly to their nearest available #occupation (by whatever name it may use). But Chris Hedges has put it as eloquently as it can be stated:
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
...
The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.
...
Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.
Go. Go now, or at least as near to now as is possible. If you cannot stay overnight, it is important to go for as long as you can. If you cannot go, collect supplies and donations for the occupiers, and if you cannot even do that, spread the word to those who don't know, or who have absorbed some of the lies they've heard about the occupiers. If there is nothing around you, organize your own #occupation. Age is no excuse-- the young have provided the energy and the joints that can tolerate a night sleeping on the sidewalk, but people of all ages are participating to the best of their ability. Do what you are capable of, now.
Yes, the outcome is uncertain, and no one knows how long it will take to expunge corporate power and reclaim democracy. Those are reasons to put one's shoulder more urgently to the task, not reasons to flee from it. You have a moral duty to participate. You have no excuse.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Individual salvation and the sorrow of the world
We live in an Age of Death, though it is, for most of those able to read this blog, just making the turn into their driveway. It will take a little longer to get to their doors. But it will be knocking, soon enough.
The current best estimate, one that may well prove too conservative, is that temperatures by the end of this century will rise ten degrees. Ten degrees is far worse than what was feared just a few years ago. The tundra is thawing, releasing vast amounts of methane, in a vicious positive feedback loop. Vegetation, rather than growing more lush in the presence of additional carbon dioxide, is dying, further accelerating warming. And the powers that be, like a thousand petty Strangeloves overseeing their own lucrative slow motion Gotterdammerung, throw ever more fuel-- literally and metaphorically-- onto the fire.
What ten degrees means is that this is no longer a matter of changing lightbulbs. This is no longer a matter of Transition Towns. This cannot be survived in a well stocked mountain retreat with a sizable arsenal. This might not be survivable, at all.
If it is not our extinction that is palpable, if in fact we put survival ahead of sociopathic greed, denial, and delusion, and muster the will to make it through, than the very best case is that we are just a few years away from a time of serious thinning of the herd. It's called "population overshoot", and it is not a pretty thing. It will not leave us stronger-- animal populations that have made it through overshoot are sickly and stunted for generations. And survival will not be for the most deserving-- survival will come, as in all great disasters, to those who are lucky (that's not to say that preparation is useless, but to say that given a severe enough disaster, it is insufficient).
That's the good scenario.
I sometimes feel as if I am living the nightmares of my childhood. The missiles have launched, and there is no pulling them back. The sirens have sounded. The world around me looks as it always has-- so ordinary, so peaceful. On a different day, in a different hour, I might sit under a tree and read a book, or curl up in a sunbeam and take a nap. But at a predestined moment, on this day, in this hour, this ordinary world before me will be horribly transformed, and there will be no more tree and no more sunbeam, only death. What now do I do?
The difference between then, and now, was that as a Cold War child I did not imagine I would have so much time to contemplate the horror of what is to come, at this, the end of the world as we know it.
It's enough to make a mystic want to escape into navel gazing. You know, the ol' personal liberation routine. The eternal now (so much better than the here and now), infinite light (beats unending heat), find your own bliss (soon to be easier than find your own water) thing. Which brings me to the 144 dying Jesuses (Jesii?) on my workbench.
(Really. It does.)
I don't care how much one believes in respect for the world's religious symbols. When one's job involves nailing 144 tiny Jesuses to 144 tiny crosses, it is impossible to avoid twisted humor. Eventually, though, I had to get a handle on myself (clients do not pay for the knowledge that I had a really good laugh over the component parts of their missing crucifixes). Which brought me to Julian of Norwich.
I sometimes have difficulty wrapping my head around the mysticism of western Christianity. Some aspects of it, like the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, seem to be cousin to some of my own practices. Others are alien to me, in particular the seeking out of pain and suffering, and experiencing the mystical experience in terms of the suffering of the Crucifixion.
The visions of Julian of Norwich are in many ways typical of the genre. She puts to paper quite a bit of gore, at least in my opinion. But she and I are in complete concurrence when it comes to (some of) the essence of the mystical experience. As Julian put it, she saw God holding in his hand a tiny, delicate, nut, one that she thought might crumble before her eyes. And then she understood that the nut was the whole of creation, and was told "God made it. God loves it. God keeps it". And so the message of Julian of Norwich is of God's limitless love for His creation. "that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
Woo hoo! End of the world solved. It's party time at Hardcore's. Bring your SUV! Right???
Not exactly. In fact, not at all.
Julian saw an infinity of love in God. Julian did not observe the absence of sin among humanity. And while I don' t phrase the confusion of humanity in terms of sin, I have little doubt my understanding corresponds to Julian's understanding of sin. Julian said sin itself was the worst possible hell. I think that Julian would concur with me that a direct assault on the safety of that small brown nut God loves so much is among the worst possible sins.
(in Julian's day, the whole of creation meant this planet and its immediate environs and not some distant galaxy somewhere -- which in any case would too would be destroyed by our sociopaths, if only they could make a buck off it)
A more reasonable analysis is that we are due hell on Earth.
But there is a more important understanding nestled in among this discussion. That is, that there is no private liberation, no spiritual escape hatch to wiggle through. For if liberation is to become wholly transparent to the Divine, and the Divine is wholly loving and wholly love, then to be liberated is to confront suffering, not to run from it, to be wholly present in the Age of Death, for as long as we survive, acting as Love present in the world.
And if liberation, or realization or salvation, or whatever we choose to call it, is, as I believe, our human duty to approach, then it remains our duty, and our destiny, to love this fragile brown nut with all of our hearts. It is our duty to do everything in our power to mitigate harm and to comfort the harmed, even though to do so requires that we face, and bear, almost overwhelming sorrow.
The missiles of the Age of Death have been fired. There is no pulling them back (though it is still possible to prevent the missile from firing which will bring about our extinction). The warning sirens have sounded for all who are listening. Everything looks normal, as it will for a time, but in a matter of years it will not be. Already death has rung doorbells in places like Joplin. Mo.
I have no suggestions, at all, for how to avoid the sorrow of this age. But the question of "what now" is resolved. As a voice from the depths of the last great human die off would no doubt concur (the Plague killed 30-60% of the people of Europe, and over 20% worldwide), what now, is love.
The current best estimate, one that may well prove too conservative, is that temperatures by the end of this century will rise ten degrees. Ten degrees is far worse than what was feared just a few years ago. The tundra is thawing, releasing vast amounts of methane, in a vicious positive feedback loop. Vegetation, rather than growing more lush in the presence of additional carbon dioxide, is dying, further accelerating warming. And the powers that be, like a thousand petty Strangeloves overseeing their own lucrative slow motion Gotterdammerung, throw ever more fuel-- literally and metaphorically-- onto the fire.
What ten degrees means is that this is no longer a matter of changing lightbulbs. This is no longer a matter of Transition Towns. This cannot be survived in a well stocked mountain retreat with a sizable arsenal. This might not be survivable, at all.
If it is not our extinction that is palpable, if in fact we put survival ahead of sociopathic greed, denial, and delusion, and muster the will to make it through, than the very best case is that we are just a few years away from a time of serious thinning of the herd. It's called "population overshoot", and it is not a pretty thing. It will not leave us stronger-- animal populations that have made it through overshoot are sickly and stunted for generations. And survival will not be for the most deserving-- survival will come, as in all great disasters, to those who are lucky (that's not to say that preparation is useless, but to say that given a severe enough disaster, it is insufficient).
That's the good scenario.
I sometimes feel as if I am living the nightmares of my childhood. The missiles have launched, and there is no pulling them back. The sirens have sounded. The world around me looks as it always has-- so ordinary, so peaceful. On a different day, in a different hour, I might sit under a tree and read a book, or curl up in a sunbeam and take a nap. But at a predestined moment, on this day, in this hour, this ordinary world before me will be horribly transformed, and there will be no more tree and no more sunbeam, only death. What now do I do?
The difference between then, and now, was that as a Cold War child I did not imagine I would have so much time to contemplate the horror of what is to come, at this, the end of the world as we know it.
It's enough to make a mystic want to escape into navel gazing. You know, the ol' personal liberation routine. The eternal now (so much better than the here and now), infinite light (beats unending heat), find your own bliss (soon to be easier than find your own water) thing. Which brings me to the 144 dying Jesuses (Jesii?) on my workbench.
(Really. It does.)
I don't care how much one believes in respect for the world's religious symbols. When one's job involves nailing 144 tiny Jesuses to 144 tiny crosses, it is impossible to avoid twisted humor. Eventually, though, I had to get a handle on myself (clients do not pay for the knowledge that I had a really good laugh over the component parts of their missing crucifixes). Which brought me to Julian of Norwich.
I sometimes have difficulty wrapping my head around the mysticism of western Christianity. Some aspects of it, like the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, seem to be cousin to some of my own practices. Others are alien to me, in particular the seeking out of pain and suffering, and experiencing the mystical experience in terms of the suffering of the Crucifixion.
The visions of Julian of Norwich are in many ways typical of the genre. She puts to paper quite a bit of gore, at least in my opinion. But she and I are in complete concurrence when it comes to (some of) the essence of the mystical experience. As Julian put it, she saw God holding in his hand a tiny, delicate, nut, one that she thought might crumble before her eyes. And then she understood that the nut was the whole of creation, and was told "God made it. God loves it. God keeps it". And so the message of Julian of Norwich is of God's limitless love for His creation. "that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
Woo hoo! End of the world solved. It's party time at Hardcore's. Bring your SUV! Right???
Not exactly. In fact, not at all.
Julian saw an infinity of love in God. Julian did not observe the absence of sin among humanity. And while I don' t phrase the confusion of humanity in terms of sin, I have little doubt my understanding corresponds to Julian's understanding of sin. Julian said sin itself was the worst possible hell. I think that Julian would concur with me that a direct assault on the safety of that small brown nut God loves so much is among the worst possible sins.
(in Julian's day, the whole of creation meant this planet and its immediate environs and not some distant galaxy somewhere -- which in any case would too would be destroyed by our sociopaths, if only they could make a buck off it)
A more reasonable analysis is that we are due hell on Earth.
But there is a more important understanding nestled in among this discussion. That is, that there is no private liberation, no spiritual escape hatch to wiggle through. For if liberation is to become wholly transparent to the Divine, and the Divine is wholly loving and wholly love, then to be liberated is to confront suffering, not to run from it, to be wholly present in the Age of Death, for as long as we survive, acting as Love present in the world.
And if liberation, or realization or salvation, or whatever we choose to call it, is, as I believe, our human duty to approach, then it remains our duty, and our destiny, to love this fragile brown nut with all of our hearts. It is our duty to do everything in our power to mitigate harm and to comfort the harmed, even though to do so requires that we face, and bear, almost overwhelming sorrow.
The missiles of the Age of Death have been fired. There is no pulling them back (though it is still possible to prevent the missile from firing which will bring about our extinction). The warning sirens have sounded for all who are listening. Everything looks normal, as it will for a time, but in a matter of years it will not be. Already death has rung doorbells in places like Joplin. Mo.
I have no suggestions, at all, for how to avoid the sorrow of this age. But the question of "what now" is resolved. As a voice from the depths of the last great human die off would no doubt concur (the Plague killed 30-60% of the people of Europe, and over 20% worldwide), what now, is love.
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