inseparable

As we walk up, it is by the bushes. A deer forages in our friends’ front yard. I look at its impossibly slender legs, twigs really. Imagine the fast twitch muscle fibers that enable it to dart away, only it doesn’t. It stays. Any of us could easily touch it. It does not know to fear us, unwittingly vulnerable now. A wild animal someone has tamed. 

Earlier in the day I had eaten venison sausage given by a friend who hunts. Now I try to imagine myself shooting this deer, grazing arm’s length away; slicing it from sternum to anus for field dressing. Imagine turning it, somehow, into various cuts of meat to seal in plastic or wrap in butcher paper and stack in the freezer. I try to imagine turning this deer into venison.

When I eat meat nowadays, I think of this. Could I produce, on my own, the half dozen Buffalo wings ordered at dinner? Could I kill the chickens? Plunk their bodies in boiling water then yank out slippery feathers? If I recoil at butchering and dressing my own chicken, what right then do I have to eat it?  

Lines from Pablo Neruda come to mind:

Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse

I linger on this word, remorse. It implies understanding the true heft of my choices, recognition of the sacrifice necessary for my sustenance. Most of all, it evokes relationship.

I work at a high school where students throw away copious amounts of food, feeding the cafeteria trashcans more than themselves. I think about the industrial food systems that provide it, the massive chem-agra corporations that have supplanted real farming. The land, air, soil, animals and workers sacrificed so that food can land on students’ Styrofoam trays (don’t even get me started on that) for 30 seconds before being launched into the trash. And then, to think, we’ll slit yet another cavity in the earth to stuff it in where it will continue to bleed noxious gases. 

Would they be so wasteful if they knew the journey of their food or if they had to produce it themselves? Indeed, would any of us be so wasteful? Yearly, Americans discard nearly half of the food we buy. But if we knew the details of how food appears in grocery stores or in restaurants would we be so cavalier?

The documentary, Food, Inc, asserts the food industry deliberately puts a veil between itself and consumers and instead offers a myth: food should be cheap, plentiful and available at all times regardless of season. Our health and the planet’s health crumble under the weight of such an immense lie.

I don’t just mean physical health.

We are wired for relationship. Have we forgotten? Daily, things die for our sustenance. To eat unaware of this fact is desecration. There is no honor in this madness we call progress.

But we take our place at the conveyer belt of consumption, which starts with extraction and leads to disposal. Yes, if I kill and eat the deer in front of me, I am participating in extraction, consumption and disposal.

I can do so mindfully. I understand the death of this being nourishes my family, its carcass feeds other beings and once upon a time a people knew to use the pelt, bladder, hooves, bones, all of it, so remorse at killing is transformed into honoring the dead because nothing is wasted.

This is truly saying grace.

Someone has now picked up a tuft of grass and is tentatively edging it close to the deer’s mouth; recreating, I suppose, something she’d done at the zoo with food pellets. I have a vague notion this somehow endangers the deer more than the human.

The very rare green deer. Have we forgotten? They are everywhere.

a little more poop

Realizing ducks have personalities has me unsettled.

For years my vegan friend has told me animals are sentient beings whose lives have their own trajectories like humans. But Oklahoma Joe’s barbeque has distracted me from pondering this for myself. Now that I’m getting to know a brace of ducks I’m troubled thinking these birds my neighbor has named, based on personality, have tasty flesh I may someday eat.

It’s not a huge stretch then to consider eggs a bit differently also. They are potential ducks, after all, whose lives were aborted for my ingestion.

What about other animals we’ve designated as edible? What about cows, pigs, chickens? Surely they’ve personalities as well. And why does a being have to demonstrate personality in order for me not to toss it on the grill or squirt mustard on it?

It seems we humans are pretty arbitrary with which creatures we’ll eat versus ones we’ll treat as family. When cat Felix dies we have a memorial service but when duck Felix dies we google recipes. How do we make that distinction?

I suspect some emotional and mental gymnastics allow us to be selective flesh eaters.

We buy flesh in parts or cooked already, often without organs or bones so it least resembles the furry, feathered, oinking being it once was. Advertising sensualizes the meat we eat hiding the process by which we get it. Unless we work in a CAFO, the slaughter of animals happens far away. We therefore are never exposed to the sound, smell, sight of our pastrami’s death. In fact, it is becoming increasingly harder to access information about this process. What we eat doesn’t look like anything that nurses its young or feels pain.

Like us.

This awareness unsettles me more deeply than the pleasure of good barbeque. 

Five Pines

As I write I have lit a pine-scented candle, handmade by a dear friend. 

*

It has been snowing. A lot. We are in liminal space. The routine of work and school has been suspended; we forget about alarm clocks and bedtimes. For a day or two, my children stay in their pajamas, wearing snowsuits over them when they go outside. We build forts inside and out. For a day or two, I see most of my neighbors, bundled, shoveling, helping stuck cars. Inside, every flat surface stamped with our hot cocoa mugs and the front room draped with gear in various stages of drying.

At night I walk. There is a quiet only a thick layer of snow can summon, a quietness of sound and movement. The falling snow blankets everything with serenity. It is beautiful. The sharp clear smell of snow is nothing I can describe but feels like calm. I walk taking in the whiteness everywhere: in the crooks of tree branches, pyramiding precariously on a bicycle seat. I cannot help but think of a line from e.e. cummings, “the snow carefully everywhere descending.” For the snow seems precise in how it lands, just so.

Under the cone of a streetlight, I look up. Suddenly I am inside a shaken snow globe. Swirling bits of white ping my cheeks, catch in my eyelashes. With my head thrown back, I open my mouth; stick my tongue out like a child.

When I grow weary of streetlights-for they have become unnecessary, garish in the whiteness-I walk to a park. I step off the sidewalk into a field and pause: there is a deep mantle of undisturbed snow as far as I can see. Because the sky is inky blue black, it is incomprehensibly bright. I begin to walk toward what has been my destination all along. The quiet is more palpable in this expansive field, broken only by my boots crunching a path.  

As I walk farther away from streetlights and houses, a small panic flits through me. No one knows where I am or will hear me scream. The snow is too high for me to run fast. The snow-concealed stray bushes are now suspect, malicious in their intent. Images from The Shining and The Grey replace e.e. cummings.

I am immersed in the singular loveliness of newly fallen snow but am unable to fully relinquish myself to it. This gift of seeking beyond the surface of things, of imagination, sometimes distracts me with the fantastical. I press on in the only way I know how: acknowledging fear and inviting what it is blocking to surface.

At the far end of the field is stand of five pines. I look up, taking in their height, fully expecting them to come alive like ents. Forming a loose semicircle, their horizontal branches reach for each other like arms around shoulders. I pause again, outside the arc they form.

Around the bases of trees, I am surprised by animal tracks. Again The Grey jumps to mind and again fear pounds through me. But I did not walk all this way through snow in single digit weather to turn back because of imagined fears. This is what I came for.

Inhaling, I step inside. Together, the branches have formed an umbrella so the ground here is barely dusted with snow. I glimpse a scattering of pine needles and cones as I go to my favorite tree. I lean against the trunk. Encircling it with my arms, they cannot possibly touch. I feel the smooth jagged bark against my cheek, marveling at what different beings we are. Trees exude a stillness of their own, astonishing when one considers life internally pulsing from root tips through trunk and branches to crown and externally articulating in sap, bud, flower, fruit and leaf. I breathe in what the tree gives and exhale what the tree receives, mindful of my dependence. It is restful, this hugging a pine in a snowy field, breathing. Gradually I realize the desire to remove my shoes. 

This is church. 

For it is all sacred ground, infused with spirit if only we are willing to revere it.

I step away and scoop snow with my glove. Communion, consecrated by its maker through deeming it good. The dry powder dissolves coldly in my mouth. I am aware now that I am thirsty and the snow is quenching. This too is church: simple human need met by elemental provision in the presence of spirit.

Tears sting my eyes. I am humbled by the wonder of it all.

*

As I write I have lit a pine-scented candle, handmade by a dear friend. Because the wax has been toyed with, the wick is somewhat buried. It flickers dimly. But the flame will melt the wax enough to burn brightly.

poop

My neighbor has given me poop.

From her ducks, that is.

She has given me duck poop smeared straw, the perfect winter blanket for my garden beds. Duck waste breaks down in my garden, nourishing the soil in preparation for planting. My harvest, in turn, helps nourish her egg laying ducks. I give her yummies from the garden or headed to compost in exchange for duck eggs. My neighbor and I are eager for the summer when we will herd her ducks over to my vegetable beds for an all you can eat insect buffet.

At first I thought ducklings were like cartoon goats, able to eat anything-rotten vegetables, moldy bread (let the record show I never gave them tin cans). This is not at all the case. My patient neighbor created a duck menu for me so I wouldn’t kill her fuzzy dependents with my ignorance. 

When we take kale or greens to the ducks, my daughters sometimes feed them. Having observed them from duckling to practically grown now, we’ve watched their personalities unfold. Also in my ignorance, I had thought only people and pets had distinct personalities. Now I wonder what other species have personalities.

Have you ever experienced a duck egg? Sturdier and harder to break than a chicken egg, the shell’s hue varies, delicate blues and pinks. They also differ in size, surprising if you’re accustomed to uniform store bought eggs. The yolk is bigger, summer sun orangey and the whites are more viscous. The flavor is strong but does not linger the way store eggs sometimes do.

There isn’t a rule saying you can’t bake with duck eggs but I do not want them absorbed into something else. They are for frying. And smelling. Tasting. Savoring. 

I know the journey of these eggs. 

I know my neighbor rearranged her life and backyard to accommodate a dozen ducks and another neighbor helped design and build their enclosure. I know all about the hoops of getting permits, not to mention how much my neighbor researched the proper care of ducks. So when I receive these eggs, I am mindful of how they came to me.

This mindfulness satisfies something more deeply than the eggs themselves.

I am now connected to my neighbor. We each have something the other needs and wants. We value each other’s efforts-she works to keep her ducks thriving and I am motivated to grow enough veggies to share. For six years, this neighbor and I had only waved to each other in passing. Because of her ducks and my garden we have a relationship, slowly evolving beyond eggs and greens. 

And poop. 

holocaust, part 5

This blog series was inspired by a group of twentysomethings with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. I heard them explain their engagement in Nonviolent Direct Action at a Sustainable Sanctuary Coalition meeting. They first detailed the process of how tar sands becomes oil then explained their fight against it. 

Tar sands resisters attempt to physically thwart any part of tar sands production and transport. Actions include barricading oneself inside a pipe to halt construction, sitting in trees slated to be clear-cut and staging hunger strikes and mock oil spills.

Following the tradition of civil disobedience, they use tactics outside political venues to peacefully challenge the institutional violence energy companies inflict. Not only have traditional methods to address environmental injustice proven futile, traditional institutions typically support those inflicting injustice. 

Civil disobedience is a way to stand in solidarity with those without political, social and economic means by becoming their allies and bringing attention to injustice as it happens. It is how ordinary people organize their collective power to change the world. 

What struck me listening to the Tar Sands resisters was their quiet conviction. They make manifest these words of Ghandi, “noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” They learned about the Canadian tar sands megaproject and responded with compassion, their sense of moral obligation overriding self-preservation.

I am struck also by their courage. Oil companies have enough money to buy local police, politicians and newspapers for years on end. These amazing activists literally put their bodies on the line to advocate for marginalized people and nature sacrificed for resources and profit. In no way does it benefit them personally to shackle themselves to forklifts. 

They sometimes go to jail for this.

In fact, in December 2013, for the first time ever, terrorism laws were used against American citizens protesting a corporation's activities when four resisters were arrested.

Motivated by a sense of social justice, tar sands resisters are undaunted. Their very selves-simple, ordinary stones to topple Goliath. 

This is what they’re doing with their privilege.

What am I doing with mine?

***

I get that not everyone who reads this will suddenly want to engage in direct action. As the group emphasized when they spoke, this is the response they have chosen, not the only response. 

But everyone can respond. Everyone can do something. 

When one learns about injustice, the heart reacts. Then the mind kicks in with rationalizations to continue the status quo, to justify why things are they way they are. I think back on a conversation regarding slave labor producing the cheap goods we Americans love. The person responded with a shrug saying, “at least those people are earning money.”

Compassion insists on a different trajectory of thought and therefore ensuing action.

So if you’re not going to lie down in the path of an oil company’s bulldozer, what can you do? Here are 6 not so easy or convenient things to do.

1.) Start with compassion for yourself.

We live within destructive systems, based on extraction without thought to restoration. Since that’s the foundation of modern society, we are each hard-pressed to choose paths outside grooves worn since the industrial revolution. For instance, I can't start tooling around town on a horse because I'm anti-fossil fuels. How then can I lessen my cooperation with evil?

You may think I am being dramatic by calling the fossil fuel industry evil, particularly since what we privileged folks experience is the benefits. But understand oil, natural gas and coal have been and continue to be a slow motion holocaust.

2.) Educate yourself. There are thousands of resources available.

http://gptarsandsresistance.org/
http://www.nrdc.org/about/

http://ran.org/about-ran

http://350.org/

http://ssckc.org/ It was at one of their meetings where I first met the tar sands resisters. SSC is a local, ecumenical group that provides congregations with assistance in taking on creation care.

http://greenfaith.org/ 

3.) Let what you learn inform your choices.

An article on Nutella cited the six different countries required to make a jar of the stuff. The price point at my grocery store for Nutella does not cover its fuel cost. People who live where fossil fuels are extracted, shipped and refined pay that. It’s paid for in habitat loss for animals and people alike. And this is just to motor it all over the world. 

My kids love Nutella. Last year when we learned about the ingredient palm oil and habitat destruction, we had a conversation about not buying products containing it. Learning now about the fossil fuels involved, further affirms our decision to avoid Nutella. Instead of my kids feeling deprived of a sweet treat, they feel empowered when they pass it in the grocery store. They understand their choice helps orangutans.

4.) Seek like-minded people so you can help each other navigate challenging situations. I’m grateful to have found this group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClimateParents. 

I believe we parents can steer our children toward a more harmonious relationship with the earth and its inhabitants if we together, collectively, make different choices with our time and resources. We can turn globalization on its head so that we regard our interdependence with reverance rather than a vehicle for consumption. 

5.) Use what you’ve got. 

One of the resisters said he does this work to blockade passivity, to blockade indifference. In whatever ways we can, isn't that the responsibility-or in Ghandi's words, the moral obligation-of each of us? 

Channel your passion or vocation into creating a more environmentally just world. It grieves me that we've lost kinship with the natural world. Having been churched all my life, it's particularly grievous to listen to hymns and sermons about God's awesomeness manifest in nature yet witness Christians descerate creation in their daily choices. It grieves me to be unaware of how my goods get to me, who and what they impact along the way or where they go when I'm through with them. 

So I write. 

6.) Most importantly, understand there is no neutral. Our choices reverberate in a web of cause and effect.

Choose compassionately.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King, Jr.