Beauty in London for the People of Japan

Eugene Hughes, director of People Brands in London, breached the wall of immobility that so many of us feel as we confront both our sorrow and our compassion for the people and the Earth in Japan. He wrote out the following poem by the great 17th century Japanese poet, Basho, and tied it to all the flowering cherry trees in his neighborhood.

Here's the poem:

If you will let me,

I will willingly wipe

Salt tears from your eyes

With these fresh leaves.

Heartbreaking

Call it the click response. The grotesque images we’ve been seeing for the past two months, of sea birds gripped in carapaces of toxic oil and dolphins expelling black muck from their blowholes, are so hard to look at that we want to click immediately to a different website, turn the page of the paper, or switch the channel.

Yet those reactions of horror, revulsion, and pity actually indicate that we have a healthy capacity for compassion. Compassion means, literally, to feel with another. When that other is suffering, the compassion response that arises in us is painful, so we seek relief by turning away. And it’s hard to convince ourselves when we see the effects of BP’s non-stop gusher that those creatures aren’t suffering.

Some relatives of the eleven men who were killed when the Deep Water Horizon rig exploded on April 20 have complained that the media is focusing too much attention on the environmental impact of the accident, while ignoring the human victims. Said L.D. Manuel, the father of one of the men killed, “Everyone talks about the birds and the damage to the Gulf and everything, but they never talk about the guys that got hurt. That really bothers me.”

It is unquestionably tragic that innocent people died while simply doing their jobs; they were the first casualties of this calamity. We feel compassion for their loved ones, as well as for the many residents of the Gulf Coast whose lives and livelihoods may be changed irrevocably as a result of this spill. But we also feel sorrow about the destruction of the animals and fish, the wetlands, and the ocean itself. And that sorrow is not only for the natural world, it is also for our human relationship with it.

Frequently, those who express regret about the loss, or potential loss, of some wild place or species are accused of caring more about nature than about people. Someone who objects that proposed industry or development in a place will adversely affect an owl, a snaildarter, or an ash tree is criticized for “anthropomorphizing.” Afraid of being thought over-sensitive or “soft,” the ecologically incriminated hasten to excuse themselves (as I just did above) and try to temper their concern about the natural world with hearty assurances that, no, no, they really do care about people, too.

It’s time to accept that, as sophisticated beings capable of compassion, we humans are touched and saddened not only by assaults on people but by those on nature as well. It’s time to acknowledge that regretting loss in nature does not mean that we are indifferent to people. It is time, finally, stop apologizing for loving the natural world.

Nature—the rocks, waters, plants, fish, birds, and animals that surround us, or environ us—preceded us humans onto the planet. They are, quite literally, our ancestors and they have been a constant presence throughout our entire evolving existence. The biologist E.O. Wilson speculates that the propensity our prehistoric ancestors developed to get along comfortably in nature eventually evolved into a genetic trait Wilson calls “biophilia,” or “the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.”

The ways humans love nature are infinite and individual. A hunter sitting in a deer blind on a cold fall morning, a skier skimming down powdery slopes, a biologist peering at microbes through a microscope, and a backpacker trekking through remote Alaskan wilderness are all absorbed in and by that partly familiar, yet always somewhat unknowable presence we call nature. Nature inspires us with its resilience, gives us solace when we’re sad, mirrors our joy, and lifts our hearts in unexpected and surprising ways, when, for example, we look up from work into a blazing sunset or hear a robin singing in the pre-dawn darkness. Nature fascinates, in our own backyard, at the far side of a scenic overlook on the highway, and as we imagine it in remote places. An estimated 100 million Americans watched the eleven-part TV documentary, "Planet Earth" last year. Nature gets along fine without us humans, yet it is often in trouble because of us.

And so our hearts break when we see these Gulf Coast birds and animals dying of oil, because we know that an ineffable source of meaning, beauty, and inspiration is being destroyed in us as well. That is heartbreaking. Knowing and accepting so makes us human.

What Is Nature Anyway?

A person who calls him- or herself an environmentalist is presumed to love nature. More than that, you could say that an environmentalist is someone who perceives a threat to nature (e.g. extinction, pollution, clearcutting) and wants to alter circumstances that are creating that threat.

But what is nature anyway? The dictionary defines nature as the physical or material world and its phenomena, in other words, that which is not created by humans. Most of us think of nature as the world of plants, rocks, hills, seas and beaches, and animals, entities that “surround” (environ means to "surround") human beings and exist independently of them. The Norwegian ecologist, Fern Wickson writes that, if “nature” is a place that is uninfluenced by humankind, then, really, there is no nature on the planet at all. “However, even if one sees nature as including humanity, the concept becomes so all-encompassing as to be practically useless…. An atom bomb becomes as ‘natural’ as an anthill.”

Culturally, we live with two contrary depictions of nature. On one hand nature is a fragile, tender thing that needs protecting from large, brutal forces that would destroy it. This is nature as the cute baby seal on the rock, imminent victim of cruel hunters with harpoons.

On the other hand, nature itself is the brutal force. This is the version Hollywood favors. This nature can—and will—get out of control and wreak havoc. People are going about their ordinary lives, rather like the seal on the rock, when relentless nature swoops down upon them in a terrible and deadly form: volcano, tornado, plague of insects, forest fire.

Nature is like that famous image that tests your ability to perceive dualities: look at it one way and it’s a vase, rearrange your gaze and see it as two profiles regarding each other. Nature swings back and forth: victim/villain, victim/villain. Cute and cuddy/ugly, terrifying, and out of control. What the current ecological crisis presents us with is an image of nature that is both these visions at once: Nature about to go amok and destroy the world because of climate change, and nature victimized and killed because of climate change. Nature is the perpetrator of disaster and nature is the victim of the disaster.

What do you think nature is?

Barry Lopez Reflects on Nature, Horror, and Beauty with Bill Moyers

As he prepared to retire after four decades in broadcast journalism, Bill Moyers thought long and hard about whom to invite as his guest on the last broadcast of his Bill Moyers Journal. In the end, he decided that the honor should go to author Barry Lopez, whom he described as "someone whose curiosity about the world, and pursuit of it, have set the gold standard for all of us whose work it is to explain those things we don't understand."

During the thirty-five-minute interview Lopez, the award-winning author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, spoke eloquently about nature as what he called "the full expression of life," the whole picture of the earth and its inhabitants, not simply a collection of majestic landscapes like those that appear on the pages of calendars.

Despite the fact that the phenomena of the natural world play the starring role in all his books, Lopez insisted that "I'm not writing about nature. I'm writing about humanity. And if I have a subject, it is justice. And the rediscovery of the manifold way in which our lives can be shaped by the recovery of a sense of reverence for life."

Moyers and Lopez also talked about the relationship of beauty and horror. Lopez began by saying that, even though he has lived for forty years in the Oregon wilderness, he loves New York City, especially when the sky is a particular shade of blue, as it was on this April day in 2010 when Moyers was conducting the interview.

Moyers replied that the sky in New York was that very color on the morning of September 11, 2001, when the two airliners were crashed into the World Trade Towers. What does that do to any idea of beauty? Moyers asked his guest.

Lopez responded: "Real beauty is so deep you have to move into darkness in order to understand what beauty is.... What you must do is build a system of civilization that is as aware of darkness as it is of beauty."

Click here to watch the complete broadcast of Bill Moyers's interview with Barry Lopez.

Humans Don't Desire Like Bettongs Desire

One of the most fascinating sessions I attended at the Parliament of the World’s Religions was called “Enabling Response: Contributions of the Ecological Humanities toward an Environmental Culture.” Freya Mathews, Associate Professor in the Philosophy Program at Melbourne’s La Trobe University and author of several books, including one I particularly admire, The Ecological Self, talked about the problem environmentalists run into when they try to persuade people to rein in their desires for the sake of a sustainable planet.

“We have to want what the biosphere needs us to want,” Mathews said. Unfortunately, humans have the capacity to want in much bigger, more creative ways than their biology demands. Unlike the bettong, for example, a small Australian mammal also known as the rat kangaroo, “which only wants to eat truffles,” humans have very complicated desires, desires that are fed by fantasy, ego, envy, and many other enticements. “Can we imagine a synergy between humans and nature?” Mathews queried.

In my book, The World Is a Waiting Lover, I unfold an arc of desire from raw, potent physical attraction to the longing to transcend and become intimately united with the great mystery of being. The force I explore is the archetypal Beloved, the inner flame of passion that allures us all our lives to connect with the people, ideas, and acts that will bring out our higher self. This path can be a joyful one and very rewarding, but it is basically solitary.

We all have an inner Beloved, but how can we get those Beloveds together on behalf of the Earth?

Mathews discussed the need for activities that would create meaning for people through what she calls onto-poetics (ontos is the Greek word for being), since “the language of the world is the language of poetics and symbol.” Examples would be festivals, pilgrimages, invocations expressed in language that plumbs below the surface and stirs what a colleague of mine calls the indigenous-mind.

The outcome of such practices? “We are sure to be ravished,” Mathews concluded.

The Uninvited Fairy

Remember the thirteenth fairy in the story of Sleeping Beauty? At the christening of the baby princess, Brier Rose, twelve gold plates were set out for twelve fairies in the realm, but the queen and king forgot to invite the thirteenth fairy. The forgotten fairy showed up anyway and proclaimed a vengeful promise: before the girl’s sixteenth birthday, she would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Horrified, one of the other fairies lightened the curse: the girl would fall asleep until a prince came to kiss her awake.

That thirteenth fairy refused to be forgotten. She would have her say. She would make sure she received her due honor, just like the other fairies.

The damaged places of the Earth are like that uninvited fairy. We try to forget them, but we can’t. Our hearts ache when we hear about animals dying because they can no longer find food. Our sense of beauty is assaulted when we confront clearcut forests. Outrage floods us when we read about toxic debris from mountaintop mining cascading down hillsides to clog valleys and streams and turn people out of their homes. Because the state of the planet pains us, many of us just try to ignore it.

But those places keep hovering in our awareness, just like that forgotten fairy. They remind us that all is not well in the land. They force us to consider what kind of world we’ll be leaving to our grandchildren. And they remain a part of us. We loved them once and we cannot now forget them, even though they are damaged.

After Brier Rose pricked her finger on the spindle she fell asleep, along with all the people in the realm. During the scores of years of collective unconsciousness that followed, many princes tried to make their way through the thickets that surrounded the palace to rescue her. Yet it was not until one particular prince, motivated by love, determined and persistent, managed the difficult journey and kissed her gently that Sleeping Beauty awoke.

Radical Joy for Hard Times recognizes that our neglected lands, waters, and communities are part of the whole living Earth. They demand restitution—not just with projects to restore them in measurable ways, but also with acts and attitudes that acknowledge that they are part of the whole community of the living Earth. In other words, the future of global ecology requires a kiss! We must forgive one another for our previous neglect of the earth, and we must reawaken those damaged places with acceptance, love, and beauty.

Then no part of the Earth will be left out of the story.

THE ORPHANED PLACES

In 1987, when I was living in New York, writing scripts and producing soundtracks for multimedia productions, I read an article about an Oneida Indian engineer, David Powless, who had received a National Foundation grant to research and develop a process for recycling hazardous waste from steel mills. Along with a small group of co-colleagues I made a short video about David, funded by IBM and later shown to international IBM employees at a conference in Miami Beach. (The photo at the left was taken at that event.) The video explored David’s work, both as an engineer and as an Oneida man dedicated to fostering the traditional ways of his people. While we were working together, he told this story:

When he learned that he had received the grant, David said, he drove out to an enormous mound of steel waste and scrambled to the top. Triumphantly, he declared, “I’m going to conquer you!” Almost immediately, however, he knew that this approach was all wrong. “I realized that the waste was an orphan,” he said. “It had been lost from the cycle of life. My job was to bring it back to the cycle of life.”

I never forgot this story, which seemed to me to offer a new perspective on ecological crisis: a way loving parts of the earth that were, by most standards, unlovable, and even unlivable.

Ten years later, in 1997, I was guiding a vision quest in the Utah Canyonlands with Bill Plotkin when I had a vision of my own. That day the questers had come back to base camp after their three-day solo. In council they had told the stories of their journey, and in the morning we would hike out of the canyon and head back to Durango.

All that night, I remained suspended in a chaotic, uneasy state of half-sleep/half-wakefulness. As I lay in my sleeping bag under the stars I kept hearing someone walking around me, perhaps twenty or thirty feet away. Surprisingly, this constant movement in the dark did not worry me. I felt only a vague curiosity about it.

Toward dawn I became alert enough to ask, “Who’s there?” In that instant I had a vision of a young Anasazi man. He paused, approached, and said to me, in effect, that my task was to take people to the wounded places on the earth and give them beauty and compassion.

I was deeply touched by this vision, and for years afterwards tried to figure out how I might carry it out. I led a weeklong vigil in a clearcut forest in British Columbia; worked with a small group to make a mandala out of trash on a Pensacola, Florida beach; and presented a ceremony at New York’s Ground Zero shortly after September 11. However, I found that most people weren’t interested in going to troubled places; they preferred to visit pristine, beautiful nature. I often grieved that I could not enact the task that had been given to me. Then, over the past eight or nine years, I became very involved in writing and teaching about the path of the inner lover, the Beloved, and put the vision of troubled places temporarily aside.

Recently, however, it has become clear to me that the time is now right to bring forth a new way of looking at and being in the company of the troubled places on earth, what David Powless called “the orphans from the cycle of life.” With serious attention now being devoted to global climate change and other ecological challenges, and a new willingness on the part of so many people to examine their behavior on and toward the earth, it feels as if what I now Radical Joy for Hard Times is ready to unfold.