Something's Happening Here

the spring equinox: a time for reflection

Spring slow-walks itself to Maine. For most people, it’s the first daffodil that signals her arrival, but here at the end of the road in the middle of the woods the daffodils dawdle and shilly shally, so I’ve come to rely on the tiny coltsfoot flower to flash its yellow head at me from the weeds at the edge of the dirt road to finally feel confident of spring’s arrival. The coltsfoot, an invasive species brought to our shores by early colonists for its medicinal use, is an impatient little soul who doesn’t wait for its leaves to form before bursting into flower.

I sympathize with such impatience.

After months of winter stillness when plant life holds its breath and the ground is frozen solid, when long light-filled days arrive and the temperatures climb, I can barely wait to make contact with the fecund life force of dirt: to dig, to plant, to grow things. Since January, as I witness with horror and a broken heart the callous cruelty our so called government is sewing across every layer of society, decimating, with almost gleeful vengeance the lives of millions, I am even more impatient for the chance to walk outside into a world where nature embraces me and I can lose myself in the joy of tending and participating in her generous web of life.

But that joy is accompanied this week by aching grief and worry for the health and well-being of that web of life. Since the Inauguration, I’ve been focusing almost entirely on the effects of this unlawful regime’s vile actions on one species of nature: mine. But this week, when the Evil Man viciously went after nature, it collided with my reunion with Mother Earth and threw me into a fury of feeling: rage, protectiveness, grief, worry, love.

First, he altered the Endangered Species Act by fiddling with the word harm. Language is one of fascism’s slyest weapons, and here they have decided that harm only means death, as in going outside and shooting a bird and seeing its lifeless body on the ground. Harm, they have decreed in good fascist form, does not include harming the habitat of an endangered species. So slash, burn, build! So what if the bear, the butterfly, the bison disappear because they have lost their home! They are mere animals who can’t compare to our brilliance! They take up land and resources we, the ones with brains, are entitled to use at our will for our betterment and glory!

Then I read this: “by the authority vested in me as President and by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America it is hereby ordered”… that all Federal agencies which in any way regulate energy insert “sunset” provisions into their programs that would automatically cause them to expire in 2026. The list includes but is not limited to these four critical agencies: the Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

On top of that, it is anticipated that on Earth Day, two days from now, the convicted felon who calls himself President will rescind the tax-exempt status of all non-profits that address the climate crisis. I lead one of those organizations.

What this ignorant administration refuses to believe is that not only will those silly bears and lightweight butterflies disappear because of their actions, but so will they and so will their grandchildren. And much sooner than even the most worried scientist has predicted.

There are currently, in the United States, thanks to the thug, 24 LNG projects under construction or in the planning phases. This could increase annual greenhouse gas emissions by over 90 million tons and erase in one year all the savings from driving electric vehicles. Even without the addition of these projects, if we keep emissions at their current level, scientists are predicting that by 2100 the world will warm by 3 degrees C. Furthermore, every maniacal profit-centered policy of this regime will raise our fossil fuel consumption and our carbon emissions way beyond even that level.

Last summer, FreeportCAN, our local climate action organization, designed lawn signs with the words SAVE PLANET HOME inscribed over the image of the earth. The sign was meant to encourage people to take all the local climate actions we’ve been pushing here in town for the last four years: insulate their homes, buy re-fashion clothing, eat plant-based meals, rewild lawns, bike. We intended it as a friendly nudge towards a lifestyle that supports the planet’s thriving.

At a steering committee meeting this week, we agreed that the circumstances of this moment have turned that sign into a message of fierce resistance to the cruelty of this regime towards our planet’s capacity to support life: ours and that of our feathered, leafed, and finned friends. Now it is time to take the sign to the streets, to add planet home to the list of things we must fight for with all our might.

I’ve mused over the last months about the unconscious motivation behind this stunning upheaval in the order of things. I have no doubt that the Evil Man’s motivation is raving narcissism and vindictiveness. But what, beyond the price of eggs and the anger at being left out of the economic gains available to fewer and fewer folks, compels so many to go along with the chaos and destruction and line up with the wish/delusion of Make America Great Again?

Is it at some level a great displacement and distraction from the knowledge that civilization is in terrible trouble because the beliefs we have relied on as bedrock to our meaning and decision making are faulty, so faulty that we face the possibility of extinction?

Birds can sense when a storm is coming and flock to the feeder in the hours before it arrives. Outside our window, the seasons have changed, there are more storms, the temperatures are climbing, the butterflies are gone, the ocean is rising, the forests are changing.

Something is happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.

Do we humans, so attuned to weather and to the land for thousands and thousands of years, have some innate but unconscious sense that the ecosystems that support us are breaking down and extinction may be just around the corner?

Are we as a society so terrified about this possibility lurking just below the level of our awareness that we are engaging in some maniacal performative drama to defy nature, to defy those who warn against extinction, and act out our powers of destruction? Is this a societal reaction formation to our fear that we’ve got it all wrong and are about to go over the proverbial cliff?

And if this is so, is this the time for deep reflection? A time for the courage to face the messages from our ecosystems and align ourselves with the truths of the universe instead of doubling down on old beliefs: white men are superior to women, to indigenous people and people of color; mankind is separate from nature, which is a commodity to be bought and sold, not conserved; success is only to be found in wealth and dominance; individual self flourishing is more important than communal flourishing?

As a child I grew up in an Irish family steeped in a Catholicism that was informed by a touch of Celtic spirituality. For the Celts, the Spring Equinox, also known as Ostara, was a time of balance and renewal and this renewal was found not inside a Church but outside on the land. The divine was everywhere, in the spring rain, in the salt marshes, in the rabbits! Both Celtic and Catholic traditions encouraged quiet reflection during this time of Ostara so as to set new intentions for the future. I remember those days as time out of time days when a walk in the woods would lead me not to contemplation of my sins but to a search for a newly emerged Jack in the Pulpit or a cottontail rabbit, or a star-filled sky, experiences which took me out of my worry about my pimples and my pride and united me with the mystery and community of the earth and the universe beyond.

While the Evil Man distracts us with his reign of terror, it is hard to find time out of time hours for the spiritual place of contemplation and reflection. Protest on the streets call me to action and I am buoyed by the community joy and rascal spirit of those streets. But this time of Oestra also asks me to reflect, to ask what new shoots of change are emerging and what of the old needs to be left behind?

Together I hope we can have that conversation and together I hope we can imagine, plant, nurture, a whole new story. This piece in The Guardian, The Rise of End Times, by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, concludes with these resounding words about what that story might look like:

…a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival. A story not of end times, but of better times; not of separation and supremacy, but of interdependence and belonging; not of escaping, but staying put and staying faithful to the troubled earthly reality in which we are enmeshed and bound.

Something is happening here, what is ain’t exactly clear.

Together I hope we will have that conversation that answers Bruce Springsteen’s question and together I hope we can imagine that far better story.

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NOTE: havemercyonus.org is up and ready for your orders for t-shirts and posters of Bishop Budde who reminded us to hold MERCY in our hearts and actions. All profit from the sale of these items goes to ACLU Maine.