A former candidate, who lost the most recent presidential election by 3 million or so popular votes, won sufficient electoral college votes to become "president" and now has created and instituted a "zero tolerance" policy against many less fortunate than he or almost all of us are -- those who are seeking asylum in this country. Think about that for a moment. As we write this, that individual is visiting Duluth, a port of entry to this country. If he hadn't been born here, would we admit him, now that he's been accused of crimes against humanity?
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| Duluth, MN: a port of entry to the United States
Photo by J. Harrington
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The last time we checked, we could find no evidence that any of us chose to be born. We had absolutely no choice of who our parents would be, what their circumstances would be, whether they would be rich or poor, what color their skin would be, what their religions were or of which nation they were citizens. These are all what we consider accidents of birth. Being born into this universe is a complete and total crap shoot.
Most parents want what's best for their children. Many want something better for their children than what they had growing up. It's considered "progress." Yet, among christians, there's the question "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" [Mark 8:36] Are we not close to that tipping point as a country, or have we already crossed it?
The universe in which we live is not a zero sum game, no matter how many folks may think it is. Nature not only abhors a vacuum, she does not support monocultures, except those artificially created by humans or those that support little life. Before we turned the prairie into row crops, the mixture of plants and animals was exuberant. Once we turned forests into lumber and ship's masts, we created pine plantations, similar to row crops. Look at what's left of natural areas. Do you see single plants dominating?
Here's our view of a bottom line:
- We are all members of the human race.
- We are all citizens of planet earth
- We need to outgrow our overdeveloped sense of tribalism
- We share this world with a multitude of other species, on whom we depend for the foundations of life, clean air, clean water, healthy soil
- For the foreseeable future, there is no Planet B.
- We are failing, miserably, our responsibilities to husband (in the agricultural sense) and steward our life support systems.
- Unless we are among the indigenous peoples who, as afar as we can tell, originally left Africa to inhabit North America, we must live in a way that makes us native to this place
- Those not native to a place deserve the opportunity to become naturalized
- We must find a way to create a shared vision of the kind of world and the kinds of life we want for humanity. This is our shared home
- We would do well to remember who it was that said “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
For the Children
Gary Snyder
The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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