Nature loves a circle

As a recovering planner, I long ago learned there is truth in the premise that "no amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck." In fact, during the past few days I've experienced the kind of serendipity that supports the premise. Today, I want to share that beneficial coincidence with you  because I believe there's a number of lessons we might learn from the juxtaposition of two "essays" available on the internet.

Today's Star Tribune has an opinion piece by Timothy Egan of the New York Times. It's titled:

U.S. is becoming a generally mean country

Tribalism, long simmering in the shadows, has surfaced noticeably in our daily interactions. 

Without getting into a quibble about whether "is becoming" is the correct tense, let's focus on the  reality that the piece concludes with these two paragraphs:

It may be, as writer George Packer says, that the U.S. is headed for "a cold civil war that continues to erode democracy." No nation can survive for long without some self-evident truths as a lodestar.

There's an old saying, attributed to the Sioux: A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass. What may be worse are a people without a heart, unable to see half their countrymen and countrywomen as anything but the enemy.

Just yesterday I had read something that struck me, after the fact, as lodestar that suggests a course that could allow us to respond positively to Egan's "old saying." In the sidebar to the right is a link to a blog I usually find both  enjoyable and rewarding to read (as if enjoyment isn't reward enough), Nina Munteanu's The Meaning of Water. Yesterday's posting there is titled Find Something To Love in Nature … And Save the World. When I first read it, I promptly identified as one of those cynics referred to in the following:

Find something to love in Nature, and you can save the world. It’s really that simple. Cynics will consider this naïve. But at its root is the very notion that Itzak Stern argued in Schindler’s List when he quoted the Talmud: “whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” Ecologists understand the foundation of this notion. Ecologists study relationships, after all. How animate and inanimate things interrelate in a web of existence and change. We are all connected. And because we are, any being can serve as a sentinel (a representative) of their functioning ecosystem and world. By saving one, you help save the whole. This is because every part of an ecosystem plays a role in that whole.

Further along, Nina Munteanu offers an insightful comparison that offers a vision of how we become less tribal and forego some of our meanness. It's captured in the following graphic:

Today, let's close with a tripartite request. Please follow the links and read each of the pieces mentioned above. Then, think about whether moving from a viscious circle to a virtuous circle offers an achievable  framework for a viable response to some of the major issues we're facing in this country and on this planet, such as some sort of civil war and near term extirpation of the  human race from the only home it  knows. Third, find something to love in Nature and follow through.

In yet another bit of serendipity, it seems that  the incomparable Joni Mitchell has captured lyrically much of what we've considered here and in the linked pieces. See what you think after you look at her wonderful lyrics to

The Circle Game

by Joni Mitchell

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar 
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder 
And tearful at the falling of a star 

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams 
Words like when you're older must appease him 
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now 
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town 
And they tell him take your time it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down 

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty 
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

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