I Can Eat Sausage
I look around and see no path. Nothing leading me where I want to go. What I’ve been thinking is that religion is a search for who or what is responsible for the deplorable state of the world and all its sorrows. Who or what takes all this beauty and brings it to rack and ruin? Who is making it so that many of us cannot draw an un-medicated breath? I am in a New York frame of mind, when it comes to what is called ‘the environment’. There is no environment, there is a world. I feel like being very direct with myself and with you.
For whatever reason, maybe it’s just all I know, I see such relevance in Christianity and other religions in the BP Gulf of Mexico crisis. I see parallels. I see suffocation, I see suffering, I see death, I see the Slaughter of the Innocents. I imagine what it is like to be a fish or a turtle or a bird, just minding my own business and then being washed over by the oil… and I die gasping. I see Everything that never had to be destroying everything that ever was.
I have come to see the useless destruction of a blameless victim. I look around and I say, “Who’s in charge here?”, and I realize that I am. And it is you, whoever you are. I say, looking at the dying bird, “Who smothered this wonderful creature?”, just as I said, as a child, who killed Christ and why, and what does that mean to me. Historically, when bad things happen to good things, we look around for someone to blame, a poor, miserable, confused scapegoat running pall mall through the storm of accusation and blame, this sort of thing can turn into a Holocaust. Unless I realize that I am responsible.
I look around and I say who, dear God, who is to blame? And I realize that I create and sustain a thing like a British Petroleum through my own stupid consumerism.
I know that since through my actions I uncorked the well that sends the black cloud through the sea, I know I am the only one who can put it back. I can use less of everything starting with my car and my dwelling. I have been in the throes of doing this and by God, this is really hard to do. Trust me. I have no where to set my ‘stuff’…it is suffocating me! I am hiding my shame under a giant pile of things I haddahave. What does the suffering and death of a bird say to me? It says, yes…
You can eat sausage.
Yes, sausage. I was raised to be a carnivore. But not a mindless carnivore. My father and other New Yorkers of my youth ate the whole thing…tongue to tail. They ate tongue sandwiches and sipped oxtail soup. Liverwurst was big. Bologna.Something called Taylor ham. They boiled every chicken carcass. My Dad made not-so-toothsome concoctions after the holidays---Big pots of grey soup. He had been hungry before, you see. He was implacably opposed to the wasteful ways of his children.
The making of a mindless carnivore took an advertising industry working with me, a complicit and lazy carnivore. I have always felt that I deserved a break today, not a beak today.
I do not have a thing about meat. But I think eating a pile o wings off of 16 probably tortured birds is a little buggered up. I can choose to be responsible for the whole thing that sacrifices (doubtlessly unwillingly) for my sustenance. I can eat the whole thing through my choices of foodstuffs. I can get real and eat sausage, for example. I can no longer conscionably pick and choose to consume only parts of what I have caused to be killed. Like a good Indian.
To me, suffering as I do over the Gulf Crisis Du Jour, and as I am sure you do, over the Gulf Spill, over having to have a Memorial Day for the Gulf of Mexico and the Turtles and Birds who gave their lives (we need an Eco Gettysburg Address to honor these noble dead) I must now make choices in every aspect of every day of my life. Nothing less can be expected of one to whom so much has been given.
Yes, I cringe over my own hypocrisy. I blush to toss away that bit of plastic that I should never have had in the first place. I cannot believe I am cooled as a corpse in a morgue twenty-four seven. I know that no make up covers the multitude of my vainglorious sins as expressed through my consumerism.
But I can become deeply conscious that how I treat this planet and its flora and fauna, is a spiritual, a deep soul issue. It is all about mindfulness.
So I cry on and do my best, and make myself see what I have done and am doing.
I remain a “Little Sister of the Wilderness”….
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Amazing Grace Moment
Amazing Grace Moment
What a year for epiphanies! Looking at dead and dying marine life is always stressful, sad, threatening…especially knowing that by my thoughtless actions, and those of my fellows, I have had a hand in their deaths…hurts the soul. I could never just walk up to a bird and pour oil over it and cause it to suffocate. Take that, Ms. Egret!
Could I? No, but I can sure drive my car two blocks when I could certainly walk or bike to my destination. Then I might not harm a single feather.
The latest Torture of the Innocents we are seeing on TV, the calves beaten with metal rods, etc., reminds me of the Biblical Slaughter of the Innocents. What did these poor baby animals do to bring out the Anti-Christ in man? How am I responsible---before I point the finger at the slaughter house workers I saw on my screen yesterday?
The hymn “Amazing Grace” is the leitmotif for our time---we will wake up when our own bacon is on the line, we will, as cowards, turn to prayer, the government, “regulators” and authorities instead of doing it ourselves. All of these are great but have their limits. We need a new favorite hymn, maybe. Sung to the tune of A.G. it could go, something like:
“Responsiiiiible, that’s what I am. I have to help, Myyyyyself…I have to save the pre-e-e-cious birds and leave the calves alone…I know that I sure have a role, in all I see before…Me… iiiin the Gulf of Mexico, and in the slaughter homes….”
Follow the bouncing ball!
Gods, if you will only save me now I will never drive another unnecessary mile in my o-so-unnecessary-SUV. I swear that I will combine my trips, think before I drive, eat less and less meat! If you will deign to save my bacon this time, I will eat less and less of someone else’s.
Ye Gods, I know I cannot say I have absolutely no role in the beating and cruelty done to innocent calves. It is my appetites that, in part, have brought this about. I know I cannot say, “Tough it out, Mr. Turtle. I guess its just your karma.
What will it take, O Lords of the Universe, for me and mine to behave? Will we need to be (and this is a direction in which we seem to be headed) under constant and continual surveillance? Up with the big lights. I have to be watched 24/7 to be a decent Humanthing.Oh! Dear Gods and Goddesses, Dear Jesu, Maria, Shiva and Alla, come to find out, as we say in Texas, I am responsible!
What a year for epiphanies! Looking at dead and dying marine life is always stressful, sad, threatening…especially knowing that by my thoughtless actions, and those of my fellows, I have had a hand in their deaths…hurts the soul. I could never just walk up to a bird and pour oil over it and cause it to suffocate. Take that, Ms. Egret!
Could I? No, but I can sure drive my car two blocks when I could certainly walk or bike to my destination. Then I might not harm a single feather.
The latest Torture of the Innocents we are seeing on TV, the calves beaten with metal rods, etc., reminds me of the Biblical Slaughter of the Innocents. What did these poor baby animals do to bring out the Anti-Christ in man? How am I responsible---before I point the finger at the slaughter house workers I saw on my screen yesterday?
The hymn “Amazing Grace” is the leitmotif for our time---we will wake up when our own bacon is on the line, we will, as cowards, turn to prayer, the government, “regulators” and authorities instead of doing it ourselves. All of these are great but have their limits. We need a new favorite hymn, maybe. Sung to the tune of A.G. it could go, something like:
“Responsiiiiible, that’s what I am. I have to help, Myyyyyself…I have to save the pre-e-e-cious birds and leave the calves alone…I know that I sure have a role, in all I see before…Me… iiiin the Gulf of Mexico, and in the slaughter homes….”
Follow the bouncing ball!
Gods, if you will only save me now I will never drive another unnecessary mile in my o-so-unnecessary-SUV. I swear that I will combine my trips, think before I drive, eat less and less meat! If you will deign to save my bacon this time, I will eat less and less of someone else’s.
Ye Gods, I know I cannot say I have absolutely no role in the beating and cruelty done to innocent calves. It is my appetites that, in part, have brought this about. I know I cannot say, “Tough it out, Mr. Turtle. I guess its just your karma.
What will it take, O Lords of the Universe, for me and mine to behave? Will we need to be (and this is a direction in which we seem to be headed) under constant and continual surveillance? Up with the big lights. I have to be watched 24/7 to be a decent Humanthing.Oh! Dear Gods and Goddesses, Dear Jesu, Maria, Shiva and Alla, come to find out, as we say in Texas, I am responsible!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Make the Bad Thing Stop
As a Crustacean, that is a citizen of Corpus Christi, or Crustyton, Texas, I have observed that the BP disaster ‘fixes-so-far’ are more Mickey Mouse than McIver. And really there are none. Did I hear right that this thing hemorrhages 800,000 barrels of crude per day? What it looks like it comes to is…no techfix for this…Challenger, Chernobyl, Katrina …Sometimes we don’t’ get caught playing with matches---sometimes we do. Sometimes we are burned beyond recognition like unfortunate children who wouldn’t listen. Sometimes we wake up worried after an evening of fun with the Octomom!
Did I really hear that this could’ve been prevented with a sort of prophylactic device called an acoustic trigger, and that such device costs only $500k a pop, and that BP got a pass from our Interior Dep’t and didn’t have to use it??? Did I hear this? Now, pundits, scholars and sages are beginning to say that there’s no fix. See the Lehrer Report for May 31, 2010---Memorial Day for the Gulf of Mexico. On the News Hour, among several scholars, was one Amy Jaffe—a Senior Energy Advisor at the Baker Institute at Rice University. Here is a quote re public reaction, from the best and the brightest, on this deal:
“So -- and it was really amazing that the industry -- we were sort of running out of oil onshore, and the industry was able to go out to the depths of the earth, under the sea, and keep us driving around in our cars. So, to sit here night after night and watch all these scientists unable to close a simple pipeline, even though it's a very complex engineering problem, as a layperson, when you sit here and watch the oil just spewing out of this pipeline, it is. It's just this horror movie, like we cannot believe that there isn't a technology to close this pipeline. And we, as Americans, believe there's a technological solution to everything. And the idea that we're going to have to wait until August for the technological solution, I think it's just got people just gripped in terror.
OMG, Amy! There’s no fix other than to conserve. Is that so hard? Are we, as wondered before, such narcissistic babies that we can’t do this? Are we that weak as a people? The one certainty is that leaders will never ask the American people to take their share, take responsibility for this, which we should. Everything you see about this suggests that ‘they’ should fix it---the gov’t, the oil companies. What if we go ahead and fix it ourselves by not driving SUVs and by moving out of our McMansions and into right sized houses, etc.
To me, this is a call for the little guy to do her/his part.
But if you pose as a leader, then you have to lead. You have to stand up and tell the folks the truth, for once. Like it is not okay to build a Las Brisas here is Crustyton, because if something goes wrong, and it very likely will, we won’t be able to make the bad thing stop!
If, in addition to braces and a college education, you want your kids to have the luxury of breathing, you will ‘unsupport’ Las Bs if you have not already done do.
Did I really hear that this could’ve been prevented with a sort of prophylactic device called an acoustic trigger, and that such device costs only $500k a pop, and that BP got a pass from our Interior Dep’t and didn’t have to use it??? Did I hear this? Now, pundits, scholars and sages are beginning to say that there’s no fix. See the Lehrer Report for May 31, 2010---Memorial Day for the Gulf of Mexico. On the News Hour, among several scholars, was one Amy Jaffe—a Senior Energy Advisor at the Baker Institute at Rice University. Here is a quote re public reaction, from the best and the brightest, on this deal:
“So -- and it was really amazing that the industry -- we were sort of running out of oil onshore, and the industry was able to go out to the depths of the earth, under the sea, and keep us driving around in our cars. So, to sit here night after night and watch all these scientists unable to close a simple pipeline, even though it's a very complex engineering problem, as a layperson, when you sit here and watch the oil just spewing out of this pipeline, it is. It's just this horror movie, like we cannot believe that there isn't a technology to close this pipeline. And we, as Americans, believe there's a technological solution to everything. And the idea that we're going to have to wait until August for the technological solution, I think it's just got people just gripped in terror.
OMG, Amy! There’s no fix other than to conserve. Is that so hard? Are we, as wondered before, such narcissistic babies that we can’t do this? Are we that weak as a people? The one certainty is that leaders will never ask the American people to take their share, take responsibility for this, which we should. Everything you see about this suggests that ‘they’ should fix it---the gov’t, the oil companies. What if we go ahead and fix it ourselves by not driving SUVs and by moving out of our McMansions and into right sized houses, etc.
To me, this is a call for the little guy to do her/his part.
But if you pose as a leader, then you have to lead. You have to stand up and tell the folks the truth, for once. Like it is not okay to build a Las Brisas here is Crustyton, because if something goes wrong, and it very likely will, we won’t be able to make the bad thing stop!
If, in addition to braces and a college education, you want your kids to have the luxury of breathing, you will ‘unsupport’ Las Bs if you have not already done do.
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