What is wrong with the world today? Where does one begin? But surely at the heart of it is the fact that we have forgotten who we are, where we came from, and have lost all bearings so that we have no idea where we are going. We are blind sailors on ships that have lost their sails, tossed rudderless on black waters. And yet we think we are the crown of creation.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” ~ Genesis 1:27
A dust mite observed through a microscope can be seen to have a hide with a pattern like a human fingerprint. This is to be expected as these creatures make their living by feeding on the flakes of skin we continually shed. Perhaps our resemblance to God is of the same order as the dust mite’s resemblance to us.
Several weeks into my recuperation from the broken leg I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and thought, “My goodness, you look well!” realizing almost instantly that it was because I was so well rested. I have probably just emerged from the most prolonged rest of my adult life. My best week during this time of recovery was the week before I was told I could put weight on the injured limb. I felt well, was not in pain, but still couldn’t usefully do anything in the way of housework. I don’t think I realized what a precious and transient time this would be. I wasn’t really aware of the gift until it was over. Once I could easily carry a cup of hot tea across a room, or walk up and downstairs, or push a vacuum cleaner, it was all over. The more I am able to do, the less son and husband do. Why? Why is any contribution considered “helping” me, when really it should be an equitable contribution to the function of the household. Where have I gone wrong?
There are different ways of being housebound. For many years I have been “bound” by my possessions. Just as I was feeling a lightening of being when I started shedding layers of possessions I was suddenly confronted by another meaning. Having slipped on ice, it turns out that I have a broken leg. Not a serious break, but enough to keep me off my feet for several weeks. Now I am confronted by a new awareness: how difficult it is to live when your arms are occupied by crutches and you can only bear weight on one leg! Worse is the inability to go outside unaccompanied. One afternoon my husband came into the living room and asked me if I wanted the blinds closed, to get the sun out of my eyes, and I was suddenly appalled at the thought and said, no I am enjoying this dazzle, because I cannot get outside.
I’ve found social networking a bit of a lifeline and this morning when my housemates had all left and I discovered that the internet had not been turned on (switch is in a remote corner of the basement) I was devastated. The thought of eight hours with only the radio as a connection, no interactive possibilities, was unthinkable. I managed to get myself down to the basement and thought, well, now I am here, let’s enjoy the old desktop, so much easier to use than the PlayBook.
When I was growing up in a small town my girlfriends and I used to visit old ladies who would give us tea and cake. I don’t know how this started but it was something we did as a matter of course, and enjoyed doing. I kept in touch with several old ladies after I left home, sending them Christmas cards, usually with a new embroidered cotton hanky enclosed as a tiny gift until, one by one, I would get a letter from a relative of theirs telling me that this or that aged friend had died. I did have in the back of my mind, although it was not my motivation, a thought that someday there would be a young person or two who would similarly treat me, would be little threads connecting me to the larger world inhabited by the younger people, the mobile people, the ones who are not tied to the inside of their home. But is is a different world now.
When I retire (and I will be mobile again) I must remember the really old, the permanently housebound, and find ways to become friends with some of them, to be in what remains of my own privileged life a sort of connection for them to the world they are now largely cut off from.
The human race is a horror. We slaughter sharks by stripping them of their fins and dumping the rest of their bodies, still alive, to die in the ocean. We tear apart the body of mother Earth to suck out the last drops of fossil fuels to feed our appetite for electricity and mobility. We destroy habitat for innumerable species in every part of the planet, from mountains to rivers to forest, grasslands, reefs and the deep ocean. If we disappeared from the planet tomorrow not a single place would suffer from our absence. What can any of us do in restitution? How can we as individuals learn to tread as lightly as possible on this miracle of a planet?
The process of getting rid of one’s possessions is an interesting exercise. In some ways it is like peeling away the layers of an onion. Each time you think you are reaching the core, but then another layer is revealed. Sometimes I think that there will be nothing left, but I remain hopeful that at the heart there is a little green shoot, the germ of a future life.
Although the “purging” has been difficult, somehow it is becoming easier as I travel this path. I think the turning point came when I took my university textbook copies of Keats and Shelley and placed them on the pile of books to leave my house. From then on whenever I hold a book in my hand and begin to waver I think to myself, if you can get rid of Keats and Shelley why can’t you say goodbye to this? A different, more positive, atmosphere now surrounds the whole adventure. My motives for keeping or discarding are becoming clearer.
For example, I was planning to keep a particular fantasy trilogy for some reason, although many others had been put in the goodbye pile. I thought, maybe I should try reading a few pages to see what I think of these books now. I have to say I didn’t even get to my goal of reading the first forty pages. It was enjoyable enough but not anything I now feel worthy of precious shelf space.
So why had I felt so attached? I understood at last it was only because I had had so much trouble finding the third volume in the trilogy. Somehow that effort had given those books a greater value in my mind. This insight made it easier for me to say goodbye, and I had learned an important lesson about myself and why I think I value some things. Now I know that I must question my motives, my feelings of attachment, all the time.
I’ve always struggled to the cenotaph, in good weather and bad, because I remember hearing about the young men who died in the mud in the first world war, and because I had a father whose entire life from the age of 22 was coloured by what happened in the second world war. When I was a child there were old men with squeaky voices, who much later I realized had been damaged by gas attacks in WW1. Now all the old men are gone, and their replacements are youth who have been damaged by the questionable involvements of the past few years. But they are still human beings who were harmed by war. We go to the cenotaph to remember the disgrace that war is, not its “glory.” and vow that we will do what we can to prevent it. “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” ― Edmund Burke
A little political tangent:
Remember Tommy Douglas’s story about the mice who kept electing cats to rule them? They kept switching between black cats and white cats. Until in a little place called Nova Scotia they finally elected mice to govern them. These governing mice were so concerned about re-election that instead of looking after their mice citizens as well as they could have, they began dressing up and pretending to be cats, so that they could be assured of keeping the “cat” vote (remember, this is a land of mice). Finally the mice had to go to the polls again, and by this time they were so confused by the dressed up mice, who were neither mice nor cats, that they returned to what they recognized, and elected cats again.
Intelligence is a fundamental quality of the universe.
People are waiting to be told what to think. There are the real people, the ones with clear vision who can teach the rest of us, lead us: not so much defending a cause as illuminating a way. The rest of us are sheep, waiting to be told what to think.
Then there are the evil ones, those who are not real, not visionary, but who have a certain skill in leading sheep to slaughter.
Thinkings 