4 posts tagged “global warming”
BE FRUITFUL AND PROSPER
“Why pray for rain?” a neighbor asked last week, learning of my latest writing project—Rainmaker’s Prayers Anthology. “What we need is a sun dance.” Frost covered her garage roof as we stood bundled in sweats, boots and jackets. In our
Oregon coast maritime climate showers are the norm. Through the coastal fog, the sun resembled a pallid gray, forty-watt bulb.
Yet, each day I’ve noticed that our celestial source rises in its arc, a little higher, a little more southerly, sometimes, even casting its warm rays through my window, over this keyboard and onto my welcoming hands. “Blessed be Apollo-Helios! Blessed be Vesta!” In my practice of honoring the spirit within life, I use Greek and Roman mythological names to greet the sun.
Early Egyptians recognized the connection between the human world and the elemental world, calling non-physical intelligence, “neters.” The Hopi people of
Northern Arizona call nature gods “kachinas.” Pueblo Indians of New Mexico honor and celebrate Corn Woman and Butterfly Maiden. Many indigenous tribes dress up and reenact the dance of a deity while in our western culture, on Halloween, we become superman and space men or impersonate goblins and ghouls.
Last Wednesday, despite blue skies and sunshine an icy wind blew in from the north. Having lived in Alaska, thirty miles above the Arctic Circle, I know the feel of an arctic chill. I’d just transplanted some seedlings—sugar peas, spaghetti squash, naturisms and coreopsis. Then I carried trays of kale and butter-lettuce seedlings from their window perch inside my cottage to the garden table outside. I hoped that the sprouts, showing first leaves, would soon strengthen in the sun.
Home late from a twelve-hour caregiving job, I had dishes to wash, bills to pay and the following day’s commitments to line up. I was in bed, lights out, when I remembered my fragile seedlings, still outside. “Oh no.” I was too tired and the night was too cold to get up and venture into the wind.
The next morning frost whitened the top of my car and ice coated the windshield. In pj’s and slippers, I rushed out to the seedling trays and inspected the miniature leaves. Tiny moisture baubles covered their green tendrils. With my thumb I gently brushed the wet leaves and felt that the seedlings were frost-free. “Thank you, Dear Ones!” I spoke aloud.
While transplanting, I’d called on the Overlighting Devas of my garden, and of each vegetable and flower and, I had asked the Nature Spirits to protect and strengthen the young plants. O.K. so talking aloud to my plants might look foolish.
But, through conscious communication with nature spirits, gardeners at both Findhorn in Scotland and Peralandra in Virginia have created amazing results. A simple recognition of nature spirits aligns the gardener with the energy of stewardship, kinship and co-creation.
“Be fruitful and prosper,” I’d said as I’d pressed new earth around their roots. This is my silent prayer for loved ones and kin—leafed creatures, two-legged, four-legged, creepy crawlers and winged ones. It works. Twice now, each of my plants has survived a hard frost. My garden has become a reflection of spirit.
COMMENTS? FEEDBACK? QUESTIONS? email me at
shinanbarclay [at] gmail dot com
rainmakers2007 [at] yahoo dot com
WHO’S POLLINATING?
“Wear something sexy,” my 74-year-old jitterbug partner writes, reminding me of the big band dance this Sunday. Although I’m a woman of several personas, my “femme fatale” costume has been gathering moss and has less motivation for me now, than sleep had for an awakened Rip Van Winkle.
“Wanna pollinate?” I use to smile at my husband in my earth-woman prime. But now, another kind of pollination dominates my thoughts. Our friends the bees are in trouble.
The silencing of bees strikes terror into my heart. News reports, of the disappearance of millions of bees, have me emailing biologists and calling lobotomists. The biologists give me a scientific take on the environmental disaster while the lobotomists share information on how to sever an apparent imbalance in the cerebral synapses that cause one planetary species
to exterminate their fellow species. Who would create a brain-numbing, bee-killing insecticide?
Then, amidst bee, biologist and big band emails, I click on a set of photos sent by a feminist friend. The images represent actions taken by a variety of enraged women whose personal pollinator went amiss.
I’m shocked to see several large axes impaled into the shiny metal
of a new jaguar. Another photo is of a small plane flying over a huge crowd at an outdoor baseball game; behind the airplane, a sign says: “xxx has a tiny dick.” The next image of a freeway billboard, reads like a giant telegram; the womanizing “slime-ball” husband is named and it’s noted that his devious deeds are on videotape.
Why not put some of this righteous rage to work for the well being of other pollinators—BEES—and help mitigate our crimes against the planet?
Postscript: Since writing this blog, a biologist informed me that honey bees are an alien, invasive species while Mason bees are indigenous. Also, a writer friend, Carolyn, has happily adopted a bee hive, placing that under her apple tree and, our local county extension office has offered a workshop in bee keeping. Every state has a bee keepers organization. Google: Beekeepers Association
Comments? email: rainmakers2007 [at] yahoo dot com
or shinan.barclay [at] gmail dot com
SPIDER RESCUE
A personal narrative
Early dawn, I stumbled to the bathroom and found a flat, brown spider scrambling around the bottom of the sink. It wasn’t the usual oval gray, daddy-long-legs whose wispy webs wave across the ceiling, curtain rods and windowsills of my cottage. It was a hobo spider.
“Well, Miss Arachnid,” I said, watching the rhythmic tap of her limbs, “Did you fall into the sink or crawl up the drain?” Yes, I’m an eccentric who talks to spiders.
My visitor’s mouth appendages, “pedipalps,” resembled both pronged forks and pincher claws—useful tools for nibbling my flesh. But with its claw-like mouth paws, the spider is busy munching gooey green toothpaste; much like my friends eating basil-pesto pizza—heads bent, lips abutting cheese, finger tentacles shoveling in mushrooms, pepperoni and sausage.
“Do you want to go back down the drain?” I question the creature. I’m rarely this chatty at 6 a.m., but I want to help. My spider is an amputee—four legs on one side, three on the other, one limb lost perhaps in her efforts to escape the slippery basin.
“Shall I play God and send a deluge?” No answer. To avoid the croak and reincarnate option, I decide not to brush my teeth and let the spider be. I suspect life choices for arachnids differ from those for Homo sapiens. I’ve read that by the time a human being makes conscious choices about life and death, he or she has reached a transcendent or enlightened state.
I know nothing about the spiritual evolution of arachnids. A biologist friend once told me “all organisms gather information and make choices.” He hopes everything will evolve to the place of doing no harm.
Where do spiders come from, I wonder? A mythology book told me that long ago, a Greek woman named Arachne challenged the Goddess Athena to a weaving contest. The goddess dealt with the dare by turning the woman into a spider, and since then there’s been a
worldwide escalation of the eight-legged weavers. Although spiders live everywhere, my slice of the Oregon rainforest is prime habitat.
By eight o’clock I really needed to brush my teeth. However, the spider still crawled about in the sink. “OK, Miss, this is your relocation phase.” I scoffed at myself for the time I spend rescuing spiders, worms, snails and slugs. Do I have some neurotic save-the-critters compulsion? Where, I wonder on the Karpmann triangle of victim-rescuer-perpetrator does human-insect intervention play out?
From past experience, I knew that this spider could return from its lair and bite me in my sleep. I’ve also learned that by asking nature for guidance, a co-creative safety is offered to me and to the creature in question.
In the kitchen I grabbed a glass and an index card—my bug trapping equipment. Back at the bathroom sink, I cupped the glass around the spider and slid the card underneath, allowing time for the critter to scramble onto the flat surface. One shaky move from me and the arachnid could bite. Its mouth-claws appeared eager. Finally, I raced the captured creature to the door. Outside, on the porch, I tipped the glass and Miss Arachnid slid into the hydrangeas.
“Where will you go?” I asked. “To a new home? A new mate? Or will you return, called back by instinctual longing to lollygag in the bottom of my sink?” Spiders rarely give up their habitat.
Driving to work I wondered if I had left the spider in the sink, would it have acquired new climbing skills? Would its survival need, over evolutionary time, have helped the species of arachnids develop suction cups on their feet, like spider man, thus enabling future spiders to leap out of slippery sinks?
Had this spider been caught in the web of my life, I wondered, or were we both part of a universal network, what Gregg Braden calls the “Divine Matrix.” Friends think I spend too
much time thinking about such things and that I should worry instead about global warming or the war in Iraq. But I believe the microcosm affects the macrocosm. When we offer compassion on a small scale, ripples of kindness flow out to the larger world.
COMMENTS? email Shinan at rainmakers2007 [at] yahoo dot com or
shinan.barclay [at] gmail dot come
Look forward to these topics in our forthcomming anthology.
CONTENTS:
Prayer: “Communion with the divine is a deeply personal and mysterious experience…Some chant their prayers and some dance their prayers and some paint or perform or swim their prayers.” S. Anderson & P Hopkins, The Feminine Face of God.
Ceremony: “Ceremony—the harmonious blend of symbols—invites a confluence of spiritual rhythms, universal principles and archetypal forces.” Mircea Eliade, Dictionary of Symbols.
Sacred Space: “The sacred is not the space itself, but what happens there.” David Morgan, Encyclopedia of Religion II.
Grounding: “Forces greater than the intellect guide evolution. When we consciously align with them we harmonize with the process.” J. Lotterhand.
Connection: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” John Muir.
Indigenous Wisdom: “If you love something enough, it will talk with you.” George Washington Carver.
Co-creation “‘Co-creative science’ involves our consciously establishing a co-creative partnership with nature.” Albert Schatz, Ph.D. Preface, MAP II.
Tools: “This earth is a shared adventure. Healing begins with ceremony. Each human has contracted agreements with many others, seen and unseen.” Ariana Houle, Conversations with Nature.
Ripples: “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver.
Celebration: “In short, you make your life meaningful. You decide to make your life count for something.” Eric Maisel, Coaching the Artist Within.
Resources: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead.
