Weather and memory

 The weather for a large part of Jan/Feb was dry and the worries turn to summer fires, dust bowl quality droughts, and the well water running out. Then the snow comes and the cold.... with it comes the thoughts that maybe this cold snap will go on forever. Now the rains return and the cry is that our spring will be a deluge rather than a delight. Do you really remember what the weather was like two months ago, a month ago? Our memory doesn't serve us very well for some things and for others maybe it serves us too well.

Our brains/minds are not large enough for us to see the big picture. We might grock the concept of climate change, at least the theory of it. But it is so big that we don't really see the big picture. We can't really comprehend what it is like for Bangladesh to be underwater, let alone a coastal resort town to be a modern day Atlantis.

It seems that most people are focused on what is in front of them. There are the really big thinkers and actors of the world: Martin Luther King, Ganhdi, Sojourner Truth, Joan Baez, Simon Bolivar... we have some great people of our lives who have seen beyond the surface and into the depths of humanity. But most of us don't see the herbicides and pesticides that seep into the soil and into our waterways and into the fatty tissue of salmon and birds. Cruising the aisles of Wal-Mart, Costco, or 7-11 we don't see the sweat of the world's poor in the gadgets that we buy. When we buy the flowers for Valentines day we don't see the acreage in Colombia (that grow the majority of flowers for the world) and the cost of air travel to get the rose or carnation to the desk. We don't see below the surface and I wonder anymore if that isn't a rarity to see beyond our village, tribe, and family. We see our food, our comfort, and our children's safety.

We may have the capacity to see more expansively than we currently do, but do we have the willingness? Do we have the courage to not buy that plastic container that is on sale, to stop eating large amounts of feedlot beef that is harmful to our body and to the land? From where do we draw the strength and the courage to say: no more!  Is it courage? Is it not knowing the benefit to us by putting off the short term benefit?

One of my favorite songs is sung by Melissa Etheridge: What happens tomorrow? Some lines from the song: If not now, when? If not today, then? What happens tomorrow? What happens tomorrow? If you become the change, you want to see change. What happens tomorrow? What happens tomorrow?

Sunday I was digging to expose the hatch to our septic tank. With each shovel full I kept finding more and more worms and night crawlers. This large concentration of  annelids was just below the surface in this rich, rich soil. What keeps people from looking below the surface? Some say it is laziness, ignorance, or lack of caring. Sometimes I think our ability to not remember the weather is just one indication of how we will never be able to dig ourselves out of this huge environmental mess we are in. On the first Earth Day, in a Marine Biology class we were listening to Jacques Cousteau say that it already too late to reverse the damage to the earth. Maybe part of the problem is that so many people have cried wolf for so long that people don't hear it anymore.

There is the part of me that wants to put in the garden, solar panels, and water storage and go into long term meditation retreat because I don't think that there is anyway to reverse the trend. But then there is the belief that it is one more step forward. That each and everyone one of us ordinary people need to take one more step forward. After all, if not us, then who?