It was about as exciting a soccer game as I’ve ever seen. As a former player myself, I’m excited for the US side but more than concerned about the defeated Algerian squad (the soccer team and the “death” variety that will be shooting them). Being a radically fundamentalist Islamic nation, Algeria will not take their defeat at the hands of the most evil country on Earth lightly. Expect the coach to beheaded publicly (not live on ESPN but handled later with highlights on Sportscenter), the starting players to be kidnapped, shot, or shot then kidnapped. Or for the bench warmers, simple imprisonment and torture.
It could be worse. They could have their endorsement contracts nullified.
“God has communicated to us that there is a connection between the physical survival of the planet and whether we follow the command to be good stewards of the planet. We have to stop exploiting the Earth and start treating it as sacred.”
- Rabbi Michael Lerner
Here’s an outstanding and illuminating article from the Religion News Service on what motivates the world’s religious knuckleheads and right-wing wackos to claim natural disasters are God’s punishment for humanity’s sins i.e. Muslim clerics blaming promiscuous women for earthquakes and Russian Orthodox priests blaming gay sex for the volcanic eruption in Iceland. Bottom line: they do it to exploit people’s instinctive fear of Nature, enlist new recruits, and essentially, grow their businesses. They may be wackos- but it works every time.
In the same article are differing perspectives as to why spiritual exploiters and political fundamentalists alike demonize Nature and cite the normal, natural functions of the planet as bizarre and fearsome calamities somehow controlled by a benevolent, omnipotent wizard (if I told you that instead of a minister, you’d say I’m nuts). Mind you: it’s a wizard who loves us all endlessly but will destroy us all whenever He feels like it. The article’s perspectives also include insights into why the wackos do it: to make themselves look like they know something we don’t. Easy to do- when you simply make it up.
Most useful is the perspective that assumes God’s vengeance is for humanity’s environmental sins. I don’t believe it, but if I was a religious nut and had a radio or TV show, that’s the one I’d be screaming. Not Pat Robertson’s racist ravings about how Haiti was smitten by an earthquake for fighting slavery. Who’s the real sinner there, Pat?
Until now, I haven’t really thought about Earth Day today because, to me, every day is Earth Day. Unlike God, baseball, and curly fries, life can’t go on without Earth. Yet it is probably the one thing we take most for granted in our comparatively puny, insignificant lives. There’s also a lot of talk about what Earth Day is without a lot of action. People gather around trees, pick up a few plastic bottles in the park, go home and never think about it again until next April.
But I not only think about it every day. I try to do something new every day to make it better. I continue to augment my home and business’ renewable energy system, increase the amount I recycle without increasing the amount I consume. Today, I renewed my membership to the American Solar Energy Association and Green America. I drove to a lunch meeting and that’s it because I didn’t have to drive anywhere else.
Naturally, thinking as well as acting is important. If we just thought about how important the Earth is, then took a few simple steps to make it cleaner, maybe we wouldn’t treat it like dirt. Which of course, it also is.
Just as humans invented God, we also appointed ourselves in charge of everything including the planet on which we tenuously exist. Certainly, stewardship of Earth is a concept that makes a lot more sense than the previous one of ravaging our island home to exhaustion. But ownership of the Earth, as currently practiced by the human race, is quite a different concept. And as Earth as shown since the day it was formed, you can steward it all you want. But it cannot be owned.
So it is that a comparatively small volcano on a rocky mass in the north Atlantic has brought an entire continent’s air travel industry to a near-standstill. As flights struggle to run out of Europe due to the cloud of ash floating from the eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, we are forced to remember that Earth is a living, breathing, and ever-changing planet. It does what it does and every step, every move we “living things” make on it is at our peril.
Earthquakes great and small- from Tibet’s latest killer to Utah’s jostler yesterday- are also ways the Earth gently or not so reminds us who’s boss. Just read the USGS’ web site of earthquakes TODAY. It’s always been this way and probably always will be. As time has shown, the only thing humans can do to affect the Earth’s natural functions is make them worse. It takes a lot of human effort, ingenuity and self-respect, just to keep it from destroying us.
And the Earth as a living thing, by all evidence, has both the right and capability to do it.
Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment. Among the intellectual forerunners to be highlighted in Jefferson’s place: medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, Puritan theologian John Calvin and conservative British law scholar William Blackstone. Heavy emphasis is also to be placed on the founding fathers having been guided by strict Christian beliefs.
- One of the changes approved in Texas’ American history books
Texas exercises an undue amount of influence over American life by virtue of not only its geographical size and large population. Their loony “leaders” also believe they are so big, smart and right that everyone must believe as they do or suffer some sort of divine wrath or ass-kicking or both. The Texas state board of education’s heavy-handed, Christian-led revision of text books to reflect their politically-motivated versions of history and science is more revealing than repelling.
It of course tells me I should never believe anything that comes out of Texas. A perfect example is the Bush family who brought you “read my lips, no new taxes”, 9/11, weapons of mass destruction, and the worst 12 years of presidential abuse and incompetence in REAL American history. The board’s perverse illusion of an America founded on Christian values instead of freedom of religion and the REAL values stated in the Constitution is a lie- unless you also count slavery, oppression of women, and violent uprising against laws you just don’t feel apply to you. The list goes on.
What’s even scarier is that Texas’ influence is so strong, it dictates content in 80% of America’s text books. Twisted history spells a bad future for the growing number of Americans who are non-Christian, non-white, non-male and non-Texan. Sadly, it also tells me that it’s just not Texas’ white, Christian hierarchy that wants everyone to live in their sick and hateful fantasy world. There are enough other Americans who agree with them to support them, and who will never be happy until they drag the rest of us into their twisted, delusional kingdom of whatever.
“These are tough times. We, as legislators, live in a fishbowl down there. It’s hard to hide anything.”
- Utah Senate Majority Leader Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City
Yup, “tough times”, Scotty. Remember the good, old days when you could take lobbyist money, romp with teeny boppers, drive around drunk and not have to WORRY? Anti-Mormons, religious fanatics, and media watchers alike are in a feeding frenzy over one of Utah’s top politicians and an LDS church leader confessing to molesting a 15-year-old girl, paying her off, then getting the help of the church, corporate media, fellow legislators and others to cover up the whole thing. This is one place where the comments to articles about it are more interesting than the facts as they come to light. They tell the bigger story here.
Because the victim is an adult now and has decided $150,000 wasn’t enough to stay silent forever, it begs the question “Why wasn’t there an investigation?” especially when the incident was reported by the victim to the LDS church but apparently never reported to the police by either party. There’s evidence local media also knew about the incident but didn’t report it even once.
It also is bizarre that Kevin Garn, the perpetrator, makes his confession in front of all his colleagues in the legislature with his “good wife” sitting beside him, after the statute of limitations for any crime possibly committed runs out, and receives hugs and a standing O. An incredibly disturbing show of support for someone who might otherwise be doing time. Truly, exploitation of women is cultural out in Utah. But this was way beyond creepy. It’s as if Garn was being congratulated for getting away with it.
Which begs the final question: how many other Utah politicians are doing the same thing? If they’re that sympathetic with Garn, you know what their mentality is: it’s the GIRL’S FAULT. But if it is, why must it be HIDDEN. If they’re finding it all out from Garn, you know they either didn’t investigate him deliberately, didn’t care about the victim, or are even more ignorant than their crazy, social-engineering legislation (though there’s already lots of evidence to confirm that).
We’ve already seen institutional abuse inside religious corporations with the Catholic church’s priest-boy abuse scandal. We know these monoliths should not be trusted regardless of their power, wealth and self-appointed moral superiority. Combined with the state senate’s leader resigning earlier in the session for a DUI, the continuing defeat of any campaign or legislative ethics reform, the ongoing contempt for voters by government leaders, and the meddling of the LDS church in the affairs of another state’s social issues- California’s Prop 8 banning homosexual marriage- it’s clear that Utah’s leaders are out of touch with morality as well as reality while trying to tell the residents of Utah and the rest of the world how to live.
“Chile can do things right, Haiti defenders argue, because it’s more developed. Wrong. It’s the other way around: Chile is more developed because it’s doing things right.”
- Tim Padgett, Time Magazine
Why did Chile sustain fewer fatalities and damage than Haiti even though Chile’s earthquake was 500 times stronger? Because they knew it was going to happen someday and their government and business communities made the preparations necessary to ensure their survival when the inevitable happened.
So when environmental critics, climate change deniers, institutionalized polluters like coal and oil companies refuse to clean up and prevent their messes, fight environmental regulation, fight renewable energy and conservation efforts- THEY ARE LIKE HAITI.
When companies and governments take unilateral and/or cooperative conservation and protective measures, work together to protect communities, don’t fill in wetlands, dump dangerous chemicals into oceans or public water supplies, or develop real estate in environmentally sensitive areas, THEY ARE LIKE CHILE.
And don’t tell me the destruction in either country is God’s will. It’s just more proof that Earth simply does what it does and humans neglect this natural randomness at their peril. If it’s anything connected to religion, it’s proof that as humans need to protect themselves from Nature, we need to PROTECT OURSELVES FROM GOD. Just ask the Canaanites and every other society God supposedly wiped out not because they were evil but because- well, because he felt like it. Haiti and Chile are two of the most devout Christian nations in the world. See how well that worked out?
Scanning the volumes of information that counts as news, it’s rare I find something as unique, meaningful and touching as this story about Vietnamese fishermen giving last rites to a dead whale. This form of honor is as old as life on Earth- older than God really (humans invented him just a few thousand years ago). Native Americans routinely honored the beasts they killed for food and if you want to see modern animal worship in Western culture, visit a PetSmart or watch Animal Planet.
Why leaders of the white, American Christian conglomerate insist that destroying Earth and its inhabitants (including humans) for our amusement and comfort is “God’s will” escapes me. But if you want to see people who understand how humans and Nature are inescapably related, apparently- and ironically- you must leave the U.S. and go to Vietnam.
I spent my entire life looking for a place I loved and felt connected with. I couldn’t really explain this need as a child so I set out to find out why. I read books about religion, philosophy, technology and other “related” subjects for decades looking for justification of my decidedly unspiritual career in news and TV and what connection, if any, it had with my quest. I watched cerebral documentaries and feature films exploring life’s persistent questions (hence, my love of Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Charlie Kaufman and Woody Allen). I didn’t realize until 2005 when I was living and studying in Boston that my spiritual search had its roots and rewards in Nature.
I’d found solace and connection briefly in places like Colorado and Vermont but my greed and ambition overwhelmed my instincts and common sense. When I found “it” again here in Utah, I had a difficult time explaining to friends and family that it had nothing to do with religion, politics, people or economics: the things most people feel are most important. Now, this New York Times Magazine article helps do that for me. It covers a number of aspects of “ecopsychology” and other trippy terms. More important, it shows that I’m not as strange as I or other people would think and, at the least, I’ve merely been doing what’s right for me.
Most important, it puts into sharper perspective the search WE ARE ALL ENGAGED IN, regardless of our artificial obsessions, for happiness, comfort and love. Through understanding this, we might better understand and nurture our natural heritage and instincts, and not only all get along better. We could create a better planet for our children and theirs to come. And instead of suffering hospitalization and fear of death, when our bodies give out, we will REALLY know that whether we’re burned, buried or chopped up for parts, we truly are returning home AND going to Heaven.
