Category: Animal Life

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

jdtabor

And death shall have no dominion

Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Does God Care for Hummingbirds?

jdtabor

I have a group of older friends who go back in our various mutual associations for over fifty years.  We regularly write one another via email of this, that, and the other. Totally spontaneous. Our topics range from the sublime to the mundane, the personal to the galactic. We particularly seem to get into intersections between spirituality and science–along the lines of the topics and questions Robert Kuhn has been exploring for 20 years on his PBS program, Closer to Truth, namely “Cosmos, Consciousness, and Meaning” [1]Kuhn has provided an incredible “Content Guide” for endless browsing here.. We all were brought together in our younger years by our interests in biblical studies–several of us pursued Ph.Ds, but our exchanges are more personal than formally academic.

Recently one of the group wrote the rest of us something that that really stood out to me and I have thought about deeply since receiving it:

That quality of mercy you all show to sentient beings was not apparent in the material universe for 14 billion years.  Recently it began to emerge. Now in you all, it flows generously.  You give me hope and faith in Future.

This observation was in response to an experience of one person in our group who lives up in Washington where the recent cold snap put many good creatures “great and small” in danger. Many were unprepared for the sudden plunge from lovely sunny days to a sudden deep freeze. He related to us his desperately successful attempts to save the hummingbirds in his yard who had not migrated. We all found it so very moving.

He and his wife attempted to construct a bit of shelter, trying various alternatives from duct wrap, bubble wrap, and Xmas lights strung around the feeder with aluminum foil wrapped to preserve the heat.  So far, he reports the aluminum foil seems to be the most effective. While they were doing this act of mercy several of these amazing creatures landed on his shoulders–and even his wrists and fingers. He was awestruck at their desperation but was able to save most of them, though one he found dead on the ground the next morning. If you know little of hummingbirds—these most amazing of all creatures—the Wiki article “Hummingbird” will totally blow your mind.

So does “God” care for birds–as Jesus famously affirmed about the One he called his “Heavenly father” who knows even a single sparrow? If one has a classic view of theism–it seems not, given the violence of nature, “red in tooth and claw,” and the unspeakable suffering we humans have brought upon each other and the billions of creatures we cruelly “manage” for our purposes. We appear to be perfectly “free” to wreak whatever suffering we choose on others, limited only by our power. And that is not to mention our unimaginably violent and vast universe–which operates by what we call “physical laws,” that seem dead our values. Such a “God” seems either indifferent or unable to assure mire peaceful and harmonious outcomes. But if one holds more to what the philosophers call “Process theism,” as I do, in which the emergent qualities of compassion and love are expressing themselves consciously and willfully in sentient beings–then even such tiny acts of kindness, as my dear friend showed to these hummingbirds, are an undeniable reflection of such realities in our cosmos. Thus “God” is not so much “outside” our universe pulling puppet strings, as the core ground of our being. As the ancient Greek poet Epimenides expressed things,  we “live and move and have our being” within that Force of all Forces that the Hebrews called self-expressive “Being.” That great I AM. And those acts of kindness we show to one another, and to our fellow creatures “great and small” on the planet, are reflective of our better angels.

Painting by Angelika Wagar

References

References
↑1Kuhn has provided an incredible “Content Guide” for endless browsing here.

Predators and Prey

jdtabor

I have become convinced over my tiny “blink of an eye” three-score and ten years on this pale blue dot that our natural world, as it has unfolded through time, most acutely reflects the dichotomy of  Predator and Prey–especially at the higher levels–those creatures, humans included, with brains and central nervous systems. Humans especially, and here I am thinking about individual psychological traits, are one or the other–not a mixture of the two.

This goes beyond the scientific understanding of our 3rd/Reptile brain–from which all of us certainly operate in a hard-wired fashion, given our instinctual drives, reflected in self-preservation–food, sex, and aggressive self-protection and promotion.

With our fellow inhabitants of the planet whose brains operate at a more instinctual “3rd brain” level, there is no moral judgment to be made. They are what they are, from the cute little kitten torturing the hapless wounded mouse, to the lion devouring the tiny lamb. But we humans have a choice, as self-conscious, self-determining “actualizations” of reality operating in a more free and adaptable arena. We call it social and individual “morality” and it is surely culturally determined in its manifestations, but not wholly so. Not at the deep level of individual Self.

Predators are those who push, manipulate, and appropriate as much as possible for the individual and extended Self. Violence, aggression, greed, and power are their hallmarks, even if such behavior is on a micro-level. Prey are their object–as one must conquer and oppress to obtain this power. Those who are Prey of course have their own system of individual and social values, chiefly the internal ethic of “Do No Harm.” Of course all give lip service to the virtues of giving, sharing, loving, and caring–but Predators do the opposite while claiming to reflect such. Prey, however, are not weak and defenseless. They are in fact “fiercely” powerful and strong in behalf of those in their care–and I mean in an extended planetary sense.

Who has the insight to do a bit of self-classification? It is tough and requires introspection and meditation on the self and the paths we have taken with their resulting consequences.

In terms of which side “wins” or dominates, the balance is overwhelmingly in favor of the Predators. After all, there is nothing stopping them from their behavior, even if it results in untold suffering and sorrow for others, and the destruction of our planet. But I am one who holds to the simple core authentic teachings of Jesus and the GENESIA vision of Isaiah the Prophet–and I take them as “apocalyptic” and “eschatological” in the long arch of history–not magical mysteries from heaven:

Happy are you poor, you who weep, you who are hungry, you who are persecuted–yours is the kingdom of God–not in heaven but on earth. Yes, the meek shall inherit the earth!

On these I stand, God help me, I can do no other…

The Day the Earth Died (Almost)

jdtabor

Of his discovery, DePalma said, “It’s like finding the Holy Grail clutched in the bony fingers of Jimmy Hoffa, sitting on top of the Lost Ark.”

The current issue of The New Yorker (April 8, 2019 print edition) has a “grippingly sobering” article by Douglas Preston titled “The Day the Dinosaurs Died.” No matter what you know of or have heard about this “event,” if we can minimize it with such a vapid characterization, one should read Preston’s account for its sheer art of narration–not to mention the remarkable discoveries of DePalma.

For we North Americans it hits “home” in a particularly disturbing way, since we are close to “Ground Zero” for the most cataclysmic disasters in our earth’s “recent” living history–namely the Yucatán peninsula. Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” should be watched and listened to monthly if not weekly by our  homo stultus species, and yet it comes across like a peaceful wave of nostalgic longing compared to the utterly TERRIFYING cosmic violence and chaos of our Solar “System.” Freud, Norman O. Brown, Becker, and Koestler, all had it right. We desperately “long to count” in our tiny little socially constructed perceptual “worlds” projected onto a “physical” reality that seems utterly dead to our longings and dreams. And yes, frightening “things happen” outside these Gates of Eden in the Land of Nod that yields only thorns and thistles. Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. Ah, but the Serpent me beguiled and I did eat. The Bible tells me so.

 

The End of All Things Is At Hand–Not From Heaven but On Earth

jdtabor
Is it not ironic that it might well turn out that we, the species who longs for a dramatic “end of all things at hand” ends up bringing it about through our own mismanagement of our good earth and its abundant resources. “Tending the garden” is fine but we have unleashed such disruption we well might be past the tipping point. Joseph Romm’s new book, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, is the best I have seen in terms of a readable “just the facts please” report. And he largely leaves out factory farming, and methane gas, and deforestation in the Amazon, which some argue is a larger factor than our burning of fossil fuels–see the film “Cowspiracy” (it is on Netflix) and you will never think the same about eating meat that is so produced.