Growing up I saw a lot of Wiley Coyote cartoons.  The coyote was sparring with the road runner and always ended up harmed in some way, and never caught the bird.  These days in the news we are hearing that coyotes are proving more successful, catching more and more prey. Around Gainesville, Florida where I live there are reports that they are killing outdoor cats, and while visiting Canada, the newspapers told of how two coyotes attacked and killed singer Taylor Luciow.  She had been hiking alone in a National Park when the two came upon her.  The singer’s mother today asks that the coyotes be spared, saying “We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature’s fold – it’s the wildlife’s terrain.” 

Coyotes, birds, cats, and humans all end up harmed in some way no matter how we live or die and this earth is all our terrain.  How then do we negotiate this complex arrangement we call life?  For me I see an example in the pain of this daughter and this mother.  We risk to be in beauty and keep our hearts open to one another, no matter the loss.  In this way we may dare to care.

This past week an article appeared about magpies grieving for their dead Mail OnLine.  I don't know if anyone can say what emotions another species is experiencing, let alone another of our own species, human.  By studying avian behavior, however, it does seem to me that birds do experience emotion, and part of those emotions may include sadness, confusion, and loneliness. When working as an avian veterinarian, I've seen parrots whose mates have died going into "mourning" by being quiet, still, and refusing to eat for a day or longer.  I imagine that bird brains, like our own, need to rewire after losing another individual that was so much a part of a social, cultural, and neural network.  This liminal time we humans know as grieving.

Once when a teenager  I saw a Northern Flicker grieving.  I was a teenager on an errand with my father driving when the car in front of us struck a flicker.  The mate that had been flying ahead, turned, and flew back to the ground to stand by his companion.  My father stopped the car to see if there was anything we could do.  There wasn't.  Her beauty was now stilled.   We could not believe that the male  bird did not fly away as we approached, his quiet stillness beyond words.  I could never really guess what my father was thinking or feeling, he being  rather stoic and undemonstrative.  On this occasion he had tears trailing down his face to see such sadness and loss, echoed in his own heart I do believe.

I never asked him what the dead bird meant to him, or the loyalty of her mate.  I did not ask the surviving flicker either.  Furthermore, science and cognitive ethology may never answer what magpies or parrots experience.   But whatever other experience, I do believe that emotions are the substance that makes up interspecies communion that sounds along the ages as echoes of loss and joy in our hearts.

 Norther Flicker

The confluence of articles on the front page of the "Local and State" section of the Gainesville Sun October 11th, 2009 tells us much about humanity. The news portrayed how we care for and admire plants, bats , and dogs, and also our own species as we muddle through our health care reform attempts.  Embedded on this page though were children chasing a pig, as intelligent and feeling as the dog, and a man cooking pigs and chickens, who feel, suffer, and have inherent worth and dignity comparable to the other species mentioned.   We are a remarkable species in how much we can care for those unlike us, and our ability to form relationships and see beauty around us is an incredible resource to enrich our lives and other beings on this planet.  It is a resource that is underused and undervalued.  My dream for the beloved community of all species is that we might grow our inclinations of concern and compassion in a more consistent and thoughtful fashion.   I  mourn that we do not examine our speciesist views that assign more value to some species, and hence treat other species with less respect.  I lament not just the immense suffering of other species, but of our own.  When we treat others as objects and not as beautiful beings we live in denial that we make tragic choices in our lives that negatively and painfully impact other species, environments, and human communities.  Because of this denial we perpetuate the misconceived notion that the desires of the powerful  naturally trump the flourishing of the less powerful, and this hurts us all.  For deep down, I believe that we all long for a beautiful world of peace and health for everyone, and if we can live according to these values, we would find greater joy and satisfaction.

(shortened version of this appeared as a letter to the editor 

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20091015/OPINION02/910149836/1077/OPINION?Title=Letters-to-the-Editor-Oct-15-2009)

    For me the "downside of spirituality" is that our various practices often do not tell us how to deal with the pain, hurt, and suffering that exists in the  world.  If spirituality means we are to open our hearts and minds to all that is, this means that we must make meaning not just of beauty, but of tragedy, and the tragic choices each of us makes, or that our communties and species makes.  How do we do this?

    I got a glimpse how one person answers this this past weekend.  I had the honor to officiate a godparenting ceremony outdoors at Payne's Prairie State Park. Before the ceremony began a park ranger walked up with a whip on his belt, "to control gators" he replied when asked about it's function.  He watched the ceremony and at the end he said:

   "I don't know if your bible is my bible. But my bible says 'to walk circumspectly.' Out here at night walking around under the stars you never know what is around the corner - lizards, snakes, gators, bison, horses, feral pigs.  There is much that can harm you and you've got to be careful.  I mean, I don't think we can stop what's coming, the bad stuff, but we can walk carefully to ward off some of it.  And as we go, we walk under those beautiful stars."

   So maybe spirituality helps us walk open to beauty and to tragedy, and my guess is that there is so much beauty that it might just be harder to make meaning of the incredible beauty than the immense tragedy." 

    How do you hold the pain? 

    Is it worth trying to grow your awareness of interconnection, to both beauty and tragedy when you can't stop the tragedy?

    How can you grow your sense of interconnection and meaning with others?

(Payne's Prairie)

(Brown Booby - photo by Aviceda)

What does that mean to begin again in love?  For me, love means never having to say you’re sorry.  I don’t think I’m the first to say that, or think it.  What love means to me is that we are in love with this awesome world – with God, with earth, with oceans and thunder, with family and friends.  It is being in love that leads us to make amends with others, to find ways to change our behavior and to care.

We don’t say we’re sorry or ask forgiveness because we or others are “bad.” That’s not the dream of our 1^st principle in Unitarian Universalism which is the inherent worth and dignity of all people.  We yearn for forgiveness because we want to be part of something special, something glorious; we want to be part of this awesome world.  If we can just awake to the beauty within that touches the beauty without we can find healing, atonement, be at one. 

Have you ever been held in that sweet embrace of wonder?  For me it’s swimming in fresh water spring or ocean, held in waves and flow as if in a womb or being born in beauty.  In that moment of purple eel below and brown booby flying above, everything is perfect, even my fumbling and bumbling.  In touching the source of awe and wonder, we forgive ourselves and each other.

Born out of awe and wonder, shorn of our ego’s pride, reborn in humble adoration, may we make our days glad together.

Download Rosh Hashanah 2009 sermon

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In celebration of International Talk Like a Pirate Day I facilitated a service on Piracy and Morality at the Unitarian Univeralist Fellowship of Gainesville.  The audio recording of the sermon follows below.

Let me lift up the issues of piracy regarding the nonhuman aspects of our communities.  If piracy means taking what belongs to others, often from the sense that “the world owes me a living,” where in your life do you feel that we are stealing from the earth and her beings?  What if we became Universal Pirates, and not just pirates following a code of ethics that serves individual needs or smaller community needs?  What if our every action was based on an orientation to the common good, to biodiversity, to sustainability, and to animal welfare (including humans)?  In this way I’d say let’s become pirates, matey, revolutionaries who take back what belongs to us all by giving back to what belongs to no one.