Green Tribe of Belonging

 I'm sorry that this is yet another post about the worrisome circumstances in which we earth-dwellers find ourselves. I would rather be writing about something engaging like seagull eggs or earthworm castings! But the war in Ukraine has pushed me over the threshold, and I can't help wondering how we will be able to overcome all our obstacles to survival, given climate change, a deadlocked congress, wars, our philosophy of domination, valuing money before anything else, narrow thinking, and reluctance to change. So I've been delving deeply into things like regeneration and recovery as well as social, economic and governmental systems. I've also been reading about homo sapiens, what we were like when we first emerged from our long-ago ancestors, how we are different from other animals, how we have developed over the ages, what abilities we have. That last research was enlightening and somewhat calming. Despite all the warring factions in our populations today, we have so ...

 I've been reading about the environmental costs of war, and thinking about our human tendency to get into explosive conflicts. It would seem that on our planet, there is almost always a war going on. And just now the dramatic situation between Russia and Ukraine is taking center stage in our newscasts and maybe in our consciousness as well. It is hard for us to take in the human suffering happening, the injuries, the grieving for loved ones lost and the loss of a whole way of life. And of course war takes a terrible toll not only on the people who get killed in these conflicts, but also on the environment. Soil and water are polluted with toxic substances, animals are killed, landscapes are destroyed, forests are flattened. It is ironic to me that countries like the U.S. work hard to focus on remedies for threats like climate change, laying down regulations and policies, yet there is an exception made for the whole military establishment. It's kind of like we want to care for ...

 Remember in one of the early Star Wars movies, Luke, Han Solo and Obiwan Kanobe were flying across the galaxies? Obiwan was teaching Luke about the Force. And then suddenly he had to sit down and hold his head. It was because of a huge disruption in the Force, and it shook him up. Then they found out that the bad guys had blown up a whole planet. That's how the world seems to be feeling to me right now. The country of Ukraine is being assaulted by Russia, thousands of humans killed, all because someone wants to have possession of that country. And it is disrupting the Force in the world. If a butterfly's wings across the ocean have an affect on us all, something as huge and violent as the current situation in the Ukraine shakes our world, whether we are aware of it or not. For in truth, we are all connected. Most countries and people seem to be in opposition to this forceful take-over. And I am hoping that maybe it takes a situation like this, high profile and dramatic, that w...