Feeling Angry, Feeling Guilty,, and Then Feeling Grateful

 A room-full of us watched an earth-shaking movie on Saturday. It's called "Regenerating Life". We didn't really know what to expect, but it had been highly recommended so when we entered the room, we probably all thought it would be at least somewhat educational. What we didn't realize is that it would totally shake us up, in a good way. It is almost 3 hours long, and that's a long time to sit. But most of us stayed through the whole thing, and as soon as it was finished, people started asking if they could see it again. There was so much information that we wanted to hold onto. So I am now figuring out when we can re-show it. You have to rent this one from Prime, but it's worth the cost!!

When I left the group on Saturday, I was feeling glad that I'd picked a good movie. And I was full of the insights and discoveries the movie shared: scientific breakthroughs that were new to all of us, perspective on the recent history of our species in the world, ways to start mending the damage. It felt pretty good then. But as the day wore on and the next one came, I began feeling angry. And guilty. I'm not sure what the anger was about, but the guilt was because it was MY species that made this unraveling of the planet's health happen. As our group was watching the film, we laughed at all the old news clips of things in our past that showed how ignorant we were of our effect on Mother Earth. In a subject this tough, it was good to have humor included. But as I let all this sink in, I realized that I am just as much to blame as anyone else. We have all been raised in a culture that does not acknowledge our essential connection with the earth. All but indigenous cultures, that is. Most of us grew up believing that humans were the ruler of all. We had the whole world to use. We could do whatever we wanted to make us comfortable, and anything that made money was good. Most of us were taught by well-meaning people in schools, our families, our churches, and the messages might have seemed good then. We tried to be good people. We tried to follow the rules that our cultures taught us. 

One of the things that probably made me angry yesterday was that our species has been incredibly blind! How could we have set ourselves above everything else? How could we have not noticed how our actions were hurting the rest of the earth? Century after century, we have raped the land with no thought about how that was affecting the whole. We have cut down forests, only thinking of the nice wood we would get, or the view we'd like. If we could have paid attention to the indigenous tribes who did have a connection with the whole of life, we might have learned something. But what did we do to them? We killed them and took their land! My anger was growing by the time I got to Friends Meeting yesterday. I sat on the wooden bench in the meetinghouse and tried to come to terms with my guilt. No, it was not all my fault, this huge disconnection with the truth of our dependence on the earth's health. It was not all my fault that for many hundreds of years, my species set themselves up as the supreme rulers of the planet. Never noticing what effect that was having on the family of life. Never realizing that we humans are just one tiny part of the whole, and our health is directly connected with the health of everything else. Never wanting to believe that we are all connected. When I left the meetinghouse, I was still angry and still riddled with guilt.

My ukelele group meets every Sunday afternoon, and although I was still angry and guilty, I made myself go. Someone asked me how I was, and I said: not so great...   But when we started singing and playing these beautiful songs, and saying these beautiful words, my heart started to relax. I'd forgotten that humans can do beautiful things too. Like writing music, writing sustaining words, singing together in harmony. It was an uplifting time, as always, to be in the center of all this music we were creating. When I got home (which is only a few steps away from the common house where our ukelele group meets), I wasn't sure what to do. I felt like spewing all my anger out in a blog post, but thought better of it. Instead I watched a Netflix series about the evolution of our planet, from the earliest days on. I'm not sure why I chose that, probably because it was the first one in the line of options, and I didn't want to watch something that reminded me of the follies of our species. If the last game of the World Series had been on, I probably would have avoided it because it emphasized competition. In fact, I was looking at everything we do with skeptical eyes. So watching something about the planet without humans seemed a good choice.

And it couldn't have been a better choice, for it made me step back and see from a far view. One species after another, over billions of years, became dominant and then disappeared. Extinction after extinction happened. There was competition back then too. And each time the planet got into trouble, something happened that gradually let it recover, usually with a new mix of life. I realized that early humans were not really different than all that other life. And as we evolved, we found that we could do so many things. Our opposible thumb helped our hands become dextrous and we began to build. We had a pretty good brain, and it enabled us to do all sorts of things that previous animals hadn't managed to do. Really, I couldn't find a lot of fault with these early humans. Somehow we've just gotten off the right path in the last few decades. And it is catching up with us. The current political situation in this country shows how far off the right path we've come. 

So I ended my evening with the question: what is my role in this topsy-turvy world? Do I give up, stay home and watch TV and eat delicious food in my recliner, and wait until the world ends? Part of me had been feeling like things were pretty hopeless, and I was only one tiny part of the whole. What could I do that made any difference? But then I remembered how I'd felt sitting with my ukelele group, making beauty out of our voices and our simple instruments. We can all choose to do something positive, no matter how small. And if lots and lots and lots of people do that, thousands, millions, it can turn a page on our past follies. Yes, I'm in for the duration, however that evolves. And it's a good thing that I wrote this blog post now instead of yesterday! We're together in this, everything is connected at deep levels. I think of the trees in the forest, where trees support each other, send help where needed, stay in tune. I think I'll go up to my favorite tree today and ask her to help me to learn that behaviour in my own life. She's lived through a lot and is a good teacher, if only I will listen.