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GREEN PARADISE LOST |
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6. Turning to Another Way In the ancient days a solemn council was called to consider the origin of death. Great men, movers of empires and corporations, assembled to debate the question. "Death came with our bodies," they said. "Our natural world, of which our bodies are a part, is full of death. Only our minds and spirits are immortal, akin to the gods. And that is why we sharpen our minds and toughen our spirits, and gird up the loins of our souls to be heroic, to project such a magnificent trajectory of a life-span that we conquer the ignominy of our beginnings in the blood and humanness of childbirth, and the dependence of childhood, as well as the humiliation of our endings in the weakness of old age and the blotting-out of death." As the men talked, they paced the floor and filled the air with their dreams of glory. Great martial adventures, great philosophical and theological systems, great scientific and technological advances, achievements of epic proportions were planned and executed with courage and strength and daring which surely would conquer the beginnings and the endings of man. "We are like gods," the men rhapsodized as they erected. "We are a little lower than the angels, and all other creatures who do not erect as we do, are below us and subject to us. All of nature itself, like the ground we walk upon, will reverberate to the majesty of our footprints upon the sands of time." But a funny thing happened as the men worked. Some of the vast heroic enterprises, instead of conquering death, began to cause it. Toxic substances, iron laws of economics, megaton killbacks, and blank-faced robot machines began to stalk the earth and "hunt for humans" like demented snipers of the rooftop. Benign Mother Nature turned on her children with murderous ferocity, slowly choking off the air and water which had flowed freely from her abused breasts. Men were cast back upon the despised dependence of their infantile memories. "This is intolerable!" the men cried out. "We cannot live as we desire. We cannot control the world and all that in it lies. If we live like this, we die and the world dies with us. But not to live like this, not to control and subdue the world, is still worse for us than death! What shall we do? Who shall we kill to make it right?" In the silence that followed, an old woman sitting in the corner knitting clothes for her grandchildren finally spoke. "You men live your lives in agonies of striving, you kill and take the world with you. And for what? You do not know who you are. Always you try to escape your bodies, to put down your flesh, to conquer nature, and where does it get you? He who cannot deal with his birth from a woman, cannot deal with his death. Life comes from death, and death is in life. They are all of a piece." The men stared at her in disbelief. What could this woman, this other-than-man, know of life or death? Only men cast their cosmologies out upon reality; their metaphors of dualism and hierarchy had etched the ontological skies for so long that they seemed embedded in truth itself. Could it be that there was another way to perceive? Another standing point? Could it be that erection itself had betrayed them into thinking linearly about everything? Could it be that they had missed the basic metaphor of life? "All right," the men taunted her, "you tell us a story. You tell us about the beginning and the ending, and about the meaning of the middle of life. You tell us." "I am not like you," the old woman said slowly. "I do not tell stories. I see visions. I see that life is not a line but a circle. Why do men imagine for themselves the illusory freedom of a soaring mind, so that the body of nature becomes a cage? 'Tis not true. To be human is to be circled in the cycles of nature, rooted in the processes that nurture us in life, breathing in and breathing out human life just as plants breathe in and out their photosynthesis. Why do men see themselves as apart from this, or above this? Is it that the natural reproductive processes surge so little through their bodies that they cannot feel their unity with nature in their blood and tissue and bones as women can? Or is it that they so envy and fear women for their more integral part in nature that they seek to escape from both women and nature into a fantasy world of culture which they themselves can control because they made it up?" The men roared in anger. "How dare you question the world which we have made, woman, you who were not made by God but made from our rib! We have given birth to you! How could we possibly think that we were born of you, or envy you, or fear you? It is against all rational thought!" But the old woman merely looked at them and said, "To be human is to be born, partake of life, and die. Life itself is the gift. It does not have to be wrenched out of shape, trying to deny both the borning and the dying. Women produce children, and they and the children die. But they know that it was good to have lived. Perhaps someday men too can rest upon the affirmation of being, and there find reassurance and an end to their ceaseless striving. Perhaps someday they shall come to know the circle which is the whole -- that which validates being -- without achieving, that which allows one to rest and stop running, that which accepts one as a person and not a hero. The sweet nectar of that whole awaits you in the precious flower of the Now, not in your dreams of glory. Perhaps, someday, men will find their humanity, and give up their divinity." The old woman had finished speaking and there was silence in the great council room. It was a time for silence. • • • It is time for a new cosmic vision -- a new understanding of human life in its home the earth. The American Indians had such an understanding, but we felt that it was primitive, as indeed we felt they were. But theirs was an organic vision of being human, partaking of both life and death, and living at home on their good earth:
Today is a very good day to die. • • •
When the hand of winter gives up its grip to the sun
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