“Beyond Blaming and Agonizing”: Lovingkindness Practice in Ordinary Life

Last month, I reflected on the emerging research on the human capacity for violence and empathy: 

“… it is a question about the overall shape of our lives and our society. Will they be characterized by violence, relying on our capacities for coercion and aggression? Or will they be characterized by healthy social bonds, relying on our capacities for wisdom and compassion? Which action will be exceptional, violence or empathy? Which action will be normal, violence or empathy? We can understand both paths as strategies to protect ourselves, and recognize that both possibilities live within us. But the research also points out that these are diverging paths. We nourish one path at the expense of the other. … Each decision we make is something of a crossroads. Collectively and personally, our decisions answer the question: which direction do we choose?” 

As Wide as the World: Cultivating Wisdom and Compassion in the face of Violence and Coercion

When we lived in Cambodia, one of our favorite places to visit was  the Phnom Tamao Zoological Park and Wildlife Rescue Center. And although people sometimes called it the zoo, its mission focuses on addressing the illegal hunting and wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. Phnom Tamao is something more like a hospital and rehabilitation center, caring for injured, orphaned, or ill wild animals that were often rescued from wildlife trafficking. (As you might guess, many of these animals are critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species.) Animals that can be fully rehabilitated are released back into their natural habitat (more than 8,000 animals were released from 2013 to 2018). Those that are no longer able to survive in the wild and need continued care remain at the Rescue Center.  We had the good luck to know one of the folks who coordinated the Free the Bears program there, a program that not only works to rescue and care for endangered sun bears, but also to transform cultural attitudes about sun bears, giving the bears, and their ecosystems, the best chance to thrive.

“Nothing Humane”: A Lament and Plea for Rights-Respecting Border Policies

Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza traveled to the United States earlier this year. He was 17 years old; he was a dedicated athlete who had dreams of being a soccer player. But he was from Honduras, and he wanted better medical care than he could access in his home country. A cousin in Tampa, Florida, agreed to be his sponsor in the United States, and everything was in order when he left Honduras on April 25. He even made sure to pack enough medication to last three months, just in case. Ángel entered the US on May 3 at the Reynosa, Mexico crossing, and Immigration and Customs officials placed him on a plane to Florida on May 5. His next stop was the Gulf Coast shelter, operated by Jewish Family and Children Services.  But on the morning of May 10, 2023, staff found that Ángel had died in his sleep, evidently from a seizure. 

“Abundance, Regeneration, and Healing”: Permaculture and Spiritual Practice

I love walking in the Ozarks, and there is a special place in my heart for glades and hillsides with limestone outcrops. Even after all these decades,  every single time I stop to take one of countless photos, or sit and read a book, I pause in wonder that I am on the floor of what used to be an inland sea, the result of millions of years of marine animals living and dying in a shallow sea. (In fact, this sea has been compared to what the Bahamas are like today. So we are, in fact, living in what was something like that paradise; we are just living here 325 million or so years too late!) The memory of this paradise is in the rocks themselves,  most readily seen in crinoid fossils. Its stalked form, known as a sea lily, made a tubular calcite shell. When the crinoid died, its shell was added to layers and layers of other shells, comprising much of the limestone we see today. And when the sea receded, more layers of shale, limestone, and sandstone were left behind. 

Quicker to Cut than to Care: The Urgency of Climate Justice

Last week, while on a working retreat in New York, I was delighted that there were four dogwood trees blooming outside my room. I could see two of them through the window every time I came through the door. It was a fantastic sight, made even more welcome because of a choice my back fence neighbors made last winter, when they cut down their dogwood tree. Its limbs grew into my yard, where I could get a close up view of each spring’s flowers. I missed that this year.

        I don’t think the tree was targeted. I doubt my neighbors got up one morning and thought, “Wow, we should cut down the dogwood tree today.” It was more probably a case of “wrong place, wrong time.” They were grading out some of their yard and clearing out the fence row, which had some small mulberry and elm saplings. And they just completely removed the dogwood tree. I had taken photos of that tree’s blooms since we had moved there in 2018. And now, this spring, there was an empty space where the blooms used to be. Again, I doubt my neighbors knew what they did. Who cuts down dogwood trees? And I appreciate a clean fence row. But their good intentions did not stop them from cutting down a beautiful tree. 

Humans excel at hubris. We just do not – we cannot be bothered to? – stop and pay attention. It takes a lot of intentional effort to slow down and do things purposefully. It is too inconvenient to ask – what trees are growing here? Are they all the same? Do I want to preserve any of them? We are almost always short on the things that care requires: time, energy, attention, curiosity, patience. 

Missouri’s Anti-Trans Actions and Our Continued Resistance

  It’s not as if marginalized communities ever get a break, including gender and sexual minorities. But this year continues to be an excruciating one, especially for the transgender/nonbinary/gender-expansive community. While collective indulgence in outrage, like videos of people smashing or shooting their cases of Bud Light beer, are obviously ridiculous, they also send a clear message to us. It’s not like Bud Light is suddenly a champion of trans people just because they work with a transgender influencer like Dylan Mulvaney. This is a marketing strategy, and so is the outrage. But all this outrage also tells me that, not only do these Bud Light-bashing folks hate me and oppose my wellbeing, they hate and oppose anyone that is friendly to me. They are so committed to erasing the existence of trans people that they can’t even drink a beer that is guilty by association. 

Moving a Balloon, Moving a Rock: On Patience & Praxis

        My reflections of late have turned back to patience, a reflection that arises again and again out of the personal, relational, structural, and cultural turmoil of the last many years. So many of the issues we face are intractable, with roots as deep as hundreds and thousands of years. And while history reminds me that there have always been people who were there to fight against oppression and insist on humanity’s potential for wisdom and compassion, it also reminds me that human lives have been consistently characterized by injustice and oppression. Our progress is at once remarkable and incomplete, and we carry the urgency of our own brief lives. And so, we also carry both a necessary patience and a necessary impatience, like oil and water in our hearts.