What Lies Between

By Judith Gayle

Earth Day came and went this year, and while there seems to be a renewed current of interest in all things green, the emergencies of the day kept the political waters running too fast to notice many ripples. Climate change remains the Elephant in the room, ignored by the small-e elephants as a truly inconvenient truth. I am encouraged that Obama continues to be an enthusiastic proponent of alternative energies as well as a harsh critic of climate deniers and here, FDR-like, he challenged the grassroots to make it impossible for him to resist their collective voice.

This week brought us potent reminders of the Gulf oil disaster, a review of all that went wrong in anniversary pictures of destroyed wetlands and wildlife. Hard to believe a year has come and gone: long enough for the lobbyists to get an ambitious drilling program back on track and for BP, which is taking a 10 billion dollar tax credit on its clean-up losses, to sue Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, for $40 billion in damages. It should be noted that, to date, British Petroleum has paid out a mere $3.6 million in claims from its 20-billion-dollar compensation fund. We have to wonder, ultimately, if BP will pay any fiscal price at all for devastating our oceans. You’re not surprised are you?

You can’t possibly be surprised that a gigantic corporation with coffers Midas would envy is as slippery as a snake and just as mean. We’ve seen too many examples of this behavior over the last few decades to think corporate America is our friend. Now that the Supremes have given them personhood, it’s ridiculous to think of enormous corporations as anything other than serial killers, state sanctioned and at-large. Pay no attention to your television screen, my discerning friend: the entertaining, cutesy commercials for insurance, the touchy-feely two-bathtubs-in-a-field that Big Pharma favors, or banking services offered by your by-golly corporate BFF. It’s all hype and snake oil, no matter how appealing we find those who hawk it for a living.

In a surprising move this week, Obama’s people announced that he is drafting an executive order that would require companies pursuing federal contracts to disclose political contributions kept secret under the Citizen’s United ruling. We can’t know how much anonymous influence Koch money and its equivalent bought in the 2010 election, but it was evidently enough to put the President on alert. This is welcome news for the democratic process.

Quickly approaching Easter, Earth Day shared its clout with Good Friday this year, remembrance of the day when the historical Jesus was tried and crucified. It’s a supreme irony that Earth Day, born here in the United States, is celebrated sans unified leadership on global warming, much as the crucifixion — a testament to non-violence and the transformative power of forgiveness — is misunderstood by most Americans with their childish interpretation of Christianity. Add the insult of corporations emboldened by the inflexible Christocrats to eliminate environmental protections and we find ourselves driven by a dangerous clash of philosophies in this country. Rapture-ready Evangelicals deny that they’ll be around long enough to exhaust the planet, while the rest of us look on in horror as Congress dithers, ice caps melt, and birds drop from the sky in truckloads. N+o wonder the rest of the world dismisses us as a dwindling superpower, lost in sociopolitical eccentricities.

We really gave ourselves a black eye in this nation when we allowed separation of church and state to erode. It’s a Christocrat talking point that the original premise was to protect the church from state interference, but in truth, it’s the state that needs protection from the church. Regarding the loyalty of his audience, Bill Maher recently said, “There’s a beautiful, progressive Canadian-­European country here in America. It’s just surrounded by rednecks.” So am I, out here in the Pea Patch, although strictly speaking, this is not the South. Missouri was not a slave state. Divided during the Civil War, it became a highly unionized state in the middle of the last century, but racial politics and outsourcing have turned the country folk from Blue to Red over the last few decades.

I’m of the opinion that before we see its end, much of the racial bias in rural areas will have to die out with those who learned it at a pappy’s knee, as must the churches that perpetuate it. Finding those biases here didn’t surprise me, but living so close to the land, I’ve been shocked by an unexpected and cavalier ecological attitude. With few exceptions, another surprise has been that greening urban areas have created an earth-conscious template much more ambitious than that of country-dwellers.

You’d think that country people, more connected to wilderness, more dependent on the earth and what it provides, would have strong environmental awareness, but that’s not how most were taught to think. Many of them were schooled to exploit and manipulate with little consideration for either sustainability or their neighbor. In their defense, green options are often prohibitively expensive, and many of these folks already live on the financial edge. My neighbors are not bad people, but most are what the late Joe Bageant called an aging “white underclass.” They are undereducated, underemployed and underestimated by all but those who wish to exploit their ignorance. Here in hardscrabble Ozarks country, tribalism is alive and well. Rent the frighteningly realistic indy film Winter Bone if you want a look; and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Little pockets of that energy I speak of in the Pea Patch can be found in every county in this nation. But if radical religion and ignorance are the enemy of our time and place, spiritual awakening holds hope out to us with both hands. I see politics as a spiritual discipline, but — full disclosure — I pretty much see everything as a spiritual discipline. My authenticity depends on being true to my values no matter what activity I’m engaged in. I would be a lousy politician, not much good at a Sophie’s Choice compromise on which children get to eat as opposed to which corporations get another fat tax break. Politics is the art of compromise in order to get things done, but even as we still discuss bipartisanship, I don’t see how one might compromise on providing for either the planet or the commonweal without harming self-respect and delivering a death blow to the the nation’s ethics.

But here’s more good news: this is a time of quickening. Hearts and minds are changing. New polls show that 44 percent of the religious now consider the free market system of capitalism to be at odds with Christian values, and many mainstream church-goers hold left-of-center views on economic issues. This is a promising return of ethical thought to a demographic that should never have lost it in the first place. Now that churches are growing aware that a compassionate choice must be made, we are beginning to awaken to our better angels. Now that politics is personal, empathy can grow within the newly teachable. Perhaps there’s hope for us yet.

It cannot be denied that there are those in our society who have very little consciousness about harming others in the pursuit of their desires. Others are focused on exploitation and self-interest simply because they’ve not been shown a better way, but I have a notion that all energies are not created equal. Energy magnetizes the equivalent of itself. Love will draw love, expanding in inclusive circles of welcome. Greed draws greed and competition, resulting in tension and unending selfishness. I favor an “all things work to good to those who love God” outlook on the future; think of those who love God as those of us who are choosing open, inclusive, productive choices for co-creation. Making a choice for a higher frequency of thought and emotion is the first step for real change in what we see reflected around us.

Easter brings us the promise of Spring each season, a sense of anticipation for the future rather than a glance backward at what lies behind. Perhaps we should look behind us this year as we contemplate transformation and resurrection. If the Piscean Age is closing its door behind us, taking with it the patriarchy and authoritarianism that have marked it, then we need to take a long last look at what is no longer the truth of our human aspirations. Our history was not by accident, much as this turning is not. There are lessons to be taken, experiences that are no longer a dark mystery to be explored. The siren song of power-mongering can be put behind us just as soon as it is no longer of interest. Cruelty and envy and greed can become a distant memory when we become satiated with both the experience and our disapproval of it.

So, have we learned, now? Did we experience enough to put this dream of darkness behind us? Have we accepted that we are all in this together? Have we understood that Gaia is our mother, we are her children and what wounds her, wounds each of us as well? Have we taken into our heart the sorrowful truth that killing is the antithesis of why we were born? Can we leave violence behind?

We can disallow racism, ageism, sexism and classism as no longer appropriate only if we surrender them to be crucified and transformed into compassion and empathy. We can change darkness into light only if that is our joint decision. That process happens within each of us, individually; it happens when we’re ready for it, when what is to be learned no longer serves us, when we can put it behind. It happens when we open ourselves to the possibilities that love offers us. As A Course in Miracles has it, that shift can happen when we’d much rather be happy than right.

Our Good Friday is behind us, our Resurrection Sunday yet ahead; what lies between can only be found and explored in our own hearts. I wish you each a happy Earth Day, Easter, Passover, Spring — and a blessed and brilliant process of becoming.

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for vetting

Obama on the stump

Citizens United

BP, 1.

Christianity, Capitalism