Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Strawberry Moon<\/p>\n
Among the many heart-rending stories related to the Gulf oil spill is one I heard on the radio<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n “We are who we are because of where we are.\u00a0\u00a0 We are Grand Bayou people, and you can\u2019t be a Grand Bayou person if you\u2019re living in Ohio. Grand Bayou for us is our place in the universe. This is where since time began the Creator saw fit to set our feet here. And we’re going to do whatever we have to do to remain,” Phillipe says.<\/p>\n There is, for me, a very important clue here about the Great Work.\u00a0 I haven’t mentioned the Great Work in awhile, so here’s a thumbnail.\u00a0 The notion comes from a book by Thomas Berry, The Great Work<\/a>.\u00a0 He posits that each culture and era has a Great Work.\u00a0 Ours, he says, is managing the transition from a malign to a benign human presence on the earth.<\/p>\n Back to the Grand Bayou.\u00a0 We are who we are because of where we are.\u00a0 To a nation built on mobility, picking up stakes and moving the family in search of the American Dream, a heritage, in part at least, of our boat people\u00a0 past, Rosina Phillipe’s description of the Atakapa-Ishak people, her small tribe that lives on the Grand Bayou, has little meaning.\u00a0 We are who we are because of our work, the things we do, perhaps our family, but definitely not because of where we are.\u00a0 Because we could be somewhere else tomorrow.<\/p>\n This has fed a growing disconnect between Americans and the land, between Americans and feral nature (as opposed to the domestic nature composed of our built environment and our managed landscapes and farms) an urban and technology reinforced disconnect that makes us not so much insensitive as inured to\u00a0 feral nature so that all the waters and minerals and trees and mountains become a source of raw materials, an obstacle to progress or a distant theme park filled with exotic animals and plants.<\/p>\n This separation, alienation really, from feral nature makes it difficult for us to imagine an identity tied up with place, especially a place defined by feral nature and not our concrete, glass and lighted enclosures.\u00a0 In that alienation lies the true barrier to the Great Work, we have much less actual awareness of the earth than we imagine.\u00a0 With little awareness of feral nature we have trouble grasping our current malign relationship to the earth and with little insight into it we will be forever unable to foresee a benign relationship.<\/p>\n What we cannot see and what we cannot imagine cannot come to be.<\/p>\n What to do?\u00a0 The Grand Bayou folks have a way.\u00a0 Some of us can become who we are because of where we are.\u00a0 We can let the rhythms of our local feral nature guide us to an understanding of the fate of mother earth.\u00a0 We can subject ourselves to the demands of the soil while we grow food.*\u00a0 We can orient ourselves to the lives of feral animals, even hunting puts us closer to mother earth than potted plants on our balcony overlooking downtown.\u00a0 We can dig into the natural history of our home, learning about the three biomes, say, of Minnesota:\u00a0 The Big Woods, the Great Plains and the Boreal Woods.\u00a0 We can spend time in them, listening to them, learning their language.<\/p>\n We can reexamine the American Dream. We can ask if our perceived rootlessness (I say perceived because recent demographic studies suggest we may be slowing down, in part because of the recession) is necessary.\u00a0 What if, instead, we saw ourselves as citizens of watersheds?\u00a0 Of local ecological systems?\u00a0 What if we began to eat food grown or raised close to our own home?\u00a0 At least some of us might begin to follow the Atakapa-Ishak way and become who we because of where we are.<\/p>\n Then, the Great Work will follow naturally.<\/p>\n *This may seem like a contradiction to my inclusion of farming and managed landscapes in domestic nature, but it is not.\u00a0 While we grow according to the demands of our soil, not necessarily organic, but with an eye to integrated pest management, regular amendment of the soil with organic matter and growing vegetables, fruits and flowers native to your area and gardening zone, we have to listen to the land as it speaks to us.\u00a0 What makes it richer, more fertile?\u00a0 What do I need to do to live with and in touch with the place where I garden?\u00a0 This is very different from industrial agriculture with round-up ready crops, annually tilled fields and heavy does of chemical fertilizers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Strawberry Moon Among the many heart-rending stories related to the Gulf oil spill is one I heard on the radio yesterday. “We are who we are because of where we are.\u00a0\u00a0 We are Grand Bayou people, and you can\u2019t be a Grand Bayou person if you\u2019re living in Ohio. Grand Bayou for us … Continue reading We are who we are because of where we are<\/span>