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The padlock in question locked a grate leading to a hatch which provided entry to the interior of the tallest flagpole in the world, a 282.7-foot monster twenty miles east of Vancouver. If we could gain access to the flagpole, we would hang a huge banner to spotlight the rampant trophy hunting occurring in BC. From the flagpole, the banner would be in clear view of the offices of the Environment Ministry, the provincial government agency in charge of game management.
So there we were on that fine morning, all set for an action and no where to go since our boltcutters were useless. It was time to pack it in; go home and watch a hockey match, eh.
Then fate struck.
The yardman of the car lot ambled out our way. Did you lose the key? he asked.
Uh, yeah, we replied, feverishly working the thirty six inch handles of the bolt cutters, still attempting to remove the lock.
I thought the receptionist gave you the key last week, he asked hesitantly.
Dumb silence on our part.
Well, Ive got a key, he offered. Dont make sense cutting that lock for nothing.
We stood back amazed. The yard man had obviously mistaken us for the crew that periodically replaces the poleUs huge Canadian flag, which monthly tatters in the high winds around the top of the pole.
The yard man unlocked the grate, all the while becoming increasingly suspicious, then bent down and unlocked the hatch as well. Where is the flag? ... Who did you say you represented? he demanded, suddenly realizing that something definitely wasnUt quite right.
But it was too late. Mick and I were inside the pole, and Kris quickly slapped a new padlock into place. Suddenly everything was going well.
Two hundred feet later, we emerged from the innards of the flagpole onto a crows nest, from which the pole, now two feet in diameter, continued another 82.7 feet up. Mick put on his climbing harness and began an arduous climb up the pole, successfully unfurling the banner emblazoned STOP TROPHY HUNTINGS in plain view of the Environment Ministry a block away.
Trophy Hunting in BC
The guide-outfitting industry in BC is responsible for widespread and devastating wildlife slaughter across the province. Trophy hunters from around the world come to British Columbia, paying from $3,000 to hunt black bears to as high as $15,000 to hunt endangered species such as grizzly bear. The guide outfitting industry claims to generate annual revenues of about $35 million in BC, guiding around 4,500 clients each year. These hunters kill thousands of big game animals, including bear, mountain lion, bighorn sheep, wolf, elk, moose and mountain goat.
There are roughly 300 outfitters in BC, and judging by the record they are not especially concerned with obeying the law. There were 61 convictions of registered guide outfitters in BC between 1990-94, despite the fact that conservation officers are pitifully understaffed and underfunded. Many more violations undoubtedly go undetected. Meanwhile, back at the flagpole...
A gaggle of activists picketed the Environment Ministry building, and were even granted a meeting to discuss their concerns with a ministry representative. It turns out a large game management conference was coincidentally happening that very day in a hotel facing the flagpole. Perfect timing!
The police who arrived on the scene locked the grate at the bottom of the flagpole and, as there was no way to get us down, left. The locked grate kept us from leaving the way we came up, but in a bucket on the crowUs nest there was this long rope...
We went for it. We tossed the rope over the side for what will surely be the longest (and scariest) rappel in my life: 200 feet straight down onto a used car lot. Alas, the authorities were not nearly as scarce as we hoped; we were both arrested upon landing.
That night, the national news featured a positive story, along with a dashing shot of Mick looking very Indiana Jones-like in his hat and trenchcoat rappelling off the flagpole.
Apparently in the midst of the rappel some piece of equipment fell and accidentally jammed the small door that leads onto the crowUs nest; flagpole personnel were effectively blocked from taking the banner down. In fact, the banner remained hung for another ten days, until a huge crane was brought onto the scene to bring it down.
Killing for fun is a sickness or a disease. Subsistence hunting is a way of life. Killing is never an easy thing to do, but with the proper respect for the cycle of life, hunting can work. The meat will feed you, the hide will clothe you and the spirit will guide you.
IUm a hunter from Montana and if luck is with me, I am blessed with a deer to help feed myself and my extended family through the winter. However, hunting has taken a new meaning for me as of late. Having recently gone undercover on a black bear hunt on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, I discovered the ugly truths about trophy hunting.
Big Game of Hunting
The hunt was sold by an American-owned company named Zarco Wildlife Inc. Zarco owns the hunting rights to one-third of Vancouver Island. This gives them the legal right to bring in as many foreign hunters as they can to kill two black bears each. In the eyes of the trophy hunters these bears have one value and that is to be mounted or made into rugs. The idea of feeding themselves or their families never enters the picture.
As luck would have it, my guide was to be David Fyfe. He is the head guide and front man in Canada for Zarco Wildlife. When I arrived in Port McNeill, BC for my undercover mission, I learned that a hunter from Texas had already killed one of his bears. Approaching Fyfes truck, I noticed rotting bear meat from the previous nightUs hunt. We hopped in the truck and headed off to the target range to test my shooting ability. This was the only hunter safety test I had to pass to use the weapon they were loaning me. One shot, one bulls-eye and I was approved with honors. So off we went to the wild world of logging roads and clearcuts to kill black bears.
In the biggest clearcut of the day, less than an hour into the hunt (a truck ride through clearcuts), we came across a large black bear less than 50 yards from us. I jumped out and started video-taping the bear. Fyfe told me this was a trophy bear and I had to shoot it. He told me this knowing he had forgotten to give me my license and hunting tag. He said, Go ahead and shoot the bear. Well leave it here, go and get your tag and come back for the bear later. He then piled jackets on the hood of his truck to set the gun on so the 50-yard shot was as easy as possible. I figured the only way to convince him I was legitimate was to play along but be nervous with buck fever. I began to shake and breathe heavily. I fired a shot five feet above the bearUs head. Now, in all my years in the woods, I have never seen anything quite like this, but the bear, still groggy from hibernation, just looked up at me and went straight back to eating. I, on the other hand, had hit myself in the head with the scope of the rifle and was bleeding everywhere. After about ten minutes of wiping blood out of my eyes, Mr. Fyfe again began telling me to shoot the bear.
Once again my shaking and heavy breathing started as I took aim at this unconcerned bear. Another shot over its head got the same response. David then suggested that we hike in closer to the bear and try again. When we got within 30 yards of the bear, and David lined my gun up on top of a stump. All I had to do was pull the trigger. After my third miss, we decided that I needed to take a break and reconsider my ability to kill a bear. On our way home for lunch, we made a quick stop: Fyfe pitched out rotting bear meat from an earlier hunt into the woods.
Lunch time featured me as the main course of humor and harassment. Their plans of making me man enough to kill a bear consisted of Fyfe showing me pictures of his 10-year old son with his trophy bear, bragging of his incredible 150-yard shot. The plan then turned to having me watch someone else kill a bear. Their choice was a cattle baron from Kansas who even brought his wife to watch his manly act of killing a bear. His wife told me of her husbands hunting adventures around the world. She said they had a trophy room at home full of stuffed monuments of every wild animal (endangered or not) in Africa, Alaska, the Yukon and British Columbia. She added that she hoped her husband only killed one bear this hunt because they were out of space in their trophy room (cemetery). These types of hunters are often Safari Club members, a hunting club that travels the world to kill exotic species.
We returned to the same clearcut and the cattle baron killed the bear that I had tried to warn with my three missed shots. While the man from Kansas watched the guide skin the bear he kept asking about the bearUs dip stick. The dip stick is a bears penis bone. Allegedly, part of the Safari Clubs annual games entail a penis pool. After hunting season a gathering is held where penis bones are lavishly displayed and sized. The hunter with the largest penis bone wins big dick bucks. Essentially, these bears are not just throw rugs, they are part of the bragging rights of big game hunters.
The following day everyone in our group of four hunters, excluding myself, shot a bear. A man from Texas with only one tag and permit shot two bears in one day. The cattle baron from Kansas, on bear number two, shot the largest bear of the week in the ass. It ran away never to be retrieved.
On day three, we discovered that a freezer containing four bear hides had been stolen. The stolen hides represented a loss of approximately $12,000 dollars to Zarco Wildlife. Fyfe angrily declared that they now had to kill four more bears and that they were going to bring in as many hunters as they could to get revenge by killing even more bears. The Texan said the saboteurs must have had someone on the inside. As I was the only one in the party not having lost a bear hide, he might as well have pointed at me.
With the increasingly suspicious atmosphere, I began plotting my way out. Once in my hotel room, I called Mike Chain and David Fyfe to my room. They knew I was having trouble with being Rman enough to kill a bear, and I told them with all of the protest to the killing, I was not comfortable doing it. They bought the story and within minutes I had Port McNeill in the rear view mirror.
Zarco Wildlife Slaughter, Inc.
The hunt itself cost $3000 American dollars plus $210 more for Canadian tax and $260 Canadian dollars for the license and tag, all of which had to be paid in cash or money order. This money was received by Mike Chain, the head booking agent for Zarco Wildlife Inc. based in Oklahoma. Chain has no work permit for Canada. The owner of Zarco is Juan Ramon Zaragoza, registered in Laredo, Texas. In addition to owning 1/3 of Vancouver Island hunting rights, Zarco also offers safari hunts in Africa, South and Central America and other parts of North America.
Hunters need to take a stand against trophy hunting. If you are not hunting to feed your family then you have no right killing an animal. The main enjoyment hunters receive from hunting is said to be the time spent in the woods. Driving around in 4X4 trucks and shooting bears in clearcuts does not constitute an outdoor experience.
Canadians beware! Hunters from around the world are coming for a weeks vacation to your beautiful country. They are leaving with body bags filled with two black bears, maybe a grizzly, a few endangered salmon, a wolf or two, lovely caribou and everyoneUs future. Let your outrage toward the trophy hunting industry be heard!
Please feel free (or obligated) to contact Zarco Wildlife Inc. through Mike Chain/Backwoods Hunts at 11600 SE 44, Oklahoma City, OK 73150, (405) 737-8070, fax (405) 741-8224. Call and book your own (bogus) kill.
The Namgis Nation, the First Nations people of the region, oppose all hunting that does not involve utilization of animals for sustenance. They also support Bear Watch in their endeavors to halt trophy hunting. Four bear hides were recently anonymously delivered to the Namgis Nation.
For more information on this inhumane slaughter contact Bear Watch at Box 405, Ganges PO, Salt Springs Island, BC Canada V8K 2W1, (800) 836-5501.
Mike Mease does guerrilla media for Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers . CMCR is an environmental group focused on exposing hidden truths from around the world. (See the dates for their Create Your Own Media roadshow on page 34) Contact them at PO Box 7941, Missoula, MT 59807, phone/fax (406) 728-0867.
At what point does rhetoric become so volatile that it becomes inflammatory? I pondered this question after a call from Judi Bari in which she asked me if I wouldnt reconsider something printed in this space a few issues ago in light of the Oklahoma City truck bombing and the Unabomber mail bomb assassination of a California timber lobbyist. Words, I thought, like bombs, can sometimes injure innocent people. That is a measure of their power, and something we should all keep in mind while staring into our computer screens.
There is probably no word in any language that carries the connotation of the word bomb. It brings immediately to mind violent images of the killing and maiming of innocent people. On the other hand, movies bomb, old cars are bombs, and I bottle home- brew in what is commonly referred to as a bomber. So it is the context in which words are used that gives them meaning. This is especially true when we use words like revolution, war and a recent addition to the American vernacular, the word jihad.
At a workshop I attended this spring, Michael Frome, distinguished professor and environmental historian, voiced what I considered the erroneous but widely held view that since we are nonviolent we should not use the language of war, and he invoked Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. as examples. At first glance this seems to make sense, but it is in conflict with the truth. Ghandi and King were both fond of using military analogy, where activists are marching soldiers for peace, armies were non-violent and the struggle for freedom was characterized as a war on injustice.
When I pointed this out to Professor Frome after the workshop, he admitted that it was true. I told him I believe Ghandi, King and others like them embraced this language in order to underscore the seriousness of the issues and the necessary sacrifice and organization required to effectively address them.
The difference between conventional forms of warfare and nonviolent warfare is that nonviolent armies do not seek to inflict casualties in pursuit of a goal, although they are willing to risk their own personal safety and well-being. Their true aim is not conquest and annihilation but understanding and reconciliation. Nonviolence will not sacrifice these long term goals in favor of short term gains. Nonviolence emphasizes respect for all opinions but above all it requires a sense of moral responsibility in resisting and opposing injustice. All this is in stark contrast to the Bosnian Serbs, Desert Storm, the Militia Movement or the Aryan Resistance.
In our phone conversation, Judi was particularly adamant about my use of the word jihad. Indeed both Lyndon LaRouche and Barry Clausen have interpreted my call for a jihad as proof that we are advocating a new wave of violence. In fact, Mr. Clausen has become something of a press agent for me of late, as everywhere he goes he generates calls from the media asking me what I meant by that word. Jihad is Arabic and roughly similar to our word crusade, although it generally has a broader meaning. This is why the word jihad is sometimes mistakenly interpreted as exclusively meaning holy war. Indeed in countries where Arabic is spoken, it would not be unusual to see a poster proclaiming a jihad for cleaner streets or even for whiter teeth.
Believe me, a jihad for the earth is precisely what we are all involved in at the moment. The armies of darkness are on the move. When we say that bystanders are not innocent we are referring to the Nuremberg Principles, which state all citizens have the responsibility to resist the power of evil or repressive institutions. It does not follow that we advocate victimizing innocent people, or even those less innocent. It simply means that people must choose sides when confronting a moral dilemma. And what could be more urgent and compelling than the survival of our planetUs life support system?
I do not advocate here the donning of camos and the brandishing of monkey wrenches. Monkeywrenching, like anything else, has its time and place. But do I think we should put on our flak jackets. We need not retreat from using strong language when strong language is necessary. You donUt hear G. Gordon Liddy or Rush Limbaugh backing off their core beliefs because they were attacked by the president on Larry King Live. Neither does the National Rifle Association, the Christian Right or the Ryder Truck Rental agency back off of defending the quality of their product. They use the opportunity to explain their differences, if they have any, with Timothy McVey and Terry Nichols.
In our attempts to deliver a message to the American people, we will unavoidably invite a certain amount of RincomingS (a word Vietnam veterans use to describe being on the receiving end of an artillery barrage). This will come both from within our ranks and from those who oppose us politically. This does not mean we should back down or change our message. We should use this and every other opportunity to talk about our position on the issues.
We must remember that even though most Americans agree with us on the majority of issues on which we work, they are not yet radical in their ecological analysis. Radical ecologists are still a small voice in the political wilderness. We should never doubt for a moment, though, that if our small voice is heard by reasonable people, we can change public perceptions and thereby change political reality. In the electronic fog that now passes for news media, smaller groups cannot ignore the power of words, or the impact of personal actions. Because eventually the truth gets out. It always does.
The Big Lie
In 1940, Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace wrote, In a democracy, individual understanding of problems and an aroused public opinion are essential to constructive action. It is my considered judgment that, in the Northwest, true understanding of the forest problems and the development of an aroused public opinion have been delayed mainly by the hired men of the forest industries who have been adroit in issuing misleading propaganda. Actually, the purpose is to justify, with some kind of rationalization, cutting practices dictated by conventional and short-term investment and dividend considerations. These and not good forest practice based on public interest, are the determining considerations.
Fifty years later, industrys propaganda was breaking down. We had the spotted owl on the cover of Time magazine, Ancient Forest was a household term and George Bush wanted to be known as Rthe environmental President. Then, in 1992, we got a court injunction against most old-growth logging. Then, Al Gore got elected and shortly thereafter brought his running mate to Portland for a Presidential Forest Summit.
So, youd think Id be writing these days about the end of ancient forest logging and a burgeoning forest renaissance with species recovery across the landscape. Wrong! Now, we have hundreds of new old-growth timber sales in the Northwests ancient forests, a salvage rider that allows for massive logging without laws and a concerted attack, funded by resource extraction industries, aimed at rolling back the protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Indeed, we are witnessing the greatest environmental rollback ever. What happened? What went wrong?
How Wrong?
As you read this, six-foot diameter trees are falling in the Umpqua River drainage and in Mt. St. Helens National Monumen part of the Deal of Shame goodwill release of sales by the spotted owl plaintiffs. And then theres the matter of the never-ending death dance with the defeated Democrats which led to the Deal and continues unabated today witness the Montana Wilderness Associations (MWA) endorsement of Rep. Pat Williams latest Orwellian-titled stump creation bill the Forest Ecosystem Stewardship Demonstration Act of 1995.
Some of us feel the whole sorry debacle boils down to how the nationals and some regionals zigged when they should have zagged at the 1993 Timber Summit. There were a number of factors involved. Interest in schmoozing Clinton and the Democrats, and wanting a new president to look good and not expose past sins in front of the sinners were the overriding motivation behind the whole thing.
Furthermore, catering to foundation monetary support caused the movement to become Pewsillanimous taking big oil foundation money and then pulling their punches, giving up injunctions, releasing timber sales from injunction and the like. Of course, this all backfired badly, and the image was created which persists to this day that extractors were the oppressed rather than the oppressors. The sympathy was directed to the children of the loggers, instead of the current and future children of this planet.
Luckily, the urban liberal wimps who have dominated environmentalism are becoming more irrelevant. The self-inflicted vacuum in the forest movement from the summit forward has been filled by increasingly militant fish folks, organic farmers, progressive companies and rural communities worried about their water.
Salvaging the Movement?
Given that we all know the wretched history, the question that matters now is: Can we break the pernicious impact of foundation money and the desire of some activists to schmooze Clinton and be players at the expense of native ecosystems?
The Forest Health lie the we-gotta-destroy-the-forest-to- save-it bullshit seems to be producing the first major cracks in the collaboration cartel. Though some groups like MWA and that green- washing corporation known as the Wilderness Society (TWS) are hopeless, it appears that this big lie is even too much for some of the usual pliable suspects.
The horrid Gorton/Hatfield salvage rider on the rescissions bill has stiffened resistance, even inside the Beltway. The heretofore ineffective Western Ancient Forest Campaign (WAFC) appropriately dubbed the rider the Logging Without Laws bill. The major nationals began phone-banking around the country. Grassroots activists responded with over 20,000 calls, faxes and even chunks of wood sent to the White House.
Apparently, you-can-call-me Al Gore got into a shouting match with Bubba over the rider and then Clinton came out with a veto promise citing the logging provisions as one of his reasons. Of course, some of us worry that Bubba will carry through on his other promise made in Billings on May 31. There he promised to conveniently forget about the rider and sign it anyway if the education funding cuts are deleted from the bill.
Every Silver Lining has a Cloud
Even though Al enlightened Bubba, what came next is of great concern. Al stated in a May 11 press release, Increasing salvage logging...and improving forest health are goals we share with Congress. In fact, we have already put in motion reforms to speed timber salvage without compromising environmental standards ... The timber salvage provision (in the bill) should be taken out and we should move forward to expedite timber salvage in a responsible manner.
That darling of the nationals, Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas, then threw gasoline on the fire declaring, a desired state of forest health is a condition where biotic and abiotic influences do not threaten resource management objectives now or in the future. Heaven forbid! Can you believe it? Forest health has nothing to do with the viability of species, only the viability of Rmanagement.
Incorporating abiotic influences is literally redefining ecosystems to include the people who are trashing them. Using this Clinton approach, effective law enforcement would be defined as including the support and cooperation of criminals along with the victims perhaps 911 operators would suggest trying robber- homeowner partnerships and round tables as a good place to start when break-ins are called in.
After reading Al and Jacks putrid quotes and smelling another compromise, the Mystery Riders started quizzing the nationals and regionals on whether or not they planned on going along with the administrationUs embrace of the forest health lie in exchange for the promised veto. The answers seem promising.
How to really Arouse Public Opinion
Perhaps the best indicator of a shift away from accommodation was Mike Roselles leaving his current adopted bioregion and going to Portland and joining ONRCs Andy Kerrs inaugural civil disobedience at Sen. Hatfields office. Wonderful publicity was focused on the intent of the rider.
One can hope that KerrUs action will create a case of paddy-wagon envy among the three-piece suit crowd. The 3000 acres of cut planned in the critical Ten Mile Creek watershed on the Siuslaw National Forest ought to be enough to bring the DC desk jockeys out for a little front-line R & R. Sugarloaf? Cove/Mallard? Copper Butte? Theres plenty to choose from, folks.
In addition to ONRC and WAFC seeming to develop a harder line, another hopeful sign is that Brock Evans of National Audubon has weighed in, saying, Ive never heard anybody ever embracing the salvage lie; read our alerts, read our phone bank messages ... No, damn it, we, all of us here, hate that salvage stuff. Were going to fight it to the death.
Its now or...
There you have it. A half-century after Henry Wallace first called the lie, it boils down to a litmus test for the nationals. Fighting it to the deathS will mean setting Al and Bubba straight. It means setting MWA, TWS, Williams and their ilk straight on their ill-advised measures. It means setting the oil company foundations straight, even at the risk of losing funding. And, it means continuing to hold the administrations feet to the fire, assuring the veto. Veto or no veto theres still a lot of trees and species going down out here in stumpland, so, ultimately, it means standing shoulder to shoulder on the front lines as the timber-industrial complex mounts its last great buffalo hunt on the forest life support systems of our endangered planet.
In ancient times, Shekinah, as the goddess, was Lady of the Beasts ... She, like they, is wild of heart and untamed. To be holy is to be wild, to let the fires of the spirit burn freely, to be true to ones spirit nature.
Shekinah is the Hebrew word for the female presence of God, and Her description is from She Who Dwells Within, a new book by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, defining a path of Jewish worship that celebrates both the female and the earthly. And yet, as revolutionary as her call for something akin to a goddess sensibility in Judaism seems, Rabbi Gottlieb is not inventing out of whole cloth. In Judaism, as in much of the haphazard historical gumbo that has come to be known too simply as Western Culture, wisdom traditions lurk, waiting to be uncovered, and simply reclaimed.
That work of reclamation, or, as it were, inviting Brother Griz up to the bimah (altar) is not easy, but like all other reclamation work we advocate as biocentrists, it needs to be done. As Christian thinker and troublemaker Matthew Fox has noted, the Western Monotheisms will become irrelevant to people in the very near future if they fail to incorporate the earth wisdom so desperately needed for our collective survival.
Certainly Judaism, like most human institutions, has much of its own tikkun (healing) to do. In its journey through history, it has been prey to the same short-sightedness and prejudices as any belief system. But remarkably, it has also adapted and survived. God said to Moses not I am that I am, but I am that I am becoming. The process never ends. As a particular path up the same mountain we all tread, Judaism, too, is still becoming. I am, in contemporary mystic Rabbi Zalman chacters phrase, a Jewish practitioner of generic religion. A generic religion that strives to be wild and untamed.
Although, Ive celebrated generic religion with an occasional equinox, Yule, and Beltane, I agree with Sam Keen, who writes in Hymns to an Unknown God , that...eventually the spiritual journey circles round toward home ... you may be a sojourner in a Buddhist land, but eventually you will need to return to your native holy land to rescue the treasures that are buried there....
Just as I cant help being an Earth First!er in outlook, it would be equally impossible for me not to be Jewish. When the New Year is welcomed at the time of the Fall harvest at Rosh Hashanah, that feels right to me; and it would be hard to do anything other than fast ten days later on Yom Kippur a day devoted to introspection and spiritual housecleaning for the year to come.
The Jewish holy-day calendar, which has its basis in the agricultural festivals of ancient Israel, operates on a rhythm familiar to readers of this publicationUs masthead; Chanukah, the festival of Winter lights; Tu Bhvat, the tree planting ritual of late Winter, Purim, the equivalent of Carnaval, releasing pent-up Winter energy as Spring begins to blossom, Pesach, or Passover, connected originally to first planting in Spring, and Shavuot, a celebration of Summers first harvest.
Once the Jewish people found themselves in exile, the holy daysU emphasis changed. No longer connected to the agricultural rhythms of one place, the more transcendent aspects of each festival were emphasized. Shavuot, for example, was originally a festival where crop offerings would be brought into Jerusalem or other centers of worship. Without a place to bring crop offerings, Shavuot becomes a celebration of Moses receiving the first five books of the bible, the Torah, on Mt. Sinai. Yom Kippur, once a fertility ritual where couples made love on the ground outside Jerusalems walls, is transformed into a period of spiritual indwelling and personal reckoning.
The weeklong festival immediately following Yom Kippur, Sukkot, retains some of its original flavor. Commemorating the Fall harvest, this was the most important celebration in ancient Israel. Good crops guaranteed life throughout Winter, and the raucous celebration reflected the relief of tribal peoples living close to the earth. Sukkot is now celebrated with the admonition to spend all eight of its days sleeping outdoors, in a shelter decorated with fruits and leaves, yet constructed loosely enough to permit stargazing. Thus all of creation, the terrestrial and the infinite, is worshipped in a single gesture.
At the same time that Sukkot binds Jews all over the world in a distinct ritual, my own celebration is sparked with the awareness that all Gaia not just the Israel known to my tribal forebears is a holy place. And thus the sukkah I dwell in should reflect my native California and the seasons of the oak woodlands, redwood forests, and chaparral that I love. But even this celebratory cycle, this intuitive awareness of the seasonal underpinnings of the Jewish lunar based calendar hasnt brought Brother Griz all the way back into the fold. Or am I trying to be accepted back into his congregation?
To get there, we still must discuss the Bible, the edicts therein, and the problems that that Really Big Text appears to present for environmentalists. Drawing the most fire is the verse in Genesis purporting to give humankind dominion or mastery over the rest of nature. But before we embark on a discussion of these alleged marching papers from God, there are a couple of important things to note. First, in Jewish tradition, the Bible is never read by itself, or taken solely at face value. The many centuries of accrued talmud (rabbinic commentary) and midrash (oral tradition) are considered equally holy, and equally important for an understanding of the whole. They also convey the sense that drawing closer to the sacred is an ongoing, evolutionary process. Only fundamentalists take the book literally, and I dont think environmentalists want to throw in with them.
Second, even if you were to take the Hebrew Bible by its naked self, the book is full of contradictions. Thus, in the same Genesis passage that allegedly gives us mastery, you also have the first of two creation stories in which men and women are made absolutely equal back to back as opposed to the later version involving ribs and such.
As for the bit about mastery, though, lets look at just a couple of the commentaries. The Babylonian Talmud, written during the first exile from Israel, notes that humans were made on the sixth day of creation, so that if peoples minds become (too) proud, they may be reminded that gnats preceded them in the order of creation. And Rashi, considered perhaps the premier rabbinic commentator, notes that dominion and descent derive from a common linguistic root (traditionally, no verse in Torah is considered to have a RsingleS meaning) and thus when humanity is worthy, we have dominion over the animal kingdom; when we are not, we descend... and the animals rule over us.
In other words, the question becomes whether we are worthy stewards, a station which mandates a deep ecological awareness. I imagine this awareness would include such duties as keeping vast tracts of wilderness whole and intact, and keeping our own numbers down. Clearly, thus far, our stewardship is catastrophically inept.
The same passage in Genesis purporting to give us dominion over the earth also, by the way, commands us to eat vegetarian diets! Every seed-bearing plant...and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit...shall be yours for food. Meat-eating is considered a fallen state of grace, and is only finally allowed,with strictures, for Noah and his descendants after the flood. Those dietary strictures, known as kashrut, or kosher, view meat-eating as bad business, which must take into account the animals suffering. While its dubious that nowadays a kosher hot dog is any more cruelty free than a regular one (its just more cow!), the system of mindfulness that kashrut seeks to instill opens the door to wider ecological awareness and softer treading on the earth.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter, a contemporary mystic, has coined the term Reco-kosher. Its no longer enough to eat dairy and meat on separate plates (from the biblical injunction against mixing the milk of the mother with the meat of the kid). Now we must start asking whether non-recyclable material is kosher. Or power from a nuclear power plant. Or fur. Or old growth wood or mahogany. All these questions, and hundreds of others, are completely in line with the original impulse behind kashrut. Love of the Great Mystery, in Lynn Gottleibs words, is demonstrated not by belief or words but in the actions of daily life and the way we treat humans and animalsQall sentient beings. and, implicitly, the non-sentient ones as well. For Jews in our currently ravaged world, eco-kashrut represents one of the ways back to Gaia/God-aware living.
So, too, does the re-embracing of the two most oft-occurring ritual observances in Judaism. The first of these is Rosh Chodesh, or new moon, which is quite simply the monthly celebration of the moonUs return. Rife with female energy, doubtless connected to worship of the Goddess and with post-biblically prescribed ritual, this lunar celebration has wide latitude, infinite possibility, and is too often overlooked. At a recent all-gal Rosh Chodesh at a Jewish ecoconference in Oregon, my wife and sister both wound up howling at the moon Tround midnight. Rosh Chodesh represents a monthly chance to get wild!
Before we get to the second ritual, a brief note about the Goddess. She survives in Judaism much as she does in Catholicism, only instead of Mary, we have Shekinah, considered the female presence of God on earth. Often, however, this earth-dwelling gave the female essence of creation a lower station on the chain of being than the loftier spheres ascending heavenward. Jewish mysticism has ten realms or spheres of being stretching upward from the earth, each getting more steadily transcendent. So, too, the female was the repository of sorrow, the Shekinah weeping as the Jewish exile from the original Holy Land mirrored Gods exile from humankind.
Still, hekinahs presence gives us a path to allow the Goddess to reclaim her rightful place as an aspect of the Great Mystery. If She dwells here on earth, then She is more immediately knowable to us, and we to Her, and She is the first to be affected by our rituals and prayers. Indeed by remaining here, She reminds us that crimes against the earth are an assault against the Mother of us all.
For a fuller discussion of the Goddess in Jewish history, and as a wonderful guide for reclamation of the female in Jewish worship, Rabbi Gottliebs book is highly recommended.
Now to our second oft-recurring ritual; Shabbat, the Sabbath, the proverbial Day of Rest.
One is supposed to withdraw from work, commerce, and trade in order to rest, pray, make love (Jews are commanded to make love on the Sabbath!), eat a festive meal, and contemplae, once again, the Great Mystery. Orthodox Jews will not even throw a light switch or turn on a stovetop burner, as such actions would constitute work. Alas, they often leave the lights burning instead (a violation, perhaps of eco-kashrut?). To their great credit, the Orthodox also refuse to drive cars on the Sabbath.
Social critics have commented that the very need for a separate day of rest and prayer shows the bifurcation between the hunting/gathering cultures and the agrarian cultures that spawned the Hebrew tribes that hunter/gatherers didnt need to set aside such a day because their lives were intrinsically better-balanced.
It is a tenet among Jewish mystics that the great task of healing among humankind is to expand Shabbat outward, to stretch it from one to two, then three days, and so on, until one is living permanently in a state of Shabbat.. According to some Jewish commentators, this will bring the long-promised Messiah, who will come can only come precisely when she is no longer needed.
What would such a state mean? It would mean pulling back from the hurlyburly of the global economy. It would mean more walks and bike rides. Taking money much less seriously. (One is not supposed to buy or sell on Shabbat.) It would mean long meals and more lovemaking and a total reordering of human priorities as we now know them. It would mean keeping the t.v. off.
It would be subversive.
So, in Jewish ritual, we have one day out of every seven where we are asked to unplug and pull back and be Fully Present for a moment. And we are asked, if possible slowly at first, if need be to expand that present-ness, that centeredness, until we are whole again.
And when we are all whole, so too will be the earth.
The following books were a great help in writing this article and are strongly recommended:
Judaism and Ecology (New York: Hadassah, 1993)
Kaufman, Elisheva, Jewish Earthways (available from the author: 5
North Street, Montpeleir, VT 05602)
Gottlieb, Lynn, She Who Dwells Within (San Francisco: Harper San
Francisco, 1995)
Schachter-Shalomi, Reb Zalman, Paradigm Shift ( Northvale:
Aronson, 1993)
To Till and To Tend (New York: Coalition on the Environment and
Jewish Life)
One day a month, I pick up garbage on the shores of coastal Georgias barrier islands. These are the days I think about god. Not, as you might think, because of the insinuating beauty of southeastern marshes and thick canopies of oak and palm against cloudless blue skies. If nature could lead me into the arms of divine comfort, the golden isles certainly would. But, no, thatUs not what sets me meditating on a higher power. Its getting up at seven on a Saturday morning. When my alarm goes off, interrupting that luscious R.E.M. cycle, I really need some long-haired patriarch, looking faintly like Uncle Bill, or some goddess looking faintly like me, only more awake and with weeds in her hair. I need to believe that something else is out there besides the beer cans, pop bottles, and gasoline jugs Im gonna be rooting around in. So I completely understand why radical environmentalists have revived paganism. Direct action requires a lot of energy, and believing in a support group of overseeing spirits does make it easier to get yourself out of bed and over to an action where you might be arrested or to a beach choked with garbage.
Paganism is all the rage. Sorry, EF!ers, you are not alone in having rediscovered the goddess. Marion Zimmer Bradley introduced her to a whole generation of 17-year-old girls in 1985 when she published Mists of Avalon. Just today, I saw a sign advertising a rock group named Pagan Jug. Nevertheless, it is not my purpose to denigrate pagan ecology or any other religious ecology. I have been wondering, though: sometimes you need god, but should you invent him?
I think a lot about the Contract of Ardra episode of Star Trek in which the people of a faraway planet make, so they think, a contract with a goddess named Ardra to give them 1000 years of peace, social equity, and environmental purity. Its a sort of Faustian deal buy now, pay later. After their millenium, she will own them, lock, stock, and planet. Of course, they themselves still have to do all the hard work of establishing peace, cleaning up, and eliminating social injustices. A thousand years later, when they have the desired peace, justice, and clean air (entirely through their own efforts), a woman calling herself Ardra comes along to claim possession of the planet under their contract. Captain Picard arrives at about this point. Theres something about this Ardra he doesnt like. Attempting to break their iron-clad superstitions, he asks the natives a series of questions. Did Ardra write any laws? Did she organize any clean- ups? Did she, he asks with exasperation, Reven pick up one, single piece of garbage? The answer, of course, is no. The people of the faraway planet are, of course, us. The problem is: Ardra may have motivated them to face the formidable task of recovering their planet, but their belief in the literal truth of her leaves them vulnerable to an impostor. Myths are better when you understand they are myths. In the final analysis, god isnt going to do it for you; you have to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. And that is why, having worked as hard as I have to free myself of the hang-ups and senseless restrictions of the religion in which I was raised, I dont think Ill be taking up another.
Richard Wilbur wrote a wonderful poem, Love Calls Us To the Things of This World in which the soul of a waking man hovers outside his body, reluctant to go back, wishing the laundry on the line were angels instead of sheets. As he wakes up, though, he recovers his love of the hunks and colors of worldly things. Religion invalidates the beauty of the waves and trees and wild places. It says these things are not perfect as they are, that some spirit world is needed underneath to jazz it all up. It suggests that something is missing, that the oceans, forests, and mountains are not enough. And they should be enough. They are enough.