Once, we hunted. Now we drive to the supermarket. Once, we cleared ground, cleared forest, made tools out of stones, made fire, discovered the workings of seasons and seeds and water, raised what we needed, feared the anger of clouds, marked days and time, accepted the spirit-shapes of our imagination, stored food for the winter, ate and celebrated the turning of nature's seasons and our own, gave names to the incarnations of nature, raised children, saw fish in the sea and went out over the sea, built homes, gathered into settlements, became communities.
Now we have the vegetable aisle. We had Gods and now we have Religions. In my local supermarket, a sign on the wall tells me that every time I re-use a plastic carrier bag, the earth says thank-you. Uh huh. Imagine an ancient ritual fire, bright against the night, the young (wo)men dancing, painted faces, high on their tribe's fermented elixir, invoking the spirits of the earth to acknowledge their transition into adulthood. Lightning flashes. And out of the fire, the voice of the earth and all the elements says something like, "Thank you for re-using your drinking vessels."
Perhaps the Goddess's message, after all, is more along the lines of, "Drive carefully." Or, "Remember to check the sell-by date."
Perhaps.
Not.
Perhaps the earth hasn't changed as we have changed away from it. Perhaps the earth has stayed as it was. Remember?
This safe world is all that we worked for, as we worked out how to build walls to keep out the elements, how to fish, how to plant seeds so that they would give us bread next year, how to make bread, how to live. All along, this is the world we were making.
But I wonder if the earth, when it sees us re-using our carrier bags, picking the organic lettuce, driving carefully home, thinks: what's happened to these guys?
Now we have the vegetable aisle. We had Gods and now we have Religions. In my local supermarket, a sign on the wall tells me that every time I re-use a plastic carrier bag, the earth says thank-you. Uh huh. Imagine an ancient ritual fire, bright against the night, the young (wo)men dancing, painted faces, high on their tribe's fermented elixir, invoking the spirits of the earth to acknowledge their transition into adulthood. Lightning flashes. And out of the fire, the voice of the earth and all the elements says something like, "Thank you for re-using your drinking vessels."
Perhaps the Goddess's message, after all, is more along the lines of, "Drive carefully." Or, "Remember to check the sell-by date."
Perhaps.
Not.
Perhaps the earth hasn't changed as we have changed away from it. Perhaps the earth has stayed as it was. Remember?
This safe world is all that we worked for, as we worked out how to build walls to keep out the elements, how to fish, how to plant seeds so that they would give us bread next year, how to make bread, how to live. All along, this is the world we were making.
But I wonder if the earth, when it sees us re-using our carrier bags, picking the organic lettuce, driving carefully home, thinks: what's happened to these guys?