Paradise Lost….Again
Without the wild things there is no heaven
Last night I watched the 2006 film by Mel Gibson Apocalypto. It is a gruesome rendering of Aztec butchery introduced, fortunately, by a paradise like beginning that is effective in making clear how humanity makes its own heavens and its own hells. Although this is not my taste in movies I was “forced” to watch it with my two son in laws who were with us for Christmas and I am glad I did – not for the gruesome parts, but for the opening 20 minutes of the paradise like village life of the indigenous tribe that becomes the victims of the Aztecs. After the movie all I could think was this: “How many times have we made our own hells? How many times have we left paradise? Will we ever learn that heaven and hell are here and now and of our own creation?” Today, I’d like to explore our present day choices that are leading to heaven… or hell.
Let’s begin with this poem of Wendell Berry, the unofficial poet of rural America, who lives on his farm in Kentucky, entitled The Peace of Wild Things.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Like the poem my premise is that despair [and hell] are defeated by the beauty and our delight in wild things. We stop wanting to dominate and control everything around us, but rather choose to be part of what is, to belong. This is exactly the mood portrayed in the first 20 minutes of Apocalypto. That means that humans do not dominate the environment. This same idea was expressed below in visual art instead of a poem in the 15th century.
The Garden of Earthly Delights was painted by Hieronymus Bosch, between 1490 and 1510.
The painter makes it obvious that the inevitable result of too many people indulging in too much material pleasure results in the garden of Eden being transformed into hell – a hell we made by our choices. Today’s age, like every age, is a strange mixture of heaven and hell. Some of what we do, for example my son in law helping an old lady in Perth cross the road yesterday, are bits of heaven. Other choices, such as the family member of a friend lying and stealing because of his drug addiction, after being supported by months by that family member, are bits of hell. Some people, such as the recently deceased Arch Bishop Desmond Tuto of South Africa, bring the light of heaven shining upon the Earth. Here is an example of what he said in 2004:
“Ecological concerns are a deeply religious, spiritual matter. To pollute the environment,
to be responsible for a disastrous warming, is not just wrong and should be a criminal offence;
it is certainly morally wrong. It is a sin.”
Others, such as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko , seem to be doing their best to make hell on Earth a reality, as evidenced by this quote of his: “Until you kill me, there will be no other elections.”
So, what can I do to not expand the darkness of hell? What can you do to bring a bit of heaven down to Earth?
Belong. Nurture and cherish all the threads that connect you to your family, your neighbours, your trees, your pets… cherish even the sunshine and chattering squirrels and those people most in need – such as the person with an addiction mentioned above. All of us are connected and when we cooperate for each other’s best interests, we are creating a bit of heaven right here. Right now. When we focus on ourselves our narcissism is hell. When we think that having more people on Earth is fine, without considering the mass extinctions that this makes inevitable, it is simply another form of narcissism, a species-centric narcissism. Without the wild things there is no heaven. Always remember, it’s not about you. You are part of a much bigger story, a much better story. I leave you with some of the words of another poem from Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir , which are the opening lines to a documentary about him, entitled Look & See, which you can purchase online. The theme, which is not obvious, is that our self-realization, autonomous, self-actuated modern self has destroyed all sense of belonging to each other and to the Earth and we have thus put ourselves into prison, into hell.
The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.
Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.
- Wendell Berry
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