Progress.
I was perusing an article about ways of celebrating Beltaine today. On the subject of Maypoles it said this:
"Go to your local hardware store and buy a 20-foot wood pole (more rural folk can cut it themselves, but be sure to take a moment to honor the tree that gives the sacrifice)."
Does this bother you people? It bothers me.
You see, the thing that bothers me is the implication that if you buy a wooden pole at the hardware store you aren't killing a tree and you needn't bother to honor its sacrifice.
Yeah, I know, it's just one line in some article, maybe badly phrased, and maybe the author didn't mean it that way. I think it just pushes a button that I have had pushed so many times in so many ways that I'm sensitive to it. It reminds me of the people I know who say that the "agrarian based" Pagan mythologies and year-cycles aren't important to them, because in their urban experience they aren't living "agrarian based lives". It always makes me want to yell: we are ALL living agrarian lives, there is NO SUCH THING as a human being that doesn't depend on the fertility of the earth to exist.
There will not be a wooden pole in the hardware store for you to purchase for your Maypole if the day comes that no one bothers to remember that forests are cut to supply the store.
Things you eat that come in packages at the store will not be there for you buy any more if the day comes that we truly "advance" beyond agrarianism. (It may be difficult to imagine this, because I know some of the "food" you can buy in the store doesn't bear any recognizable relation to things that grow from the earth, but it is still true: Food is made out of produce from the earth, even if it is thoroughly processed first.)
As long as we allow ourselves to believe that buying a wooden pole in the hardware store is in any way different than cutting down a tree ourselves, our culture will continue to be out of balance with the land.
As long as we allow ourselves to believe that buying dinner in a store makes us in any way less dependent on the earth to feed us, our culture will continue to be out of balance with the land.
"Go to your local hardware store and buy a 20-foot wood pole (more rural folk can cut it themselves, but be sure to take a moment to honor the tree that gives the sacrifice)."
Does this bother you people? It bothers me.
You see, the thing that bothers me is the implication that if you buy a wooden pole at the hardware store you aren't killing a tree and you needn't bother to honor its sacrifice.
Yeah, I know, it's just one line in some article, maybe badly phrased, and maybe the author didn't mean it that way. I think it just pushes a button that I have had pushed so many times in so many ways that I'm sensitive to it. It reminds me of the people I know who say that the "agrarian based" Pagan mythologies and year-cycles aren't important to them, because in their urban experience they aren't living "agrarian based lives". It always makes me want to yell: we are ALL living agrarian lives, there is NO SUCH THING as a human being that doesn't depend on the fertility of the earth to exist.
There will not be a wooden pole in the hardware store for you to purchase for your Maypole if the day comes that no one bothers to remember that forests are cut to supply the store.
Things you eat that come in packages at the store will not be there for you buy any more if the day comes that we truly "advance" beyond agrarianism. (It may be difficult to imagine this, because I know some of the "food" you can buy in the store doesn't bear any recognizable relation to things that grow from the earth, but it is still true: Food is made out of produce from the earth, even if it is thoroughly processed first.)
As long as we allow ourselves to believe that buying a wooden pole in the hardware store is in any way different than cutting down a tree ourselves, our culture will continue to be out of balance with the land.
As long as we allow ourselves to believe that buying dinner in a store makes us in any way less dependent on the earth to feed us, our culture will continue to be out of balance with the land.