Good Friday and the birds and the bees

Apr 02, 2010 17:32

If religion or spirituality is not your bag you may want to move on to other fare. I'm a Catholic and while I do not work to spread my beliefs around, I make no apology for expressing them in my own blog. I also feel no need to explain whether I agree or disagree with the Church on various matters -- not when my aim is writing from a personal place in my own spiritual life.

And, if you have criticisms of the Church, or are a so-called recovering Catholic, or are at the opposite pole find these writings not "Catholic" enough, this is not the place to post such issues or rejoinders. Again, other forums exist and you will find them without much effort. Okay, that's the disclaimer, now on with it :)

On this Good Friday, here in the northeast, the sun is out after interminable rain, and signs of spring are all around.

I'd like to see a few more honey bees flitting about the flowers, and hear a few more song birds. But both are under siege, like a lot of creatures of late. Pesticide is a culprit, but I suspect only one of many.

For a long time, my Good Friday ritual has been to visit the Stations of the Cross at Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto, a beautiful sanctuary here in Lowell, Mass. Jack Kerouac mentions it in his writings about Lowell, and it's a part of the city's spiritual mosaic.

After the recent flooding, it's clear we are a bit too paved over and this is why the water cannot drain naturally into the ground. Along with the disappearing honey bees and song birds, all something to think about on Good Friday.

The word "repent" is one of those words that has lost its original meaning due to a change of context. It means, literally, to think again, or re-think.

Good Friday seems an especially good day to re-think our relationship to the environment -- the many ways in which we love the Earth in principal but then continue to do behaviors or subscribe to policies that harm it. And the other creatures. And us.

It's a day to think about how we have tools to live differently, and that we need to use them. One tool is science -- listening to truths, however painful and yes, inconvenient Another is political will. And, a third, asking ourselves what our own role is. Even the most environmentally aware among us know of ways we could do better, or reach out to educate others.

Is it enough, for instance, to dress up like polar bears and jump in Walden Pond every winter to demonstrate the consequences of global warming? Chances are whoever notices -- to mention your fellow polar bear impersonators -- already share the same beliefs.

Good Friday this year comes with warm weather, and the promise of spring, not one granted unconditionally. The animals and plants around us, linked to us by genes and by our common history on the same planet, could tell us something we must hear -- before the song birds and honey bees fall silent.

lent, religion, spring, nature, environment, spirituality, good friday

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