By Robert C. Koehler
What does mowing the lawn have to do with world events?
Well, one of my life skills is the ability to make minimal and possibly absurd connections, linking the trivial and the profound. Thus, a few years back (when I still mowed my own lawn), I wrote this poem. It’s called “Buddha’s Lawn”:
I mow the lawn and feel gratitude
my neighbors
haven’t pigeonholed me as a crazy old coot.
I’m stalled in my transition
from a lifestyle and sense of order based on
killing things,
like weeds, mice, whatever,
to one based on reverence for all stuff,
however weird.
It’s a cool day but
I work up a sweat.
On the lawn, I pick up a shred
of burst red balloon, a used napkin,
a transparent plastic juice container.
This stuff is all just litter
and the weeds are still weeds.
If I really let myself
see them differently,
I’d be the crazy neighbor, right?
You know, value everything, including the disposables of life. I guess I’ve always had this wacky inner protest going on, not against order and cleanliness per se, but against the clank of the trash can: “throwing stuff away,” then assuming it’s permanently gone from our universe, rather than floating in a river somewhere or buried in a landfill.
Is it possible, I quietly (secretly) ask myself, to actually value . . . somehow . . . trash, weeds, mice, bugs or anything – everything – else that doesn’t fit into a properly civilized, middle-class universe? This secret question is mixed with confusion, even shame, because, well, I’m sort of a slob, indifferent to dust and disorder and the like, but also, at the same time, a participant in and benefactor of humanity’s exploitation of Planet Earth.
So, I tell myself: just mow the damn lawn, toss out (or maybe recycle) the litter and do your best to fit in. I try, I try, but my strange, soul-deep uncertainty persists. And a larger, far more troubling question quickly emerges. Where do we draw the line between valuing and dismissing . . . whatever?
And my uncertainties turn social. They turn political. I grew up in the Christian church, and heard its values espoused: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And, oh yeah: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”
Could anything resonate more clearly? This was deep, unyielding: Don’t submit to simplistic anger but dig, when you are hurt and offended, for understanding, for healing. Love is not a simple concept – a sploosh of kumbaya and the problem’s solved. It may well be life’s deepest challenge.
But as Christianity became a world religion, its cross got turned upside down and became a sword. And along came the Crusades. Let’s retake the Holy Land, man! Loving thy enemy apparently meant killing him – and his family, his children. Millions of people died. And the wars rolled on and on. Conquest and dehumanization became fully embedded as the religious values of the powerful. Human ingenuity – scientific progress – mostly fed the urge for war, culminating in the creation, and use, of the atomic bomb. And 12,000 or so nuclear bombs now sit here and there around the planet, continually upgraded, patiently waiting to end the world.
But even as ending the world remains on hold, non-nuclear wars continue, making the news virtually unbearable to read. For instance, over 50,000 Palestinians, — maybe 100,000 or more – have died in Israel’s genocidal assault.
And, as Truthout reports: “Many Palestinians say that the starvation is even worse than Israel’s bombardments, having been starved by varying levels of Israel’s blockade for 19 months and with food costs constantly on the rise. The total aid blockade ushered in the worst conditions of the genocide so far; one Palestinian reporter said in March that children in the region are so hungry that they’re drawing pictures of food in the sand.
“ . . .. According to an assessment by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, nearly 71,000 children are expected to experience acute malnutrition in the next year due to Israel’s blockade.”
This is humanity’s flow of indifference to much – or all? – of life. I can’t let go of it. And I can’t stop noticing it at the miniscule level of “weeds” and “litter” and every other aspect of nature that doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is not, oh gosh, be good to the weeds, be good to the discarded cigarette butts and plastic straws – but rather, notice them and ponder, with deep wonderment, the meaning of nature, the meaning of life.
What if we started collectively seeing that discarded plastic straw not as simply an assault on our sense of order – clean sidewalks! – but as a minute particle of the living planet? How far upwards might this awareness flow?
Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.
