April 19th, 1997

WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON?
By Jackie Giuliano

"It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up - release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love for the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened."
-- Joanna Macy from World as Lover, World as Self, Parallax Press, 1991.

As Earth Day 1997 approaches, I am reflecting on many things. In many ways, I feel numb. I read in the newspaper today that the tobacco industry is very pleased with the recent lawsuits and pending settlements. The front pages of the L.A. Times report that the cigarette industry is finally being forced to admit that nicotine is addictive and that they have been manipulating people. Yet the Business section of the same paper tells of how their stock prices have soared more than 10% with the news of the pending litigation. You see, these "settlements" that the tobacco giants are talking about making with the various states will secure for them immunity from personal injury and wrongful-death lawsuits. By admitting wrongdoing, the system will allow them to operate without fear. Something is very wrong.

In Los Angeles, city officials are upset at the "trash scavenging" that is going on. Homeless and others in need of money will visit the curbside recycling bins to remove bottles and cans, trading them in for cash. This practice denies the city, they claim, over $2 million worth of recycling monies. So, in response, the City of Los Angeles is spending $33 million to buy "anti scavenging curbside recycling receptacles." Have I done the math wrong?

The Los Angeles Air Quality Management District (AQMD), under sharp criticism in recent months for loosening industry air pollution standards and clean-up requirements, is expanding its program of "air pollution credits." Under this unbelievable program of denial, the AQMD allows businesses to gain "credits" when they clean up air pollution sources. These credits can then be applied to plants whose pollution output does not meet local standards. For example, a factory that is dumping millions of pounds of toxic air pollution into the Los Angeles basin from one of its plants can earn credits by paying for more efficient water heaters for local residents or for a small local business to switch from diesel fuel to a more clean burning fuel. The credits they get for their gesture can be used to remove the regulatory restrictions on their polluting plant! So the AQMD has found a clever way for a polluter to legally continue to pollute and not consider L.A. "unfriendly" to business. This is shocking and unconscionable to me, but considered very clever by city government and industry.

Earth Day approaches. It is a nice thing, to be sure. On one day a year, we are encouraged to honor the Earth. It is sort of like International Woman's Day or Black History Month. Limited periods of time are allotted (one day to one month) to be mindful of great wrongs and ongoing injustices. What can we do to make our celebrations into "Earth Life" and "International Woman's Forever," and "Black History Always?" There must be a way.

Joanna Macy's words echo in my head: "Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up - release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature." We desperately need help in understanding our "vast, true nature."

Today I was listening to Jerry Brown's "We The People" program on Pacifica radio station KPFK in Los Angeles. Jerry was interviewing long time activist Gary Snyder. They were talking about our disconnection from the natural world and from each other and any sense of community. Jerry asked what we could do about it. Gary Snyder said that one of the things that you can do is to meditate, to turn inward, to seek the silence inside. Going into your imagination will take you into a true wilderness. Jerry agreed and said that meditating is something you can do anywhere, even on the Space Shuttle. Gary said "true, but if you meditate, you won't want to go on the Space Shuttle - it won't be imaginative enough for you!" What a powerful message that is. We don't often appreciate how awesome our minds, hearts, and the natural world are.

Hildegard of Bingen, an 11th century abbess, poet, scientist, musician, artist, and politician, said that the Earth and her gifts are so awesome that we cannot comprehend them directly. Her work had never been translated into English until 1982. She offered a deep and healing medicine for what may be the West's primary diseases of the past few centuries: 1) Anthropocentrism: the West's preoccupation with the human, 2) ignoring other creatures and Nature's cycles, and 3) the reduction of the mystery of the universe to a machine. In her book "De operatione Dei" ("The Book of Divine Works"), she urges heart knowledge, not just head knowledge. "Search out the house of your heart," she said.

One of the most powerful things she said was that we experience so much brilliance in our lives that we need allegory to approach it. She said that neither science nor theology is enough to awaken a people. It is the artist's gift to do the awakening. The artist takes powerful scientific and spiritual energy and re-creates it, weaves it, sings it, dramatizes it, and ritualizes it. She said that in this way, knowledge gets it into the minds and hearts and imagination and bodies of the people. From there, it moves into the institutions and into forming new ones that are needed. She was, and still is, a great awakener with her words, poetry, songs, and music. Look for her books, interpreted by Matthew Fox, and CD's of her music (they are actually available on the shelves of Tower Records!)

As this Earth Day approaches, maybe we can use it as a time to reflect, a time to meditate about what we need to do. Maybe we can spend the day committing ourselves to finding a daily practice that helps us notice what is really going on. A powerful first step might be to realize that what we read in the newspaper and what we see on the television news are not reports of what is really going on. We have to accept new, or maybe very old, criteria in order to find out what is really going on. Maybe the flower petal you saw today is what is really going on. Maybe the quiet moment you spent in your lover's arms this morning is what is really going on. We need new priorities. We need new reasons to love.

O our Father, the Sky, hear us
and make us strong.
O our Mother the Earth, hear us
and give us support.
O Spirit of the East,
send us your Wisdom.
O Spirit of the South,
may we tread your path of life.
O Spirit of the West,
may we always be ready for the long journey.
O Spirit of the North, purify us
with your cleansing winds.
-- Sioux Prayer


To live content with small means,
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion,
to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich,
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly,
to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart,
to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely,
await occasions,
hurry never -
in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
-- William Ellery Channing


We ate no flesh in Eden, but afterwards,
when things got hard, we forgot
the peaceful kinship of that ancient kingdom.
As our teeth sank into their flesh
we had to deny them. So we said
they had no souls, no reason, no thumbs,
no speech. We were so different. We made
a chain of things to protect us - fire, medicine,
our locking houses, many kinds of clothes.
And we renamed them - farm product, fur crop,
renewable resource. Pray that we will see
their faces again in the mirror of creation,
the miracle of animals, their clear eyes
meaning more than profit to our own!
-- Jean Pearson


RESOURCES

1. The three verses above are from Earth Prayers, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and published by Harper Books, 1991.

2. Joanna Macy's books can be purchased from Creatura Books at http://members.aol.com/creabooks/creatura.html

3. Read the L.A. Times story about the tobacco industry in the April 17, 1997 edition: http://www.latimes.com/sbin/my_iarecord.pl?NS-doc-path=/httpd/docs/HOME/COMM UN/NEWS/ZONE15A/t000034406167.html&NS-doc-offset=0&NS-collection=DailyNews&N S-search-set=/var/tmp/33571/aaaa002S2571364&"

4. Read about the AQMD's air pollution credits: L.A. Times article: http://www.latimes.com/sbin/my_iarecord.pl?NS-doc-path=/httpd/docs/HOME/NEWS /SCIENCE/ENVIRON/t000032970.html&NS-doc-offset=0&NS-collection=DailyNews&NS- search-set=/var/tmp/33571/aaaa002lX5714cc&

AQMD Web Site: http://www.aqmd.gov/

5. Participate in Jerry Brown's "We The People" program at http://www.wtp.org/wp-art.html

6. Learn about Hildegard of Bingen at http://www.wtp.org/wp-art.html

Her incredible music can be purchased from the CD Connection at http://www.cdconnection.com/bin/webquery/ObdTsq5oZVOR.ab I highly recommend "Visions" on Capitol Records.


{Jackie Giuliano can be found trying to sort it all out in Venice, California. He is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, the University of Phoenix, and the Union Institute College of Undergraduate Studies. He is also the Educational Outreach Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to send space probes to Jupiter's moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and the Sun.}