Yup. Duluth, Minnesota was freakishly warm this week, reaching 60 yesterday. I mean, when the global climate chaos effects are delightful (walking barefoot on the back stoop or to take out the trash, needing only a light jacket at a time of year when you are normally tackling snowbanks, ice, and below zero windchills...), I guess you have to simply enjoy it. On Wednesday, I sat in the sun down at the beach near Canal Park, amazed to be feeling just a light south breeze, not the frigid gales of November roiling down the lake. Yesterday, the promised cold front blew in, but it remains relatively mild.
Still, there's something slightly ominous about it all. The light is all wrong, for one thing. The sun is too low in the sky. The trees are bare of leaves, and most of the lawns are finally brown. So to see people walking down the street in tee shirts is jarring. To hear the return of spring birds (however beautiful) is jarring.
And it continues to be jarring to hear assorted news items about communities trying to adapt to global warming, corporations and nations negotiating limits on this and changes to that. This action, while perhaps well-meaning, seems to me to mask the harder truth, that our modern way of life is completely at odds with protecting Nature. Creating more and more goods for more and more people, to be consumed then tossed out -- well, I just don't think it was ever in alignment with Goddess energy or can become so at this late date. I don't believe the Goddess thinks in terms of money (perhaps that's just my personal projection though!!!). But heck, all these generations we have taken "natural resources" without paying for them. There hasn't been a "bank" where we've paid Her for every gallon of oil, or every tree, or every ounce of ore, or every fish, or breath of fresh air...etc. And even putting money aside, for the most part we never even thanked Her (and I include myself, although finally, genuine gratitude has started to take hold). So now, we feel the longterm effects of the one-sidedness of this relationship. And unless our actions start to weigh in the direction of "loving Nature" rather than "saving humanity", they may have little effect. And they may have little effect at this late date, anyway.
How to proceed without despair? Complete rootedness in the present and awareness of the beauties that cross our path. This morning, I had an existential moment where I couldn't believe that the sun (91 million miles from earth) was shining on me. For the first time in 68 years, I realized the miracle of it all. Perhaps in that sense, it's never too late to change?
