I'm still enjoying the David Abram book. And it's directed me back toward animism... not that I ever really left animism. Anyway, he takes a passage from cultural anthropologist Richard Nelson, who studied the ecology of the Koyukon Indians of north central Alaska:
[T]raditional Koyukon people live in a world that watches, in a forest of eyes. A person moving through nature—however wild, remote, even desolate the place may be—is never truly alone. The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified. They feel. They can be offended. And they must, at every moment, be treated with the proper respect.
Abram goes on to suggest, "If the surroundings are experienced as sensate, attentive, and watchful, then I must take care that my actions are mindful and respectful, even when I am far from other humans, lest I offend the watchful land itself.” And, on the subject of offending the land, he then takes a prayer from Old Torlino, a Navajo elder:
I am ashamed before the earth;
I am ashamed before the heavens;
I am ashamed before the dawn;
I am ashamed before the evening twilight;
I am ashamed before the blue sky;
I am ashamed before the sun.
I am ashamed before that standing within me which speaks with me.
Some of these things are always looking at me.
I am never out of sight.
Therefore I must tell the truth.
I hold my word tight to my breast.
That is fantastic. And it meshes rather well with another book I am reading (in fact, listening to), Racing to Extinction, by Lyle Lewis. Lewis worked for the US Department of Fish and Wildlife and proved to be a thorn in the side of every manager he had, because Lewis actually wanted to save endangered species rather than make money or advance in his career. The book is not hugely cheery - basically he says, that's it: we are all going to die. He explains how everything we do has negative impacts on the environment. I mean, that much I know: everything we buy, trace back its journey and how it was made or grown and what was needed in that process (machines, chemicals) and so on and there is nothing "eco-friendly" in the world. If we stopped emitting, polluting, procreating, destroying habitats and so on right now, it still wouldn't be enough. There's too much carbon; the ecosystems are too degraded; there are too many toxins and plastics already loose.
I am ashamed before the earth.
Young B, on the other hand, bears no guilt: she can hold her head up high.
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