Super Bugged

            Admittedly, many of the assumptions and implications herein are speculative and subjective.  Drawing from observation in the natural world yields parallels and corollaries regarding the state of our world.  These parallels I have attempted to draw between plant, animal, and human domains may not be completely appropriate, but that something is going on with our natural and living world I am quite certain. 

            There are more troubling observations from where I interact with the world.  Many of the grand expressions of life are being depressed and thus being substituted with more marginal (less beneficial and less valued) expressions.  In the landscape and woods edge poison ivy is thriving and growing at accelerated rates, while cultured grapes are struggling with one pest after another.  Ageless species of trees are dying, but the common weeds are thriving.  Beneficial insects like lacewings and honeybees are struggling while consuming, decline-inducing insects such as Japanese beetles, bagworms, and tent caterpillars are ever increasing their populations.  In the soils that support the plant kingdom the beneficial and necessary fungi of the micro-rhizae families are less and less evident, while infectious soil-born fungi like those causing verticillium wilt are ever more present.  

            At some point sooner rather than later, society must respond to the deficits and losses that confront us.  Many are saying it is already too late and are questioning whether their own actions can even make a difference.  Recent history suggests that the majority of humanity has not seen or appreciated our intimate connection to the living Earth.  Throwing our hands up is another way of practicing not seeing – not seeing the value of getting started toward caring for and celebrating life around us as inseparable from the life within us.  Ultimately our efforts will need to be big.  Small may not be good enough at this late hour.  Then again, if enough of us truly make a small step, it may be enough to equal a big one!

            Human history has often illustrated that we have wanted to reach beyond life’s integrated fabric and do something grander and more special of our own.  Perhaps these insatiable yearnings to become more are to prove our worth.  Now the greatest challenge of recent history is set before us.  The taking fires are burning all around us.  Will we be able to cool them down and put them out?

            Identifying life as the ‘pearl of great price’ will, for many of us, become a new way to see.  Perhaps humankind’s material extravaganza of taking and controlling would not seem so necessary if only we could believe that life, and more of it, is what we seek.  We can only be as alive as the living world around us is allowed to be. 

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