Donna Henes Urban Shaman

It Is What We Do That Counts

By Donna Henes, Urban Shaman

If the success or failure of this planet of human beings depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be and what would I do?

-Buckminster Fuller

This fall marks three years since the United States made its shameful showing at the Kyoto Conference on Global Warming. I was in Paris at the time and watched CNN in horror as the U.S. representative had the nerve to stand up in front of the entire world and say that, unfortunately, the United States simply couldn't afford to take environmental actions as they were bad for business and thus the economy.

Everyone who I encountered in Paris and later in London was livid at our unmitigated audacity. But when I returned to New York, I realized in amazement, that most people here didn't know the first thing about the Kyoto Conference, let alone our despicable performance there. There was nothing about the climate of International opinion against us on the mainstream news.

On the BBC and other international news we were being portrayed as a dangerous enemy of the global community and Mother Earth, Herself. We were constantly berated, derided, for our shortsighted, selfish disregard for the health, safety and spirit of the rest of the planet.

We were the only country out of 200 developed nations to refuse to sign this international agreement to work to reduce the proliferation of greenhouse gases and to reduce the wanton depletion of the earth's resources. We, the source of fully one fourth of the carbon monoxide poisons produced in the world today, refused to make the slightest alteration to our greedy, consumptive ways.

Up until September 11, 2001, our European friends and allies had been seriously pursuing the idea of imposing sanctions on us for our bad faith and rotten behavior. Although, the whole world had been watching us, monitoring our lack of consciousness and compliance, the full extent of the global environmental emergency and our direct responsibility for its deplorable condition never quite made it to our popular media.

Most of the American people probably would not have approved of the stance of our government, had they been consulted. After all, it isn't as if the effects of our foolishness aren't already imminently evident. Nine out of the ten hottest years of the entire Twentieth Century occurred during its final decayed decade.

For the past several years, cities across the country have been plagued with power shortages and rolling blackouts. And Just a few days ago, we experienced the most widespread blackout ever thrusting 50 million people into the dark and blistering heat of night. If you think about it, all those air conditioners running all the time are actually making it hotter in the long run. We have created a vicious circle heat/drought monster. The more energy we consume, the more energy we need. Green house gases be damned.

After the last tree has been cut down, After the last river has been poisoned, After the last fish has been caught Only then will you find That money cannot be eaten.

-Cree Prophecy

But all this, of course, is brilliant for business. So good in fact, that now we are back in the Middle East as conquerors and the some of the most pristine places on the planet are in danger of being sacrificed in order to fuel our frenzied, albeit lucrative, over-drive.

Today, post 9/11, this touchy topic has been tabled, conveniently ignored by the international community whose attention has been diverted by the search for terrorists which has served to eclipse and forgive all else. When Donald Rumsfeld is correct when he states that we are fighting to preserve our way of life and to secure our freedom. We are defending our right to drive cars that get eight miles per gallon of gas, our freedom to cool movie theaters to the degree that we need to wear sweaters inside in July, our liberty to live in luxury at the expense of the rest of the world.

But we can't just blame the big guys, either. We are, all of us, delighted to do our part by diligently acquiring as much as we can, lusting after what we cannot obtain and wasting what we do have — even those of us who are careful. We are all response-able.

Lately I've seen several outrageous television commercials that blithely extol the benefits of throwaway dust rags and floor mops and disposable baby bibs, of all things. As it is, every American uses an average of 4-6 trees a year on paper goods, wood products and newsprint.

Knowing myself to be a concerned citizen and certified Queen of Reducing, Re-using and Recycling, I feel morally indignant in the face of such crass waste. I also have to admit that I feel somewhat morally superior, self-righteous and not a little bit smug. I rags, sponges and cloth napkins, after all.

This is all well and good, but what have I done lately? What did I do today? I have come to understand that this is an important distinction: what did I do versus what did I not do. The issue is not how many trees did I save, but how many trees did I plant?

Water flows over these hands. May I use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Maybe it is self-defeating to think that we should be giving up comforts and luxuries in order to be more environmentally correct and connected. Such negative terminology doesn't make acting conscientiously seem like a very attractive prospect, but rather like some sort of deprivation that would appeal only to martyrs. That's just bad psychology and unproductive.

Perhaps it is more fruitful to think not of giving something up, but of giving something back. It is the most elemental and universal rule of etiquette that if you take something, you put it back; if you use something, you replace it -- plus some. While saving and conserving are admirable virtues to be commended and encouraged, being generous and proactively responsive is equally crucial to our survival, body and soul.

It is our responsibility to take less and give more. I am not referring to responsibility in the deadly, leaden terms of duty or burden or millstone of guilt, blame, fear, shoulds and should nots. This unfortunate reading of responsibility invites evasion and childish rebellion.

A friend who owns a book store has a sign posted in the shop john that says something like, "If you finish the roll of toilet paper, please replace it with a new roll from the shelf below." He tells me that no one ever finishes the complete roll of tissue. They always leave one sheet, one measly square on the cardboard roll. That way, of course, they are not responsible for changing it.

Today more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sending of universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.
-- The Dalai Lama

Maybe we should think of it as response-ability. The ability to respond to respond. Recently, I was asked to speak to the ministers who are being trained to serve as resident chaplains in the Pastoral Care Department of the Westchester Medical Center. Specifically, they asked me to present the shamanic point of view of team building with an emphasis on creating alliances and community.

After much rifling through of books and files as well as several periods of deep meditation on the topic at hand, I realized that there is no such thing. From a shamanic point of view, it is redundant to think of reaching out to build teams, alliances, and communities, as we are already all connected, allied, joined together as one. There is no us and them. There is only us. We -- all of us who occupy this planet: organic and inorganic; living and not; past, present, and future -- are the world.

We come from the earth and return to her belly. We are made of the same substance as the sea, the soil, the stars. There are, and ever have been, only so many molecules in existence, and all the rest -- birth, growth, death, development, change, evolution, species -- is really just about recycling.

We breathe the same air as our cave-dwelling ancestors; inhaling and exhaling, exchanging carbon dioxide and oxygen with our plant relatives untold billions of times over the millennia. And the same holds true for water. It rains, it pools, it evaporates. We drink, we pee. Again and again and again in a grand scale cosmic round robin.

All borders and boundaries and separations are pure illusion. Each time we touch someone, we leave some of our skin atoms behind and pick up a parcel of new ones. Thus we merge, literally becoming part of each other. I am you and you are me and we are we.

We are all in this together, inextricably bound on our beautiful blue planet spinning through space. Remember that extraordinary photograph of Earth taken from the moon? We are one team, one community, one world, one living, breathing entity. And the sooner we realize it, the happier, safer, and saner we will be.

If you think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from someplace else, you see that we are the earth. We are the consciousness of the earth.

--Joseph Campbell

Everything, everything, matters. Every single thing counts. We live in a participatory universe and since everything is connected, there is no such thing as an outsider, a disinterested observer. According to quantum physics, observers, by the very fact of observation, affect events. What harms you, harms me. What threatens the planet, weakens me. What goes around, comes around.

So what's a gal to do? Well, do something, certainly. I can't just sit here and watch this wonderfully woven world unravel around us. If every single thing that we do matters, I decided that surely I could begin by doing one small thing. For me, this was the summer of the paper bag.

My old friend Ryan spent the summer doing construction work around my house. In addition to all the great repairs and improvements, he also brought La Cruella coffee back into my life. Big time. Every morning I'd set off to the Dominican Castillo for two cafe con leche grandes to go for us, my own paper bag in hand.

Each time I handed over my crumpled, much-folded bag along with my money, I would comment, "I'm re-cycling." In the beginning, the guys were disgusted -- a used paper bag, how uncouth. Then, after weeks of the same unwavering procedure, they began to show interest and soon it became a contest of sorts. Just how long would one bag last? Were they taking bets, I wondered?

Eventually, I began to give status reports. "Four weeks. Times seven days. That's 28 bags we saved." How many bags make a tree? I used that same bag again and again, toting 20 ounces of liquid plus cups - almost one and a half pounds in weight -- each time. I discovered what the Japanese have known all along, that paper is nearly indestructible.

I finally retired that bag into the re-cycling bin when it began to feel too flimsy after nine weeks of service. That's 63 bags-worth. At that rate, a person would only need to use six bags a year, saving 359 bags in all. And that's just for coffee. Times how many people, how many meals, how many trees?

Our not doing is a potent as our action. In other words, that by doing something positive, even just by thinking positive thoughts, the negative trends are altered and transformed. As are we.

Let the beauty we love be what we do
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

-Rumi

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