Sometimes juxtaposition can beget illumination.
On Friday I learned that the manatees may need to be rescued from spreading oil in the Gulf of Mexico. As you probably know, manatees are large, goofily lovely aquatic mammals known for their friendly nature, their big flippers, and their frequently losing battles with power boat propellers. Already endangered, unseasonably cold weather in the Gulf last winter decimated an additional ten percent of their population. Biologists have no idea whether they will be able to successfully relocate the manatees before they're harmed by spreading oil and it goes without saying that BP has no contingency plan to address this eventuality.
On Friday I had also just about completed Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's excellent book, "Half the Sky" about the worldwide scourge of female sex trafficking, honor killings, genital mutilation, maternal mortality, and mass rape. The glaring truth is that across a substantial portion of the globe the profound ongoing suffering of millions of women and girls matters not one whit.
To say my heart was heavy would have been an understatement.
Then on Friday after work I went to dinner with two women friends. We ate, and drank, and talked, and laughed. Afterward we walked out of the restaurant into a balmy, golden Pacific Northwest evening, free as birds, happy as larks, with the scent of summer in the air.
This juxtaposition damn near killed me. Glory here, sorrow there. Delight here, anguish there. Lusciousness here, barrenness there. How to hold both in my heart? How to simultaneously love the good and face the bad? "Simple" came the answer, an answer both old and new, "it's simple." "The riches you've been given, the riches of education, safety, freedom, work, food, water, aren't yours to keep. They are yours to give away."
Doh! Homer Simpson head slap!
As my hero, Bono, sang almost twenty years ago:
One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
One...life
One
Today's front yard critter count:
Deer:1
Raccoons: 0
Chipmunks: 1
Squirrels: 1
Manatees: 0 (but they can come live with us - we have a spare bedroom)
