Monday 14 November 2011

The tears of green parrots




I sit on my rooftop, Dhaka’s morning haze wrapping itself around me, a soft blanket that does its best to protect me from the admidst the cachophony of din assaulting my senses.  The noise is coming from foundation drilling, in a formerly lush green block cleared of its ‘natural assets’, now resembling more a lunar surface than anything of this world.  

Looking up from my small bowl of noodles, I see several bright green parrots hopping and clinging to the rooftop’s railings, their hooked feet ill-suited for its hard, flat concrete surfaces.  With a jolt I remember the last time that I have seen them – hopping around the coconut and palm trees that used to grow in the block, eating insects and quarelling amongst the dappled foliage.  Like the Swomee Swans from The Lorax, they are just one of thousands of species deprived of their habitat, made home-less by development.
 
So here I am eating breakfast and watching them, and watching the drilling going at the moon’s surface.  What help to them is that pang of conscience in my stomach?  Like the seven months of living that I have done in Bangladesh, I have seen more suffering, need and deprivation than ever before in my life - all from the comfort of having a home and a (comparably) ample income source from the Australian government).  What use is this witnessing? 

Bearing witness is a powerful pre-condition for creating positive change.  It is the essential act of self-awareness in a suffering world. To quote eco-buddhist philosopher Joanna Macy:

"I call it the work that re-connects. It involves speaking the truth about what we are facing. I think it’s very hard for people to do that alone, so this work thrives and requires groups.

It needs to be done in groups so we can hear it from each other. Then you realize that it gives a lie to the isolation we have been conditioned to experience in recent centuries, and especially by this hyper-individualist consumer society. People can graduate from their sense of isolation, into a realization of their inter-existence with all.

Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say “It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.

Our little minds think it must be over, but the very fact that we are seeing it is enlivening. And we know we can’t possibly see the whole thing, because we are just one part of a vast interdependent whole–one cell in a larger body.
"

So I sit and watch these beautiful feathered verdant bodies flying to and fro, trying to renegotiate and rebuild their lives in the midst of devastation.  As they call to each other and fly, I think about their tiny frames, so marvelously sculptured through millions of years of adapting to the environments around them.  The wisdom accumulated through this journey is immense, and we humans are only now scratching its surface.  And although our collective mind-less-ness is driving us to scratch open raw wounds in the planets surface, I still hold hope that as we learn more of stunning beauty and interconnectedness of this world, we will see that our present actions make as much sense as tearing our own precious skin.


[Note: I was too slow to get a photograph of any of the green parrots, so the image at the top is of a crow in the same former habitat]

1 comment:

  1. Hey Michael, Beautiful blog post. I couldn't agree more that bearing witness is the beginning of a long process for creating positive change. I will visit your blog again!

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