W.W.D.D.?

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I have always admired the Buddhist way of respecting all life.  I must admit that I have killed an exceptionally scary looking spider or two in my day, but generally speaking I try not to harm any living creature.  I’ve moved far more spiders from inside of my home to the great outdoors than I have executed.

Most recently, after getting our 25 baby chicks and watching them grow, naming them, having them peck feed out of my hand, gently picking them up and rescuing them when they fly “over the border” of their little area, I made the decision to go ahead and be a full-fledged vegetarian.  We were darn close anyway.

Unlike most people who lean into vegetarianism, I stopped eating fish first.   I was concerned about the way we are decimating the life of our oceans.  I’m really not sure that people who live in land-locked Tennessee are really meant to eat sushi-grade tuna.  It’s not exactly environmentally-friendly locally-grown fare.   But, chicken and beef?  Why, you could get those from right here in Tennessee, and they were in no danger of extinction.

But, then we got the chickens.  And then we had Buffalo wings when Triston came over.  And then I almost wretched up what used to be one of my favorite dinners.  How could I look my precious chicks in the eye at 9:00 when I was smacking my lips over her cousin at 6:00?  It wasn’t a huge leap to also apply this feeling to the beautiful brown-eyed bovines I passed every day on my way to class.  So that was it.  No animal was going to have to die for my consumption again, I determined.   Buddha would be proud.

In a related story, Susie called me in a panic as I was about to turn into the driveway this evening.   There was an injured deer in the woods just adjacent to the big dogs’ fenced-in area.   The dogs were going nuts, and the deer was on the ground and in shock.  We believe it had a broken leg.

After placing several calls, the best answer we could get was that we should call the sheriff’s office.  Now, in the world of animal rescue, “call the sheriff” is code for “there’s nothing we can do” which is code for “this animal needs to be put out if its misery.”  In fact, the one wildlife rehabilitator we called said that he would lose his license if he rehabilitated a white tail deer because they were already so prolific and they really needed hunters to keep the population down.  “Besides,” he drawled, “you can’t rehabilitate a deer with a broken leg.  The most humane thing you can do is shoot it.”

We called the sheriff.  As we waited for a patrol car to show up, I stood out on the front porch wondering what the Buddha would do in this situation.  Was that “respect all life” thing such an absolute that helping to ease suffering was also off limits?   Would the Buddha have simply given the deer food and water and let nature take its course, even if nature would seem to have an inhumane lack of compassion?

In the end, I did what I always do.  I checked my own spirit and tested my own actions and behaviors against my own consciousness.   When the sheriff’s deputy arrived, I showed him the way to the deer.  Then I left him alone with it.  I went back to the house and waited.  Pretty soon, two shots were fired about 10 seconds apart.  They almost seemed to rip through my chest.   Then I felt release.  The deer was gone.  So was the pain.

What would Buddha do?  I care about as much for the answer to that question as I do for the similar question about Jesus, or Muhammed, or Shiva, or Billy Graham.  Consciousness, spirituality, whatever you want to call it, is an art and not a science.  We can’t achieve enlightenment by following the rules or path of another.   We can only achieve it by artfully wending our way along the path that is ours alone.    So, on my path this evening I helped end the suffering of another being on this planet.   For me, it was the right thing to do.

But it still wasn’t easy.

Integrity Can Be Exhausting

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

The textbook actually uses gay marriage as the sample issue for discussion in the \”Definition\” chapter.  So every time I teach English 1020, this topic comes up.  One of the decisions I have to make is when to tell my class that I\’m gay.  Some of them are astute enough to have already figured it out, but those students are surprisingly rare.  Some of them are unlucky enough to have already made a homophobic remark before I tell them.  Most of them take it with a certain amount of equanimity.  But all of them look at me.    Without fail.  I get every pair of eyes in the room drilling right into me as if they\’ve never seen me before.

Except for Sylvia.

Sylvia was one of those who opened her mouth before I got a chance to.  She made a few terse comments through tight, angry lips about \”those people\” and how they were going to hell, how marriage ought to be defined by the bible \”the way it\’s always been.\”

I was quite taken aback for a few minutes.  Not because of what Sylvia said, but because she was the one who had said it.  Until that moment, I would have pegged Sylvia as the other gay person in the room.  Of course, this phenomenon doesn\’t come as a surprise to most gay people.  If falls into the catagory of \”methinks the lady doth protest too much.\”  But that still doesn\’t make it any easier to watch someone engage in what seems on a deeply intuitive level to be self-loathing.

I thought she might soften her position, as students often do, once she found out I was gay.  But, she didn\’t.  Not one bit.  In fact, I think she became even more entrenched in it.   The second I said I was gay, however, she looked away from me.  And I never caught her eye again the entire evening.

I did my song and dance for the next 45 minutes.  I usually keep this discussion as far away from the bible as I can since marriage is and always has been a civil issue in this nation.   But, I admit, Sylvia sucked me in just a little.  I tried to address some of her biblically-based statements with some gentle correction.  I tried to point out that if we went back to a definition of marriage as found in the bible, then men would have several wives and hundreds of concubines.    Of course, that was probably a waste of breath.  I carry no delusion that I can persuade someone like Sylvia into doing a 180 on an issue like this.

I ended with the final argument I could make.  I told the class that I had no intention of changing their minds and certainly not their belief systems.  But, I did ask them to remember one thing — these were people we were talking about.   These were sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and, yes, mothers and fathers.  This was not some amorphous \”them.\”  This was the human experience, every bit as much as theirs was.

I dismissed the class.  Sylvia walked out without a comment and still not looking at me.

Some classes are easy and some are . . . less so.  This one made me feel like I\’d been hit by a truck.   I will not pretend to be something I\’m not.  I haven\’t done that since my freshman year at a religious college.   But, I have to admit, there are times when it is tempting.

Every time I teach this class, I think that maybe there is one person who really needs to hear this.  Maybe something I say will give validity to someone who feels very alone or help someone heal a relationship or at least make someone think.   On nights like this, I come home feeling like there might be a chance I\’ve done some really important work.

And, I admit, I come home exhausted.

Which One Is The Elephant?

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

Lately there has been a debate going on in the media over who is the “de facto” leader of the Republican party.  The two people in the running are Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee.   Talking heads and various other people in the know are spinning this back and forth and up and down, but I have yet to hear any of them ask the really pertinent question.

If Rush Limbaugh is even in the running, if this is enough of a contest to demand debate, if there is even the slightest possibility that he could be the guy . . . then doesn’t that tell us all we need to know about today’s Republican Party? 

In the same way that John McCain tried to walk a tightrope during his campaign by kowtowing to the ignorance that often found its way to a microphone at his town hall meetings, the Republican power brokers have to allow Limbaugh to run amok because shedding the light of truth on his ridiculous ranting would cost them a huge chunk of their base.    Michael Steele attempted it a few days ago, and today I saw the announcement that he is apologizing.   The head of the Republican Party apologized to Rush Limbaugh for calling him an “entertainer” and his talk show “incendiary.”   What’s next?  Are the Republicans going to hold a press conference to announce that the earth is flat?  The election made it clear that the Republicans are out of touch with reality.  This latest Limbaugh flap screams it from the rooftops.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, and the Republicans have chosen intercourse with Rush Limbaugh (which is a picture that should make ANYONE a Democrat).  I’m just afraid the baby they make out of that liaison will be a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy Republican Party.