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Preference
and Power
Delivered by
Bruce Arnold, April 20, 2008
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
When I was in high school, we lived in a lovely old
paper mill town called
Chillicothe
,
Ohio
. Paper mills are usually
placed near forests so they have access to lots of trees, and
Chillicothe
was no exception. It was at
the confluence of the
Scioto River and Paint Creek, right smack-dab on the
terminal moraine – that place where the glaciers stopped grinding
everything flat at the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years or so ago.
From
Chillicothe
north to the Hudson Bay and west to the
Rockies
, the plains stretched like a tabletop.
To the south and east, nothing but hills and woods, clear to the
Blue Ridge
.
Logging was not what you’d call big business; it was business,
though, a steady one, feeding the paper mill.
I worked as a logger one summer, on a 10-man crew.
It was good work, out in the woods and the sun and the rain, the
wind and the wildlife. We
ourselves were not clear-cutting. I
believe it was because we did not grind the logs on-site.
We hauled them to a wood lot at the pulp mill where they were
chipped. Hauling smaller trees
would have been more difficult. If
you look at log trucks on the roads around here, you’ll see that they
are all good-size logs.
There were outfits that did clear-cutting, though, and one day we
woke up to find them at work on a hillside that was visible from a main
highway. And oh, there was
wailing, and grinding of teeth!
Apparently clear-cutting was OK so long as it took place back in
the hollers. But out where we
could see it? Outrage!
My girl-friend’s father was a forester with the paper company,
and he explained it to me. Clear-cutting,
he said, was no different from a forest fire.
It looks ugly as sin. But
in the first couple of years, weeds and small woody plants make a
resurgence, such as could not grow under a mature forest canopy.
They provide seeds that feed a lot of birds and small game, and
tons of organic material as they die back in the fall, enriching the soil.
The abundance of small game attracts predator species, such as fox
and hawk, and they have a population boost.
As young saplings grow, they provide tender forage and cover for
deer and larger grazing species, who also get a boost.
And so on through successive stages, each building on the one
before.
Twenty years later, you could not distinguish that
swatch from any of the rest of the surrounding forest.
It was not planted in tidy rows of pine, as is often done, but
allowed to re-establish as the same mixed hardwood forest it had been.
I’m not saying clear-cutting is always and
everywhere a good thing. But
clearly, it is not always and everywhere a bad thing.
All the points that the protesters made were proven wrong.
There was not massive erosion.
Wildlife did not desert the area.
And perhaps most relevant, the “ugly gash” was not a blight on
the landscape forever. It was
not a blight for two years, once re-growth was visibly established.
That’s the salient point. It
was ugly. People didn’t like
it. But they wouldn’t just
say that. It had to be wrong,
because they wanted it stopped. And
we all know, as adults, that stamping our feed and saying, “I don’t want
it! I don’t want it!
I don’t want it!” doesn’t work.
But – oh yes, but if I tell you that I’m saving the Earth, or
Working for World Peace, or – check this one out – “It’s for the
Children,” then by golly, you have to give me what I want.
“You have to give me what I want.”
Take that out of any given context, and just let the bald statement
roll around on your tongue. “You
have to give me what I want.” Imagine
it being said by your made – your teen-ager – your worst enemy – or
just the jerk in the next office. Set
aside whether you want to be forgiving, understanding, or even just avoid
a conflict – let the bare statement roll around your mind for a while,
and be honest with yourself. It
rankles, doesn’t it?
When what I want becomes what I must have, and you have to give it
to me, we have a problem.
From the sublime – such as the 150 years’ battle between
capitalism and communism – to the ridiculous – which lamps will we
have on the walls here in the sanctuary?
-- so much comes down to “because I said so.”
Not “because I said so,”
“because I said so.”
Now, if you’re nodding your head and thinking about some else you
know who does this, then you have missed the point.
You can’t make the other guy stop.
You have to see for yourself the ways you convert desires into
“oughts” or “should.” And
there’s a real simple way to discover this.
Every time you say “should” or “ought,” try substituting
“I wish” instead. So when
I might have said, “John, we ought to do something about the hum in the
sound system,” instead I could say, “John, I wish we’d do something
about the sound system.”
Because the word “should” makes it sound like a moral
imperative. If I should do
something and I don’t, I’m a bad, bad boy.
But if you say you wish I would do something, and I don’t, I
haven’t been bad, I’ve just come to a different set of conclusions.
“I wish” is more honest, more clear, more direct, more
accurate.
There has been a lot of tension around here lately.
Most of it has something to do with the building effort.
If we look into our hearts, we will see that what we take to be so
self-evidently imperative, is really a preference.
How does this translate into action?
Well, for one thing, while attending meetings, we don’t have to
voice an opinion on everything. Just
because an idea occurs to me, does not mean that I really know anything
about the topic. Some of us
tend to over-think things, to micro-manage every last tiny detail.
This is just about control, not quality.
If you find yourself saying, “I just want it to be the best” to
yourself – or others – frequently, then it’s about control, not
quality. When it’s about
quality, you pick your battles better than that.
If you find yourself getting upset about decisions frequently,
it’s not because you care too deeply, but because you’re not getting
your own way. This isn’t
psychopathology, folks. This
is plain old human nature. If
you find yourself never saying “No,” it’s not because you’re
dedicated, it’s because you don’t think it can run without you.
If you find yourself blaming other people for the way you feel,
it’s because you haven’t been honest with yourself about your real
motivations.
These are hard lessons. They
require us to dig deep. But
this is the road to spiritual growth and maturity.
There is no other. A
church is a caldron in which we put ourselves.
Like the old alchemists, we can turn base metal – our immature
passions and power plays – into purest gold, the gold of harmony, of
forbearance, forgiveness, of connectedness, of gracefulness.
The alchemical quintessence – the catalyst that turns base metal
into gold, and not into dross – is love.
We have to love each other more than we love our ideas.
We have to love each other more than our pet projects.
We have to love each other more than material things.
We have to love each other because, in the end, it’s all we
really have.
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