Thomas Friedman a Wiccan?
by: Nancy Vedder-Shults on August 30th, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I don’t normally read Thomas Friedman’s op. ed. pieces. But this one — “Connecting Nature’s Dots” — drew my attention, probably because of the word “Nature” in the headline. Practicing Wicca attunes me to nature, since to me it’s sacred. I ground my spirit in its rhythms (as the title of Starhawk‘s recent book The Earth Path proclaims). We are creatures of Mother Earth. She sustains us. And being in touch with Her cycles gives me significant insights into my life.
Thomas Friedman’s recent eco-safari in Africa seems to have brought this home to him. Of course, as a journalist, he sees it all from the perspective of a newspaper. In fact, you could sum up his piece as “Extra, extra, read all about it in the animal and insect tracks on the earth.” But I found his insight significant, nonetheless. Friedman’s guide, Map Ives — the 54-year-old director of sustainability for Wilderness Safaris, which supports ecotourism in Botswana — could read the tracks of passing animals as well as detecting the weather from their marks. More importantly, Ives pointed out all the interconnections and “free services” that nature provides.
Plants clean the air; the papyrus and reeds filter the water. Palm trees are growing on a mound originally built by termites. “If you spend enough time in nature and allow yourself to slow down sufficiently to let your senses work,” Ives said, “then through exposure and practice, you will start to sense the meanings in the sand, the grasses, the bushes, the trees, the movement of the breezes, the thickness of the air, the sounds of the creatures and the habits of the animals with which you are sharing that space.”
I’m not a trained scientist (although I live with one who wants to know EVERYTHING about the natural world). But just having a home in Madison for over 35 years, I’ve begun to learn those interconnections for myself and believe that I’ve become a naturalist of my local environment. When the swans return, I know it’s almost Winter Solstice; when the orioles return it’s Beltane (May Day). I’ve discovered for myself what we Unitarian Universalists call the seventh principle — “reverence for the interconnected web of existence of which we are a part.”
And like any Wiccan and belatedly Thomas Friedman, I know that the interconnections extend to our problems as humans, and therefore, as an earth-based animal species. Unfortunately, we approach what are interrelated crises as if they were separate.
“We need to stop thinking about these issues in isolation….We tend to think about climate change as just an energy issue, but it’s also about land use; one-third of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation and agriculture. So we need to preserve forest and other ecosystems to solve climate change, not only to save species.”
And we need to deal with poverty at its direst. Food insecurity affects almost a billion people world-wide on a daily basis and 2 billion intermittently. This means we need to begin to use more efficient farming methods so that we don’t clear more forests and drain more wetlands. As Friedman says, all the people pushing for change in these different areas need to realize that the problems are interconnected. He suggests these folks need to go on safari together. I suggest that we just need to listen to the Earth more often.
Nancy, I have been a city guy most of my life, though as a kid I spent many vacations on a farm. But we moved from San Francisco to rural New York on the edge of the Catskills when our son was four and brought him up there. Miles of woods started at our back door. We were there 14 years and then moved back to the Bay Area for this job at Tikkun. Back in the city we are both in mourning, bereft of the trees, birds and animals to a degree that has shocked us. We live in the East Bay where the density of housing is much less than our former home in San Francisco, and one friend there said we must be enjoying the “semi-rural” nature of El Cerrito! What? This is a huge metropolis and we are finding it very hard to get this sense back, that you describe, of the interconnected web, the local ecology. It feels as if it is gasping for survival, buried under concrete and asphalt. I know other people manage to do it. This is just a heartfelt cry about how I’m not managing to.
Dave, I know how lucky I am to live on the shores of Lake Mendota. The vista I see everyday reminds me of the interconnected web of life, even shows me these interconnections, if I take even the slightest interest. I think one of the most important tasks of Wiccan practitioners today is to translate that sense into life in urban areas, since most of us in the U.S. live in cities. One of the ways to do this is to grok that we humans are a part of the web as well. And that means that the concrete and asphalt — however aesthetically unappealing you may find it — are a part of the web, too. Sometimes I get this understanding and am amazed at what we humans can accomplish, especially when I listen to music.
I know that only goes so far. In fact, I have just promised myself — after seeing the STARS again during our vacation in the Adirondacks — that I will go to the countryside outside of Madison on a regular basis to see them (I haven’t decided how often, once a week, once a month, but seeing the sky full of stars is so uplifting for me that I must do this). My daughter Linnea, who lives in Brooklyn, was happy to move from Manhattan so that she could see the sky again. But even this was too little for her. She says that all she can really see is the moon. So she regularly facilitates a full moon circle for her artist, musician, dancer, and film friends, where they celebrate the lunar cycles, and she’s not Wiccan. But she loves nature. She just inherited her grandmother’s car, so now she’s driving out the city more often, and I think that helps as well.
I will ask Linnea how she deals with her nature deficit. But one suggestion I know she will make is to be aware of the few animals and trees that are in your environment. She tells me often about the feisty squirrel that seems to have made its home on her balcony.
Dave, The other thing the sky shows us is the weather, and that’s a wonderful expression of Mother Earth — her water cycle, and, sometimes when I personify Her, her moods. I love reading the clouds, even just noticing what kind of clouds are in the sky. In the East Bay, as opposed to San Francisco proper with all its fog and tall buildings, you can see the sky’s changes. Linnea seems to think that it’s the sky that nurtures urban folks. (I haven’t asked her for more ideas about what else she would suggest since my last post 5 minutes ago.)
And, of course, local parks have a lot to offer. I guess I really heard your heartfelt cry. And I want to thank you for getting me to think about all of this, because I believe it’s very important at this stage in the Earth’s history.
P.S. I’m really enjoying our conversations. Thanks!
I am glad that Thomas Friedman was exposed to Wicca. There may be some hope for him after all!
I enjoyed your post.
Lauren, I don’t have any information that Thomas Friedman was exposed to Wicca. He was exposed to an eco-safari that put him in touch with the many interconnections in nature (a perspective shared with Wicca and ecology for that matter). But his perspective seems to have shifted after this eco-tour.