Respect and Responsibility

Nurturing Compassion for All Creation

When someone or something we love dies, we grieve.

Right now, half of the country is angry and the other half seems to be gloating.

(Much of this post is something I first published on October 6, 2017.)

In Lauret Savoy’s essay, “The Future of Environmental Essay,” published by Terrain Magazine, she says there are two words we need to remember when we interact with other people, other cultures, and the land: respect and responsibility.

Each of us carries a community inside us. The history of all who came before us — our ancestors — are held within us. Our lives are rooted in their past, and we carry remnants of what they went through, the trauma they suffered as well as the joys and celebrations. 

The home we grew up in is an environment as much as the forests, meadows, and rivers that live around us. Our neighborhood is an environment, as well as the rest of the city. The weather and the seasons are part of us, shaping our outlook and modulating our moods. For example, if we love warm sunshine, when it’s cold and rainy for a week, we become negative.

Respect yourself and others.

We can lose sight of our values, both personal and communal, under the grind and stress of everyday chores and social discord. 

With all that we have to do to just get through each day, we may not think we have the time to consider the long-range implications of what we do, how our choices affect other people, or how they harm the land. It is helpful if we take a few moments every morning to be quiet and remember our values so that they can guide our actions and decisions throughout the day.

Respect other people and listen to them. They have a right to their views as much as you do. Make decisions together. Collective wisdom is greater than individual hubris. 

Respect the land and take responsibility for your actions.

In the news, another large earthquake shook Oklahoma in an area where they never used to have earthquakes. The cause has been identified as fracking. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, drinking water for cities has been polluted by the industrial wastewater being injected into the ground. Those who are making money off of fracking say it causes no problems. Will the politicians and business people who profit from fracking take responsibility and pay for the damage and illnesses that fracking is causing? If we are shareholders in an oil company that fracks, but we say nothing against it, then we are guilty of causing the damage.

In North Dakota, an oil pipeline is shifted away from Bismarck because its largely white population worried that an oil leak would pollute its drinking water. The new route now goes by the water supply for Native Americans. The powerless are taken advantage of, and another treaty is broken by the United States. The oil company says the pipeline is safe, but then why move it away from Bismarck? And why has this pipeline already sprung a leak?

Respect people and your communities.

We continue to sell the lives of poor people, women, and peoples of color to make money. We belong to several communities — our family, our neighborhood, our city and nation, and the land we live on — and we have responsibilities to each of them.

We need to acknowledge our interdependence with each other and the land. We need to stop large scale exploitation and destruction of people, cultures, and the natural world.

We do not create community by putting up arbitrary boundaries of us and them, or by manipulating people for our own gain. 

When death takes away someone or something we believe in, we grieve. Then we have to pick ourselves us and start over.