Resilience
March 20, 2022
Many years ago, a friend of mine gave me a cactus thinking that even a person like me, who did not have a green thumb, should be able to keep a cactus alive. Well, I did not water it even once. Somehow this cactus survived for a long time by relying on its internal source of moisture. In the end, it looked scraggly. Its color turned black. Eventually, it did die. While I had a slight pang of guilt, I learned to admire its desire to live. Nature has such amazing resiliency. Have you seen right after a forest fire, the new sprout trying to come out of the charred ground?
I remember reading a book called, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. The author Viktor Frankl described the suffering and survival inside the Nazi Concentration Camp. He said, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
Amidst all the bad news every day, the sun still comes up in the morning. The birds are still chirping. There is plenty of beauty all around us. How can we hold both realities? It is not a choice between darkness and light because both realities exist at the same time. Not only that but without the darkness, we cannot see how brilliant the light is. The lotus needs to grow out of the mud to show its full beauty. An ancient Japanese poet wrote,” The barn has burnt down. Now I can see the moon.”
In Suzanne Simard’s book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, she wrote that “…plants communicate with each other. Plant communities are driven by not only competition but cooperation as well: different tree species share resources with trees in need, “mother” trees send carbon to seedlings, and dying trees donate nutrients to neighbors.
Before the White Europeans came to this land, the Natives have been following nature’s rhythm to live their lives. They knew when to plant, plow, and harvest. They also knew when to move to the next water source to hunt for animals. White people came and forced them to use the clock. An anthropologist was invited into the tent by the chief for a tribal ceremony. Every time the tent door opened, he could hear the drumming and singing outside as the community members were warming up for the ceremony. But nothing started. Finally, he asked the chief what time the ceremony will start. The chief said, “when the time is right.” Modern people have forgotten to listen to the rhythm of nature. Without a watch, we no longer know what time it is.
Suzanne Simard also wrote, “In western science, from Plato onwards, we’ve learned to separate ourselves from nature. As dispassionate observers, we miss the mystery that we are all part of.” If we truly practice our Unitarian Universalism’s seventh principle, which is to Respect for the Interdependent Web of All Existence of Which We Are a Part, we would know that violence is not part of our nature. Like the cactus, the basic instinct of all living things is to thrive together.
A Tibetan Buddhist nun showed her compassion toward the Chinese soldiers for their suffering after they have just tortured her. Can we practice compassion toward the evil that is not only connected to us but also part of us?