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Well, it’s that time of year again: the annual ritual heeartless genocidal slaughter of the innocent infant trees has started. Not that I have any judgmental opinion about it or anything.
It’s interesting how the “Christians” adopted what was once a pagan ritual of death and rebirth and commuted it to just birth. And took the symbol of the tree, which was part of the ritual of midwinter death and turned it somehow into birth. Although they did keep the idea of the crucifix, which is the more “civilized” version of the tree as it was used. (actually two trees, but you probably don’t want to get into the details of that soon
after a big meal.)
Speaking of big meals, it was while I was riding the bus up to the big town about 100 mmiles north last Wednesday to do the usual founder’s day gluttony thing with friends that I was reminded of the tree slaughter. On the way up I passed dozens of trucks (maybe even scores, but who was keeping score? (The first violin? The conductor? Nope, they took the train.)) carrying loads of the aforementioned boreal corpses heading the other way. I thought that we must have finally used up all the trees in Oregondown south and were having to get them all from up north now, but no. Read on.
Mysteriously, on my return trip Friday I saw just as many loads of victims heading north. Had they been rejected at the border. Doubtful. It seems that the hand of the economy that Adam Smith characterized as “unseen” is also incomprehensible. It must somehow be more efficient to ship dead infant trees in both directions. It must. I’m told dollars don’t lie.
Don’t infer from any of this that I am in any way disparaging other people’s spiritual practices. That’s not my style. (A chorus of People Who Know Me Well: “We deny the preceding sentence!”) At least I’ve never been directly accused of it. My own spiritual practices are unique enough that I would just be asking for it. For ex: I have in the course of my life been given 5 spirit guides or “totems” as some Native Americans refer to
them.
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Digression: Wherefore are they called “native”? Isn’t that a real Anglo sounding term? As in “The natives are restless.”? I’ll bet they’re restless: they gave us cornbread and turkey and mashed potatoes and we took a few million square miles. (Not to mention lives. Civilization, ho!) Anyway, they aren’t “native”; they came from Asia. So they got here before the Caucs did, yeah, but that doesn’t make them native any more than it makes me “native” to the Hmong or the Vietnamese or whoever. I suppose I’m relatively native. Then so are the Tlingit and the Anasazi, okay. Then the newer Asians will be native when the next wave hits. They probably already are. End of digression.
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And four of those five have been trees. Aside from the fact that this makes the concept of me ever carving a totem pole problematic at best, it gets me riled to see such obvious abuse of the relatively helpless. And talk about natives: these our arboreal brothers and sisters didn’t just step off the boat yesterday.
My suggestion is that people might consider getting a live infant tree to honor in the winter and plant it in the spring. Being a good pantheist, I have kept a cedar tree for eight years or so, as a house and/or patio plant before setting it free, and I have had a bonsai juniper for many years now.
Life goes on. Keep your sunny side up. Bright Solstice.
