What Have You Done with the Garden Entrusted to You?

Photo courtesy Ruperto Miller / Flickr

Membership has its privileges, as well as its downside. For example, what do Donald and Melania Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Thom Tillis (R-NC), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), and Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins all have in common?

These dignitaries all attended the Rose Garden ceremony at the White House on October 3rd, where the president officially nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

It must have felt like an honor just to be invited to that garden. And as if to honor Trump—and the occasion—90% of those gathered weren’t wearing masks or observing the social distancing recommended by the regime’s own science advisors. And the downside was that within 5 days the two senators, the two Trumps, Conway, Christie, and Jenkins all became infected with COVID-19. And since the virus often takes between 5 and 12 days to make its presence known, we still didn’t know how many other Rose Garden attendees would become infected from this “superspreader” event. 

And sure enough, by the next day other Republican dignitaries—Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, his top aide Hope Hicks, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel—plus 3 White House journalists had all tested positive. And the day after that, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany became the latest member of Trump’s inner circle to test positive. To some, this outcome seemed not only the virus, but poetic justice at work.

***

 Putting the virus aside (as Trump had been trying—for months now to do) he could have done far worse in whom he selected to replace a revered justice—Rudy Giuliani, perhaps. But Amy Coney Barrett is no buffoon—though many Democratic senators refuse to meet with her. By all accounts, she’s a bright legal scholar—and one who had earlier survived COVID herself. Yet there’s something diseased surrounding her nomination. 

And this is a “disease” that’s been infecting our country far longer than COVID—though its toxicity has peaked during the Trump years. For the intensity of the nation’s political polarization really is a disease. And arguably a greater national security risk than any once posed by al Qaeda or ISIS. 

This brings to mind a few lines from a 7th century Zen master—that is also part of the oldest existent Zen document—Sengstan’s Verses on the Mind of Faith. 

The Great Way is not difficult 
for those who have no preferences.
When neither love nor hate are attached to
everything becomes clear and undisguised. 
Make the smallest distinction, however, 
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth, then hold
no opinions for or against. To set up
what you like against what you dislike 
is the disease of the mind. 

From the point of view of Sengstan’s enlightened mind, the toxically polarized political climate in the U.S. today would seem that very disease. And if spiritual enlightenment is the only real cure, that would take an almost unimaginable, unprecedented shift in our collective awareness. Maybe though, our increased evolutionary necessity for something in that direction can bump just enough people a notch farther in the developmental spiral that we might avert the calamity, that otherwise, seems just ahead. Yet neither of America’s political parties have given much thought about how to achieve this—they’re too preoccupied with defeating each other. 

Yet a similar collective shift—one that out-prioritizes the current polarization—will be required to better handle the challenges of COVID, as well as climate change. And while COVID rages, the devastations of the latter are already upon us. (Two “500 year floods” have already put Houston under water twice within the four years of Trump’s presidency; a billion animals burnt to death in the last Australian summer.)

And in the past 3 American summers, wild fires in California, Oregon, and Washington have produced the most toxic air quality on the planet. (As I’m writing, only intermittently do I notice the white noise of the air purifying machine—which is on because where I live, about 5 miles from Berkeley, California, the air quality is 4 times more toxic now than what’s considered “healthy.”) And for the past 4 weeks, this has become the new normal. Perhaps we’ll soon be buying space suits and head capsules on Amazon—to walk more safely through the towns where we live. As it is, American democracy staggers, just barely alive. 

All of this seems inter-connected. And how bad does it need to get before we realize these are not normal times, but a pivotal epoch, requiring a massive Awakening. (Or, at the least, a trigger-switch kicking in by humanity’s survival instinct—if  it’s still working).

For while our 45th president has told us that both global warming and COVID are hoaxes, climate change scientists are telling us something else. Namely, that we have barely a decade to clean up our act, before we reach a point of no return.  Yet what science is also saying is that changing our current president is not nearly enough.

As a species, WE need to change—both fast, and profoundly. That’s what the science suggests. For it also tells us, that if we don’t change something in ourselves, and in our priorities, by 2070 our grandchildren will inherit a world where a third of the planet that is currently habitable, will be so no longer. 

Mexico and Central America will have populations even more desperate to flee North. But even a massive, militarized wall along the Southern border won’t change the fact that Texas and the American South will become hot boxes themselves.

Arizona will grow parched, its golf courses no longer attracting retiring snowbirds. The once green fairways that had been watered by the aquifer will dry up. For as precipitation dwindles, so will the aquifer. The landscape will become a giant sand trap that only appeals to lizards and cacti. 

Our coastal cities will suffer from flooding, the wild fires will get worse on the west coast, and the nation’s bread basket—the Midwest—will suffer crop shortages. This is the scientific forecast of a probable future—not a dystopian science fiction movie. And human beings will face the largest mass exodus in the past 6,000 years.

Already, nearly half my friends are thinking of leaving California. But where do you go when this is the only planet you have? Now, another verse comes to mind—a haunting one, from the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado:   

“What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?”