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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

One Touch Of Nature



"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin..."
Troilus and Cressida,
Shakespeare

Picture from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
synopsis of Troilus and Cressida
The war has lasted seven drawn-out years. Few illusions remain about the glory of armed conflict—or anything else for that matter, including love. This staging was imaged as in the contemporary Middle East.


So, now a man seeks to build a large winery in Napa County according to the

Anderson Valley Advertiser
Sebastopol v. Winery

by Shepherd Bliss, February 11, 2015
... The applicant, 32-year-old Napa County winemaker Joe Wagner, briefly introduced his winery, which would reportedly be the 15th largest in Sonoma County. His family has grapes or wineries in four counties. He asserted that this site was selected because of “its great potential on a heavy thorough-fare.”
“We are not considering being organic,” he admitted, revealing that he uses conventional chemicals, which would damage this unique environment. Wagner acknowledged that it would “increase truck traffic and emissions.” He suggested, “This would be a better use of the property.” He also agreed that he had submitted “incomplete studies.”
 "All he did was throw buzz words out there that he thought would work,” commented grape grower Bill Shortridge. “There were no details. No answers. He brought nothing to the table, which leads me to believe everything we are worried about would occur." ...
Not to mention the water requirements and the Drought.

Then, in Ancient Egypt,
Al-Ahram Weekly
Animals in ancient Egypt

Far from superstitiously worshipping animals, the ancient Egyptians had perhaps 
surprisingly sophisticated attitudes to the natural world, writes David Tresilian
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/10397/23/Animals-in-ancient-Egypt.aspx
... But it seems that animals were rarely worshipped in themselves, being seen either as manifestations of qualities of the gods with which they were associated, or used as votive offerings particularly in the Late Period. An important exception to this rule was the cult of Apis at Memphis, however, a sacred bull thought to incarnate the god Ptah and worshipped during its lifetime...


Qualities of the gods made clear and open, an epiphany of showing-forth.

If God made the world, was not this creation a making manifest of some love of God towards Adam?
If the Earth be not properly husbanded and taken care of, do we not scorn that manifestation?

It is our duty to exercise proper husbandry, not to exploit.

Exploitation implies clearly a hierarchical structure where the lesser beings benefit the greater, and those benefits do not flow both ways. If the same benefits were mutual, the ladder of hierarchy would disappear, for there would be no lesser rungs of humanity to stand up on.

What of Fracking?
Does it not take the Earth as a manifestation of God's concern for our welfare and effectively spray over it with crude graffiti?
Does this not treat the Earth as one of the lower rungs in the ladder of hierarchy? Earth is there for the exploitation and benefit of the higher ups.

Referring again to Ancient Egypt:
Perhaps the ancient Egyptians did not see this system in hierarchical terms, since a god could be manifested just as readily in a scarab beetle or a frog as in a cat, a wild dog, or a baboon.
Perhaps man is in the image of God, and so are the animals and lands he husbands. What shall he exploit when the face of the divine is everywhere?

And the last question is why is there such great hatred of the manifestation of the divine within the material world?
Islamic fundamentalists hate people praying at the tomb of the Prophet. Developers hate anyone seeing the face of divinity within the strata of the Earth which they wish to tear up, breach, frack, or violate.

The simple faith of common people who see the hand of God everywhere is much despised, which is the source of much woe today. God is hidden in dogmatic learning, and manifestations are mocked.

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