{"id":1405,"date":"2016-01-07T18:31:41","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T22:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/quakerpagan\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2016-01-07T19:19:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T23:19:26","slug":"on-nature-human-ugliness-and-the-problem-of-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/quakerpagan\/2016\/01\/on-nature-human-ugliness-and-the-problem-of-evil.html","title":{"rendered":"On Nature, Human Ugliness and the Problem of Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This morning was one of the first genuinely cold days of winter.<\/p>\n

As I drove to work today, to my west I saw\u00a0blue shadows snow speeding past, and\u00a0rank on rank of winter-bare trees on\u00a0the hills. \u00a0To my\u00a0east, I saw backlit hilltops, and the first rays of sun pierced\u00a0the woods. \u00a0I could smell pine smoke\u00a0rising\u00a0like incense from the wood-stoves\u00a0of my neighbors, and I watched the lights come on in sleeping houses.<\/p>\n

This world is so beautiful. \u00a0And yet, in spite of that, we humans manage to\u00a0bring so much ugliness into it.<\/p>\n

The natural world? Has death in it, and suffering, and sorrow. \u00a0Sickness, parasites, the flash of a predator\u2019s teeth; hunger and pain are all \u00a0undeniably part of the natural world.<\/p>\n

\"David<\/a>
David Restivo, Whitetail Deer in Winter, 2006<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Being Pagan doesn\u2019t blind me to those facts.<\/p>\n

However, for all the pain in the natural world, there is beauty to accompany it: white pines in the morning, ice crystals in the\u00a0sun, the deer startled by the noise from my car. When I look at the natural world, I see\u00a0balance, wholeness, and grace.<\/p>\n

Not so, the human world.<\/p>\n

At the end of my commute is\u00a0the high school where I work.<\/p>\n

Mine is a small school in a poor\u00a0district, struggling to do a lot with a little. Our students come from families that are comfortably middle class, struggling working class, or ground down by generations of\u00a0poverty. \u00a0We send our graduates off to state and community colleges, as well as\u00a0the occasional Ivy League school or prison cell.<\/p>\n

I think that makes them a lot\u00a0like teenagers anywhere.<\/p>\n

Many of them seem like strong young\u00a0trees to me, or like the deer: clean-limbed and full of that beauty nature gives to young things. \u00a0I watch them, running or playing hoops, \u00a0absorbed in their music or making art. \u00a0They are lovely, and many of them show great promise.<\/p>\n

Others, though, have already been badly broken. \u00a0Often, I encounter kids of\u00a0seventeen, who have already lost the sense that their lives have\u00a0meaning. \u00a0Many\u00a0feel little empathy for others, or have given up on finding anything better\u00a0in their lives than\u00a0their next high, their next sex partner, their next smartphone or set of wheels.<\/p>\n

I understand that\u00a0none of this is unique to my \u00a0landscape, or to my students, my kids. \u00a0Humans just seem to have a talent for bringing\u00a0ugliness\u00a0into the world, and for destroying the beauty of our young.<\/p>\n

My point is this: these are not natural conditions. \u00a0This is not, like disease or death, simply part of a greater pattern of natural beauty; this is an\u00a0aberration, an exception to the truth that nature reflects beauty and balance.\u00a0 We are not, of course, the only species that preys upon its young\u2013but we are one of the few that has a choice about it, and it is hard to see what we do to one another and not feel overwhelmed by it. \u00a0There\u2019s racism in my beautiful hills. \u00a0Domestic violence, child abuse, drunkenness and squalor alongside the old stone walls and wild things.<\/p>\n

Some\u00a0Pagans will tell you that they don\u2019t believe in evil, only in things that are not in balance. \u00a0But the longer I live, the less I\u2019m sure\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0true.<\/p>\n

I do share the typical Pagan view\u00a0that our world is not fallen, and not a battleground for gods of\u00a0absolute good and absolute evil. \u00a0I have no room in my heart for the notion of a god of evil, or for nature as fallen or damned.<\/p>\n

When I look at humankind, however, I see so much that I can\u2019t\u00a0reconcile with the beauty around me. \u00a0It is hard not to despair, even in the bright light of morning.<\/p>\n

\"Anne<\/a>
Anne Frank, school photo.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the days since I began working on this piece, my mind has returned over and over\u00a0to a\u00a0story I once heard about Anne Frank.\u00a0I remembered reading in her diary, years ago, that when she was in hiding, what she longed for most was the sky, contact with the natural world. \u00a0And I wondered, as I have many times, if, even as she was dying in the hell of the camps, there might have been some comfort in having reclaimed the sky.<\/p>\n

I can never know, of course. \u00a0Perhaps it\u2019s foolish of me even to think that something as small as the sight of sky would be of any use to someone in such terrible suffering.<\/p>\n

But the story wouldn\u2019t let me alone, so I searched for it, and discovered that, actually, at least for the time she was in hiding, the tiny glimpses she had of sky and clouds, and of one single white chestnut tree meant everything to her.<\/p>\n

As the Sapling Project<\/a> tells the story, Anne could only safely\u00a0look out from one attic window. \u00a0And in spite of the small comfort you might think one, single window would be, her diary celebrates that small slice of the natural world that she was able to see.<\/p>\n

At least in the years\u00a0she kept a\u00a0diary, Anne never lost that sense of wonder and communion with nature.\u00a0 \u201cAs long as this exists,\u201d she wrote, \u201chow can I be sad?\u201d<\/p>\n

Anne\u2019s tree is dead now.\u00a0 However, its descendants live on, and they have been shared all around the world, in her memory. \u00a0And of course the beauty that she loved continues, and surrounds our human world still.<\/p>\n

Is it enough? \u00a0Is that\u00a0beauty enough to counterbalance the ugliness that is also part of being human, and living in the human world?<\/p>\n

Maybe. \u00a0Maybe not. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure I can ever be sure of the answer to that question.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an old question, though, and I\u2019m not the only person to have struggled with it. \u00a0And even if the darkness of human evil were more powerful than the Light of the world I see, I know that I am closer to harmony with that world when I turn to face its\u00a0Light.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have to deny the beauty or the ugliness in the world to follow the advice James Nayler gave to Quakers, 350 years ago:<\/p>\n

Art thou in the Darkness? Mind it not, for if thou dost it will fill thee more, but stand still and act not, and wait in patience till Light arises out of Darkness to lead thee. Art thou wounded in conscience? Feed not there, but abide in the Light which leads to Grace and Truth, which teaches to deny, and puts off the weight, and removes the cause, and brings saving health to Light.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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