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A Life to Emulate
“So I will continue to stand for what I believe in, and I
will continue to refuse to back down and go away. No person, no business,
and no government has the right to destroy the gift of life. No one has
the right to steal from the future in order to make a quick buck today.
Enough is enough. It’s time we as humans return to living only off the
Earth’s interest instead of drawing from the principal. And it’s time
we restored some of the capital investment that we’ve already stolen....
I will continue to believe that love is the answer, love is the power,
love is the truth.” In this way Julia Butterfly Hill concludes her
amazing and profoundly moving memoir of the two years she lived in a giant
redwood tree in Northern California. (The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a
Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods; HarperCollins 2000,
p. 237) She did this, braving the elements of nature and the ire of
disgruntled people, in order to prevent a lumber company from cutting down
“Luna,” as this giant hundreds-of-years-old tree was called by the
environmental group trying to save her.
I believe that Spirit helps us to encounter events, people,
and texts at the precise moment we are ready to experience them. I vaguely
remember hearing in the news about some “crackpot tree hugger” who had
taken up residence in a tree some years ago, but back when it was
happening I had not yet had my consciousness raised about the crisis in
our ecosystem, nor had I fully embraced the principles of Creation
Spirituality. So when I came across her name in another book I was
reading, my curiosity was piqued and I immediately sought out her book
from Amazon. What a story! Julia’s book, like all truly memorable
biographies, goes beyond the simple events of her own life. Her struggle
to protect nature as it suffered in silence takes the reader into the
realm of Spirit and helps one to realize that indeed we are part of
something greater than our individual lives and circumstances.
She recounts how as a twenty-something just out of college
she yearned for some sort of meaning in her life. During a trip to
California she heard about the predatory activities of a lumber company
which had cut down so many trees that an entire town was nearly destroyed
by flooding and mudslides. She volunteered to take part in a “tree
sit,” a direct action demonstration reminiscent of the anti-war protests
of the 1960s and ACTUP in the 1990s. However, Julia was to remain in the
tree long after her fellow protesters had given up; she stayed there for
over two years, until she was assured that Luna would not be sacrificed in
the interests of corporate greed. During those two years she endured sleet
and hail, extreme cold and heat, not to mention the inconvenience of
having no formal bathing or waste disposal facilities. Meals were
make-shift depending upon what had been hoisted to her in a basket by
those who were able to sneak past the “no trespassing” signs and the
armed guards posted by the lumber company. She tells of the efforts the
company made to eject her from Luna: Not only was she shot at by hired
guns; she was even stalked by a helicopter that nearly knocked her out of
the tree with the wind it intentionally generated to make her fall. She
tells how she suffered with nature when she heard the chain saws cutting
down other trees, noting that when a giant tree falls it makes a sound
very much like human screaming. In hearing these trees die, she felt as
though members of her family were being sacrificed before her very eyes.
Ultimately, however, her story is one of triumph—the
overcoming of fear and the assurance that when we do what we know is right
in our hearts we can seldom go wrong. She taught me that there are causes
worth putting everything we hold dear on the line. There are moments in
our lives when we are called upon to step forward and make a difference.
Thus, Julia Butterfly Hill takes her place alongside other reluctant
prophets such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mother
Jones, and Dorothy Day, just to name a few. Julia reminds her readers that
what she went through did not seem noble or inspired at the time; only in
retrospect do our actions of love, justice, and compassion seem bigger or
more important than they were at the time. Nevertheless, I know I will not
soon forget her story or the moral that no one is ever too young or too
inexperienced or too marginal to make a difference.
In an Afterword to her book, Julia muses: “There will be
times of blissful joy beyond my wildest imagination and times of pain
where I truly wish that I could die. There will always be points along my
path that will challenge me with struggles and adversities that seem at
first glance too big to take on. Too big to change. Too big to transform.
But as I learned in Luna’s branches, in the most powerful, sacred time
of my life, the difference is in the doing. We do the right thing, because
it is the right thing to do, regardless of the outcome. We persevere
because someone today has to hold those accountable for the children of
tomorrow. We love with all that we have, even in the face of overwhelming
hatred and violence because we know love in action is the hope for our
world.” (p. 254) How is Spirit calling you to make a difference?
The
Rev. Dr. Tom Bohache is the pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of
Rehoboth, which is in the process of inaugurating some “green”
programs to help the earth and its people. Check out MCCR’s website at
mccrehoboth.org.
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