Duck People: The Story Continues

Hey, this place is full of quacks! And, hey,
it's so crowded here the water is dirty and
I can't find a place to lay eggs. Maybe having
so many of us in this finite place isn't such
a good idea.

Okay, so the story continues ... in 1996 I was a loyal Republican and church leader. I spent four and a half years planting a church for the unchurched, but then I began thinking, "If this religion I was born into is so right, then why is everything so wrong?" I looked around and couldn't make sense of what was going on in the world. I was fiddling while Rome was burning.

So, I spent from July 1997 to November 2003 as an environmental activist, with a particular interest in population. I did volunteer work for Planned Parenthood, National Wildlife Federation, Population Connection, and spent massive hours helping the Sierra Club. I worked in political campaigns, held signs at demonstrations, attended endless meetings, and built coalitions. I volunteered with a passion, neglected my family, and won five awards. I held local, state, and national positions with the Sierra Club — every moment of my day I was busy doing something. I was totally driven.

This year, I rotated off most of my Sierra Club positions and have cut back on my volunteer time. This has allowed me to pursue my two other passions — Macintosh computers and tennis. But more importantly, it has given me valuable time to think. The thing I love about the Sierra Club is the wonderful people I have met — both the volunteers and staff. A really cool thing about the Club is that it operates about 200 e-mail discussion lists, so you can sign up for any environmental topic you want and have discussions with and make friends with people around the country.

Protecting the environment is extremely difficult because it is in our cultural DNA to continually grow and expand, usually with no regard for nature or the future. After six years of swimming against the tide of Mother Culture, and after years of banging my head against the wall, I have concluded that a new approach is needed.

For much of this year I have been in learning mode. Two areas that I have spent months studying are indigenous societies and human history. What I learned about indigenous peoples is that there have been thousands of small societies around the world that have lived sustainably for thousands of years. In just a few hundred years, Western Culture, along with its Industrial Revolution and One-Right-Way religion, has either severely disrupted or destroyed nearly all of these communities.

In regards to human history, I have learned that much about our behavior is determined by the past. When 9/11 struck America, we dug into our DNA and reverted to a primordial "panic" state. For the past three years our nation has not behaved rationally, rather we are in "fight and flee" mode. When you study history, you can better understand why we are acting the way we are.

Even more fascinating in my studies has been the evolution of religion. I am starting to see that the faith of the Hebrews was not written down by a few Jewish fathers, but rather Judaism, and its offshoot Christianity, are a collection of many ancient ideas and influences. Ancient Egyptian religion, in particular, seemed to serve as an incubator for many of the ideas now found in today's Big Three religions.

What I have concluded is that, hmm, well, I guess that religion is all about the human interpretation of God. In many respects, religion is either good or benign, but there is also some bad. As a great Canary once said at a lecture, "Religion has done some good and some bad, but mostly bad."

My interest at this point is to perhaps begin an outreach to religious fundamentalists. Right now I have no idea how to approach this, since the gap between me and a fundamentalist is vast, the topic of discussion is charged with emotion, and they are not really interested in what I have to say anyway. I know where they are coming from because I was once one of them. I will continue to listen to them, but I'm not so sure they will listen to me.

I have no idea how I became a Yellow Canary and became different from the Yellow Ducks. I have no idea why I became a progressive idealist instead of an unquestioning follower. I really don't. But I had lunch today with another Canary who is just like me, and that is reassuring.

Maybe I am insane, but maybe I'm not. Only God knows.

Yellow Canary