To Nature, Or Not To Nature

I read this from Coyote Blog.

And there is this from NY Times.

I'm certain there's all kinds of other things out there too. But I find this all rather interesting. Exxon-Valdez occurred just prior to my departure from Alaska...I think I've purchase from Exxon maybe twice in my entire life (and it was accidental), and I stopped buying from Mobil when they merged.

Yet what is the logic in that?

I have no inclination to boycott BP. Is my lack of armchair-outrage simply because it's not my immediate vicinity? Or is it because I recognize that shit happens and it wasn't the result of a captain being drunk (which was the story being bandied about when I left, Wiki has some interesting info regarding that)?

And though there is talk about the environmental impact not being as great as originally anticipated, I remember reading (or viewing?) a report with some bushmen pulling up rocks on the shore of Prince William Sound where you could see there was still oil laying about. And on a recent episode of After the Catch there was a comment that the herring fishery has never recovered.

Certainly it's not the ONLY herring fishery in the world, but that lack certainly effects the locals, as well as the folks that fish the area.

It's a difficult balance to strike of being involved with nature and letting nature be.

Spirituality vs. Religion

Thanks to South of the Fork's post about Free-Range Kids' post, I happened upon a comment by Anthony Hernandez that has been mulling about in my brain this afternoon.

Mr. Hernandez stated, in part:

Beyond this, the idea of teaching a kid that they were born with sin and must obey the many contradictory and barbaric laws of a book that would make the brothers Grimm weep with envy is abuse, pure and simple.
Yes, I said it: Religion is child abuse, period.

I have to admit that at least in terms of spirituality v. religion, I agree with him. Though it might be more palatable to me because I grew up with the belief that we are NOT born in sin. That we do not spiritually pay for the sins of our fathers and mothers. We pay for our own sins only. Now, that doesn't mean we aren't involved in, or effected by, the consequences of the choices our parents have made (or the choices of prior ancestry); but their sin is not ours, it is theirs.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
excerpt from Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth

Another part of my agreeing with Mr. Hernandez comes from my belief that one's relationship with God is personal and is not defined, hampered, constrained, dictated, or fabricated by any other human. And it certainly doesn't have a monetary value to it!

And a final point to my agreement with the stark statement quoted above is that too much these days it seems as though Religion has lost its Spirituality. And encroaching upon, devaluing, or denying a child their Spirituality is, in my not-so-humble opinion, a form of child abuse.