08/15/2024
I came across the below passage yesterday and felt like it really did a great job of putting into words the reason why I run things a little differently than most here at the farm. To me, an animal giving me their trust is the highest honor, and not something I expect. Not a day goes by that I don't consider their infinite generosity and respect to me, and my first goal is to treat them with the same. That's why they all live outside in as big spaces as possible, why my horses get to choose what type of careers they want, why my hens, goats, and cows get to keep their babies to raise themselves if they want them, and why I don't kill and eat them after they've spent a lifetime in service to me and are too old to be useful. I know this goes against a lot of homesteading values that have been on the rise lately, but it's also probably why I don't consider this farm a homestead. 😊 This is a long read but has a lot of interesting new thoughts and it's worth a couple minutes of time, in my opinion!
"During the summer of 1869, the great explorer, writer, and patron saint of America's national parks, John Muir, journeyed into the Sierra Nevada mountain range for the first time in his life. We are fortunate enough today to have his journal, which gives us glimpses of his adventure, and all of the things he experienced along the way.
About halfway through that summer, he started to grapple with one of life's greatest of philosophical questions. "Why, oh why does poison ivy exist? Why would a good and loving God allow innocent people to suffer from poison ivy?"
This is a question that I have also wrestled with on numerous occasions. I am someone who can just look at a patch of poison ivy from a mile away and still somehow manage to wake up the next morning covered in an itchy, oozing, disgusting rash. So, why on earth did God create such a sinister plant to begin with, when all it does is bring misery to so many human beings? The same question could also be asked of the Wisconsin state bird, the mosquito. Why does the stupid mosquito exist to begin with? What was going on in God's brain when he made such a cursed insect? Of what benefit are these bloodsucking demons to us?
As John Muir thought about these pesky nuisances of nature and why things like poison ivy exist, he eventually came to a beautiful and revolutionary conclusion. Here is what he said:
"Like most other things not apparently useful to man, poison ivy has few friends, and the blind question, 'Why was it made?' goes on and on with never a guess that first of all, it might have been made for itself."
Poison ivy was made for itself, not for us. The mosquito was made for itself, not for us. The problem isn't with the existence of these types of things, the problem is with the lense through which we look at the existence of these types of things. For, we human beings seem to be the only creatures in the entire known universe who evaluate the existence of other natural things based exclusively on their value to us and the pleasure that we can derive from them.
When the modern person looks at Mother Earth, today they don't see much more than a bunch of resources to be used, to be consumed for our benefit. We all relate to our planet as if she exists exclusively for our own comfort, pleasure, and material wealth. This warped view of reality is what happens when we as a society bend the knee to mammon, to money, more than we do to that which is sacred. It's what happens when we make the pursuit of wealth and luxury our new religion, our path to enlightenment, our vehicle to salvation. It's what happens when we make saints out of rich people just because they are rich and because they have acquired the type of stuff that we are envious of.
My friends, as long as we as human beings look out over Mother Earth's vast meadows and see nothing more than good spots to plaster over with concrete for new suburbs and outlet malls and not as ecosystems that should be allowed to exist in their own right; and as long as we human beings look at things like cows and pigs, chickens, tomatoes, kale, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and see nothing more than items to be sold for a profit and objects to be consumed and devoured for our pleasure, and not as things that were created for themselves first and foremost; and as long as we human beings view the pristine beaches of our world as great places to construct profitable playgrounds for the rich and as ideal vacation spots to sip on piña coladas and not as places that should exist untarnished in their own right, then all of our so-called attempts to heal the planet and all of our green activism will fail. It will fail."
-Fr. TJ Humphrey
Horse Training, Animal Rescue, Happy Cow and Chicken Products, and Wildlife Conservation
