May 2025 PhotoBox

Behold: A Rhinocerous

This month’s Behold a Rhinoceros is the third in a series titled Behold. The word ‘behold’ suggests a particular way of seeing. The photographs and reflections are about seeing.

The images for this series are of wildlife looking at us, we at them, meeting eye to eye. What of that meeting, eye to eye, the series asks.

This photo of the rhinoceros seems more a portrait than any other of the images in the series; we might imagine the rhinoceros coming into the studio, posing in front of a black backdrop, a large softbox to the left and a light behind. 

Viewing the photo of the rhinoceros, one might feel an intimacy typical of portraits. Portraits are meant to be intimate, personal, revealing.

The photo of the rhinoceros shows a beautiful grading of light across the rhino’s head, the angle of light suggesting the smoothness and softness of the skin, revealing subtle shifts of colour to give the skin a tenderness, a delicacy. The smooth skin from the neck transitions to deep recesses around the eyes and mouth suggesting a wisdom of years. The eye catches a bit of light intimating a quiet knowing, a patient listener, even a tired eye that has seen so much. A bit of light catches the line of the mouth, the backlight gives the chin a nobility. 

The portrait reveals an animal of quiet and noble dignity, one with sympathy for us, the eyes, as if seeing our tender heart within, understanding our longing, as few others do. Personal. Intimate. Familiar. We might feel as if we could reach out and stroke its smooth face, rub the chin. The portrait exudes a kind of lovingness, a tenderness. As with a beloved pet, we might nearly want to plant a kiss as we stroke its face.

The truth is a rhinoceros is a ferocious and vicious beast who would gouge you to death and crush your bones to powder were you in its way. The only reason the rhinoceros could be photographed this way is that it was trapped, captured, transported to a zoo and caged in by a strong steel fence and concrete moat. 

Around the fence are humans staring at the dociled beast, pointing, shouting, laughing, taking a selfie, laughing.

It’s not meant for us to meet the rhinoceros eye to eye. The rhinoceros is a wild beast. The wilderness – habitat of the rhinoceros – is a wild place. The wild is just that: wild. No place for us humans. Some say we are just one more mammal in this world of mammals, another organism among organisms, but it’s not quite like that. We humans don’t do well in the wild. Not equipped for it. We were the ones hiding in caves.

The wild world belongs to another order. Despite its violence of prey and predator, eat and be eaten, its order has a harmony, an integration. All of the wild is connected, thrives on its connectedness, flourishes in its wildness. The wild is its own order, an order we only think we know. The order is wild – is the wilderness.

The untouched wild is a foreign place for us. We humans exist in another world, one of our constructed environments. We use our human gifts to separate from the wild, harbour in our built spaces. Over time, we expanded those spaces, intruding more and more into the wild space, taming the wild with the brute force of our cultivation, with our steel machines.

Some humans – Indigenous peoples, for example- learned to live well with the wild.  They shelter in its shadow, submit to its coursing rivers, to the black storm clouds, the heat of the day. Indigenous peoples learned to accept the will of the wild, follow its rhythm, acknowledge its majesty. They are grateful to the Wild understanding the wild beasts to sacrifice their lives for the Indigenous people’s survival. The beasts of the wild in Indigenous values provide for their care. In return, the beasts are upheld with great respect and honour.

The wild is the gods of the stories told to the children, rehearsed by the community in its rites and ceremonies – the stories remind the community of its place in the wild world. The children are told those stories, of their place, how they, strangers in this world, guests of this world, might belong. Submission to the gods, gratefulness for the gods’ blessing, knowing one’s place in the fierce world – the cosmic order – was a human way for thousands of years.

The stories changed with time. Gods became more like humans. As time passed, humans learned how to take care of themselves, isolate themselves from the wild by subduing the wild, by harnessing its power, and by building ramparts against the wild’s onslaught. Once begun, there was no end to the conquest of the wild. From the heart of Europe, its elites – Frankish knights and magnates – very successfully expanded their territory with tempered steel armament and heavily fortified Norman castles: the making of the West. Kingdoms and principalities of the West successfully spread throughout the world. 

The West continues to push itself into the wild. In a May 9th article, The Guardian tells of the need “to protect wildlife and habitats from the ever-growing number of visitors seeking a picture-perfect holiday.” The article describes how across southern Europe, “tourists driven by Instagram and TikTok are taking to remote areas in greater numbers, and are threatening local environments and biodiversity.”

“Visitors to the region [of southern Europe] account for about a third of all the world’s tourists, or about 330 million people in 2024 -and are forecast to reach 500 million by 2030.”

“The [2023 Experiences Traveller Report] concluded that Instagram was now the most influential platform for tourists planning activities and trips. Tourist expectations have been molded to a new, Instagram standard: picture perfect beach, sun-drenched villa and pristine scenic view -many of which are manicured for the tourists at the expense of local ecosystems. The article gives one example of the daily grooming of beaches with heavy equipment that destroys sea turtle nestings buried in the sand. 

The article goes on to describe how tourists inconsiderately trample fragile ecosystems on their way to that view they saw on Instagram, or preferably, an even better view from where to take their own, unique selfie. In their excitement to find an ideal place to photograph themselves, tourists flatten all kinds of flora and fauna. It’s the photo they want, themselves in the photo, like the one they saw on Instagram, for their followers to like. It’s not really about being in nature. They want to see themselves perched by a precipice or looking out across an abyss, often in designer clothes and glamour makeup, typically with arms raised triumphantly.

Inevitably we become the gods, a jealousy of human nature it seems, deep in our evolutionary brain, some drive for conquest, drive to be as gods. We of the modern, affluent culture of the West, in the spirit of our ambitious Frankish knights and magnates, and full of our scientific achievement, have assumed a superiority for all we do. All the world is for us to take as we are able, for ourselves, whatever we want, however we want, with no thought to nature itself, no regard for its own life. We in the West have pursued conquest of all the world – the wild, nature, other sovereign territories – for us to dominate as we please, with our machines, with our ingenuity. All this gratifying our insatiable desire for more. 

The story that The West tells its children is one of progress: more this quarter than last, endless consumption, incessant scraping of the earth to extract its bounty, using it up, as fast as we can, profiting. Endless profiting. Our jobs and economy rely on our ingenuity and our capacity for more, for producing more than ever. And how very successful in that pursuit the West has been. Twenty percent of us, primarily the West, control and use over 80% of the world’s resources to feed our lifestyles. It’s a triumphant story. It’s a presumption which leaves only 20% of the resources for 80% of the world population, but we have no qualms about that. It’s the way it is, we believe, we being the smart ones.

The story accounts for how the earth has been laid bare where once was bounty. The story explains how in a few short generations the great diversity of species flourishing on the earth has been decimated. The story explains where once there were forests is now parched desert; where once there were pure rivers and lakes used by people for fishing and drinking, are now toxic pools from mining runoff. Vast islands of plastic garbage float in the oceans; refuse litters the shores. Microplastics are in the bloodstream and the cells of every living creature and every bit of the planet. No place exists, it seems, where we have not contaminated the wild with our industrious ferment. 

Dead sea life has been appearing on the beaches of Florida. The sea life is observed to spin madly in the water before succumbing to death. Corpses then float onto the groomed beaches of the human bathers. The experts have determined that the dead marine life, including the already endangered sawfish, have a neurological disorder. The algae they eat on the ocean floor is toxic. Toxic because humans have made it so.

Let’s pause because you may want to stop reading. It would be reasonable to close these notes. None of us likes to be lectured to. None of us wants to be told we’re not nice people. That we’re selfish people. Told we’re in the wrong. Told we’re not as smart as we like to think. Told we are not as competent or astute as we believe ourselves to be. We don’t want to hear how we are dupes of our own hubris. 

When faced with criticism or judgement, humans are very inventive with an ability to convince ourselves it’s not our fault. We couldn’t have known, we argue. It’s not that bad, we insist. Technology will make it right, we promise. Psychologists have names for this: Projection. Denial. Repression. Rationalization. Regression. Sublimation. Compensation. Compliance… Sound familiar? 

How do we keep reading? If it is true we are facing insidious threats to the sustainability of life, then how do we as a society bring ourselves to face up to that? How do we help each other address the consequences of our great myth of prosperity, the one teetering on the brink of collapse? How can we admit to the consequences of that myth about which our best minds are warning us? Alarmists! Pessimists! The cry goes out. Let me get on with my life! Technology or some other religion will save us! Hey, get over the guilt trip! 

OK. Maybe. Eighteenth century British Prime Minister William Pitt wouldn’t have children because he believed the world wouldn’t survive them. Yet, it is our best minds that are telling us we are in trouble if we don’t act. We have only to consider that archaeology is riddled with many examples of societies and cities, even empires, who in their archaeological remains tell a story of sudden collapse. The reason for their collapse, the archaeologists relay, is that all their resources expired or a confluence of circumstances did them in, in a moment. Past societies as confident as our own, who also thought nothing needed to be done, just carried on until they couldn’t.

We live in a culture where prophetic voices can be ignored. We don’t have to listen to the experts’ dire warnings that the lifestyle we obsess about is unsustainable. We are encouraged to persist with how things are even when events tell us otherwise. Even when the warning signs are already a loss of a stable, predictable growing season; extreme weather; more fires which are more intense than ever before; more frequent and more damaging flooding, hurricanes and tornadoes; longer heat spells and drought; an overheated planet; loss of critical habitat that sustains us. 

As the politicians and policy makers know, and you know, this summer is projected to exceed the dreaded 1.5 degrees for a second year in a row. According to the latest State of the Climate report submitted by the World Meteorological Organization, the last ten years have been the hottest ever on record and the next 5 are expected to be hotter. You know, as do our leaders, that each year other than covid years we are putting more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere than the previous year, each year more than the year before, last year more than any year, despite knowing what we know. You see how all of us are aware that increased temperatures mean increased extreme weather, and you know that the scientists’ predictions are proving to have underestimated the consequences. 

As a society we do all we can to preserve the status quo. We are content when the politicians offer targets for change way off in 2030, 2035, even 2050. Don’t worry that you need to make drastic change now, say the politicians (who know how they secure our vote). It will be addressed in the future. It doesn’t seem to matter that we’ve missed all our targets on the way to the redeemed future. Don’t worry, console the politicians. Don’t think about doing anything. Keep going as you are. In your comfort and convenience. Drive wherever you want. Whenever you want….. We expect our leaders to honour that.

Eugene Ionesco wrote a play titled Rhinoceros. 

Stage directions:

[At this moment a noise is heard, far off, but swiftly approaching, of a beast panting in its headlong course, and of a long trumpeting.]
…

[The noise becomes very loud.]

Jean [to Berenger, almost shouting to make himself heard above the noise which he has not become conscious of]:
…

[The noise has become intense.]

What’s going on?

[The noise of a powerful, heavy animal, galloping at great speed, is heard very close; the sound of panting.] 

Whatever is it?

So we come to a fork in the road. Dismiss this or face up to it. If you are still reading, you either are braver than most people or you have faced up to the accounts of doom yourself, not turned away, seen the writing on the wall. You are likely also asking what’s to be done. You know the status quo is not sustainable, but you also know that you are a minority voice. You see how little our society is doing to help ourselves. 

Some people advising on communication about the climate collapse propose that for successful communication with the general populace, communication about the crisis should not say anything to upset people or scare them off. 

Others say there is no time left but for straight-forward talk. A Guardian survey of the most important climate experts on the planet, where over 50% of those surveyed reported back, virtually all revealed themselves to be despondent, even deeply despairing. For decades the scientists have warned the world of their research and little has been done. Some of the scientists have quit their life-long research and have turned in a last-ditch effort to advocacy. Speaking out, loud and clear.

CBC Ideas in the week of May 19th featured the lecture of scholar Peter L. Biro, who was scathingly blunt in his lecture, coming across as a dark purveyor of doom, speaking with a prophetic and urgent voice. He didn’t mince his words. His was a clarion call. Is he just shouting from the sidelines, not to be heard above the din? Or is his straight-shooting talk going to help turn things around?

Peter Biro begins his lecture at the point of a dagger, stating what he says is most obvious: “with the second inauguration of Trump, the Jan 6 insurrection is a success.”

He then offers his evidence for saying the insurrection succeeded. He argues, and he is not alone to claim, that liberal democracy has crossed a line in the United States to become ‘an electoral autocracy with the makings of a police state and mafiocracy.’ 

He points to how “within the first weeks of [Trump’s] second inauguration, the administration :

  • neutralized or eliminated altogether entire categories of independent oversight offices, including firing most of the Inspectors General and the head of the office of government ethics; 
  • shut down the world’s most important aid agency;
  • fired a large swath of the government-employed truth-telling class -scientists, environmental protection and public health experts;
  • threatened the impeachment of judges and the defunding of their judicial districts;
  • instructed the FBI and the justice department to investigate and prosecute his critics; 
  • bullied Republican senators and congress members into abdicating altogether their oversight responsibilities; 
  • [these] and much more.” 

As further corroboration, the Guardian headlines for a single week’s activities of the Trump administration were:

  • Noaa [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] fires hundreds of climate workers after court clears way for dismissals.
  • Trump administration cuts $4 million to Princeton’s climate research funding.
  • White House ends funding for key US climate body: ‘No coming back from this.’
  • Trump signs orders to allow coal-fired power plants to remain open.
  • Trump takes aim at city and state climate laws in Executive Order.
  • Revealed: Big Tech’s new datacentres will take water from the earth’s driest areas.
  • Trump officials quietly move to remove bans on ‘forever chemicals.’
  • New House Republican proposal seeks to exempt many toxic Pfas from review.
  • Severe storms and tornadoes hit US south and Midwest, killing seven.
  • ‘Potentially historic’ flooding threat looms after almost 100 tornadoes hit the US.
  • US prepares for deadly floods with many National Weather Service Offices understaffed.

Trump has denied access to White House briefings or any access to the military for news media critical of him. In fact, he attacks those media organizations who question his activity by prosecuting them with expensive lawsuits. The Atlantic is one of them. Even some of the best universities in the world, with funding cuts and threats of cuts, have succumbed to the administration’s threats.

Peter Biro suggests otherwise: speak up, loud and clear. However, listing the actions of Trump is not the hard message Peter Biro is delivering. The hard part, as he argues, is that protecting liberal democracy is not primarily in the hands of the politicians or the institutions of state; it is the primary responsibility of the citizenry. 

He points to the fragile life of a liberal democracy, how it requires a continual and sustained societal commitment. Protecting democracy is not natural to us, is hard work, demands diligence. And we’re not doing that, he states bluntly. When we don’t, he says, society necessarily flounders and human nature succumbs to a strong man allegiance. 

Peter Biro’s message is yet darker. He “doubts America [going forward] will see any popular commitment to protecting liberal democracy.” Liberal democracy is over. 

Yes to the strongman. The obsession to keep life as it is predominates the social and political values of the West, no matter the consequences. Trump’s great appeal. His promise. The overwhelming majority of Americans either voted for Trump or didn’t bother to vote and gave him the highest office to do as he will. And why did they? Trump promised America would be richer than ever. 

Americans willingly made Trump president and military commander of the most powerful country in the world knowing full well he said on day one he would be a dictator. The American people made that choice in defence of the status quo, their comfort and their convenience. They willingly did that even though the choice threatens their own future with devastating climate change and now the undermining of civil society. 

It’s quite natural that people who have a good life want that life to continue. Those doing well in the industrial West have had a long run of comfort, convenience and abundance. We’ve gotten fat laying our influential claim to the rich resources of the world. Don’t say it can’t continue for me! I have my plans! My home, my mortgage, my family, good schools, a cottage, a car or two, jobs, stuff, lots of it. Retirement. Travel. Beaches. Fun days. Don’t keep that from me! Let me live in ease and comfort, indulgence and security. 

“[Psychiatrist Carl] Jung disparaged the American ideal,” writes Peter Kingsley; “an ideal that has shaped the culture of The West.” This ideal is the epitome of our Frankish ambitions. Jung fretted over America the Great, and all of us who live and thrive in its shadow. 

America began as a failed corporation. But America learned from that beginning, learned very well how to do business for itself. Call it capitalism, but no matter the name we give it,  it is what it is. Says Jung, the ideal claimed and proclaimed by the West is that we in the West have the right to impose our will however we wish. To have our own way as we will. The West’s declaration of self-determination, proclaimed from on high, hand held to heart -the West’s driving force- Jung summarizes as “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” 

“Ideals are the ultimate temptation; and to think I can do what I want is the greatest delusion,” writes Peter Kingsley of Carl Jung’s thought.

Trump is quickly dismantling the democratic institutions of the United States. He promised he would before he was elected, and the American people voted and said yes. Yes. Those who attacked Capital Hill and went after elected members of Congress, screaming for them to die, have been exonerated. Truth to the Victors. Yes. As promised, the climate crisis is dismissed, scientists fired, and the research purged from official record, so we can just carry on as we are…let’s party. 

We believe in our manifest destinies, our political idealism, our utopian social movements. They inspire us to write books and music, produce art and found religions. They inspire universities, hospitals and philanthropy. But we might also see over the course of history that human achievement appears but an oasis between madness and madness. Madness is never far away, at any time capable of broiling up, even now, breaking out in hot spots such as Myanmar, the Sudan, Palestine, Kashmir, Yemen, Ukraine, a Minneapolis street for nine minutes (this day, five years ago), and many other streets around the world. Is this not madness? Chaos?

Trump wants to send American citizens to the Terrorism Confinement Centre (Cecot) in El Salvadore where he has already sent (paid with American taxpayer dollars) hundreds of undocumented workers. They are among the 40,000 there, locked up in windowless cells; 80 to a cell with open toilets and a basin; dirty drinking water, little food; metal beds, three tiers high, no mattresses or sheets. Thirty minutes a day outside the cell, but never to see the light of day. Under the current regime, no possibility ever to leave. To be sent there is a life sentence, forever. Already four hundred have died inside. Is this not chaos? Are we, humanity, not living in madness even now, a sickly madness?

Humanity seen from above, over time, seems to careen from madness to madness, at times prospering in a state of stasis, good will, dignity and respect, yet beneath the surface, present in our biological nature, always fomenting. is a pressure to madness. Chaos, it seems, is inevitable. 

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is playing at Stratford this season. The play is about evil: regicide, where the King, symbol of social order, is done away with for one’s own fantasy of having it all; the Macbeths imagine themselves as gods. A journey to darkness it is. Fair is foul and foul fair. 

Unlike Macbeth, seemingly a good man caught in the grip of fate, Peter Biro would say any collapse into madness is the responsibility of the ordinary people. The people can’t blame charismatic politicians, manipulative social media, failure of educational and political institutions, their parents….The conclusion seems to be that we need to look into ourselves, our own heart of hearts, our evolutionary bent, to see how we are, how it is we readily give ourselves over to absolute authoritarian power. To see into our evolutionary selves, deep within the psyche, is to account for our descent to madness. 

This – in its most stark form – is to say that Trump is not the cause of all this chaos. Trump is but an opportune symptom of something deeper, something inside us. What is buried in our psyches are the Western values that have brought us to this place, values held so dear by a culture spawned in the determination of the Frankish knights and magnates: the culture of the West. 

One more empire in the history of empires; one more empire to fall on its own petard, thinking it can have it all, as it wants. Thinking of itself as great.

There are base laws of existence writes Jung: “not the laws humans make, but laws that make humans.” Our hubris is suspect. We deposit the rhino in a cage, stand about, admire its size and power, chat away from behind an iron fence, laugh, at times toss the rhino bits of our popcorn. 

Our laws imagine reality as we would like to see it, imagine the world with us at the centre of it all. Our laws imagine for ourselves a human ideal for conquest and power …. we might have that wrong. 

[The noise of a powerful, heavy animal, galloping at great speed, is heard very close; the sound of panting.] 

Among the arguments of the philosophy of religion, there is a qualifier to not presume the gods see things as we humans might assume them to do. When humans say the gods are just, the gods may have their own, quite different idea of what is meant by ‘justice.’ The logic and reason of the argument, so it goes, stipulates humans cannot presume to know the mind of gods. Or expect gods to act in any way humans might imagine them to act. 

Yes, in many of our sacred stories we go so far as to say humans are made in the image of one god or another. And we convince ourselves that is true by believing the god or gods have revealed it to us. The question to ask, stepping back from the lure of belief, would be to question how human-conceived are those stories of revelation. Theologians and historical/literary critics have different answers for that.

“Not the laws humans make, but laws that make humans.”

No matter which perspective we turn to -theologian or textual critic- this same reasoning applies – and perhaps more decisively – to a view of the wild. With the same logic that gods are gods and none other, so the wild is wild and none other. The wild, we might consider, is something else than us, of another order which does not relate to us: does not relate at all to our values or our sensibilities or our imagination or our dreaming. The wild is of a different order. We are in no place to say anything certain about the wild. 

The wild, let us reason, is not a reflection of us, nor made by us. The wild, obvious it should be, has nothing to do with us, hasn’t ever for hundreds of millions of years. The wild exists quite independently of us, successfully, whether we exist or not.  

Humans are not essential or even helpful for the existence of the wild. If humans were not to exist, the wild would continue to thrive and flourish. If the wild did not exist, neither would humans.

We create our own human-centred, self-serving laws, write our own stories, establish our own normalities – ones that suit us –  and we call these the truth and impose our view on all of life, that we humans are the capstone of all of life. In the end, our truth is a truth that serves our interest. Only our ambition matters. We have a good time on top of the world, anointed by our hubris, the bunch of us, tossing our peanuts at the rhinoceros.

As Jung writes, nothing about the order of things – that is, nothing about the laws that make us human – has anything to suggest humans are all-knowing; anything in the laws to suggest that humans are omnipotent; anything to account for our conceit of superiority. Those fantasies exist only in the human imagination, in its stories, in its bombasticy. The deep order of reality has nothing to do with us being superior, nothing to justify our pomposity, nothing which bestows on us dominance over the planet.

[At this moment a noise is heard, far off, but swiftly approaching, of a beast panting in its headlong course, and of a long trumpeting.]

Comes the thundering beast from out of the darkness, snorting, screeching: dare you, human, put yourselves among the gods of hurricane, storm and thunder; dare you stand among the wild beasts and think yourself as one of them? What do you, human, know of anything? Have you made the darkness? Have you held in your palm the billion light year universe? You, human? Have you done this? Anything to do with the spinning planet you stand on, the one that flies around the sun at more than 100,000 km/hr; earth in tow of that sun flying around the centre of the Milky Way at 700,000 km/hr; and the whole of that galaxy, one of billions of galaxies, 100,000 light years across, filled with hundreds of billions of stars, a galaxy hurtling through space at over 2 million km/hr relative to cosmic radiation? You? You, human, have you had anything to do with this? You who poison the very air you breathe and water you drink? What gall, you, you human, who tosses peanuts at the rhinoceros.

When we taunt the rhinoceros, set ourselves up in its place, ourselves as little monarchs, the bunch of us, doing as we wish – as if we dictate the cosmic laws that made us- then our grandiosity reshapes that cosmic landscape; our impudence invites a visitation of the gods. From out of the starless night, the deep darkness, comes the thundering of hooves, rapid snorting, heavy panting, a beast that would crush our bones to dust. Beneath the pounding feet of the heavy beast, a wasteland arises from the dust. Chaos.

To ignore the majesty of the rhinoceros, dare even to taunt the rhinoceros with our impertinence, brings on the inevitable. The rhinoceros turns on us. Everything upside down and inside out. Order into chaos. The rhinoceros is not subdued ever by iron fences or a concrete moat; does not go away; does not submit. The heavy, snorting beast comes to annihilate us, makes waste our human hubris – for us to be so stupid to think we know anything of what goes on, know anything of the dark, the cosmic quantum dark: Ha. You think you know anything? 

Humans have not always believed in what we in the West believe about our superiority, to govern as we will. The ancient god Apollo, god of the sun, was admired not for light (as Western literature tends to believe), but for darkness. At the end of each day, the god travelled into the underworld and the next morning returned. That journey was revered. With little exception, humans could not venture into the dark and return, could not learn the secrets of Persephone, Queen of Death, and live. The daughters of Apollo stood by the gates of Hades, deep in the dark where there is no light. Humans built temples to Apollo, sacrificed to him, prostrated before him.

Humans have at times recognized their place in the order of things – darkness being the order of things. 

The laws of darkness have a purpose, says Jung. The same is said by others – said by seers, poets, and old women staring out from the shadows. They tell – for those who would hear – about a purpose for the dark, a sacred purpose. That sacredness has nothing to do with towering cupolas, richly adorned vestments, grand processions, hierarchies of ordained priests. Those are human conceits (whispers a toothless, old woman hidden by the shadows). The sacred which belongs to the dark order has its own beauty, a beauty of its own order. That beauty exists as wholeness and interconnectedness of all existence. The purpose of the darkness, its sacred purpose, is to be that order.

The human response to the darkness either makes sacred the darkness or turns the darkness against the human. When humanity sees itself as the pinnacle of the order of things, then from the dark of the night comes the beast. Disorder. Chaos. It doesn’t have to be this way. To submit to the mystery of the dark, its very existence as mystery, to accept the primacy of a deeper order is to understand its sanctity and make it sacred. The dark order is a sanctuary, made so when the human acknowledges the sacredness of the dark order.

Writes Peter Kingsley, “there is a hidden reality that we all share – one in which every slightest thing has its proper place, its beauty, function, integrity.” Her name is many; one is Gaia. 

At times in our wisdom, humanity respected the sacredness of the mystery, acknowledged the majesty of all that is. At times, humans understood there was a purpose to which they had to subscribe, were meant to honour: that the world, the wild, the darkness, the lair of the gods, Gaiai itself, was this other order, an order that governs all of existence. 

As Kingsley writes, “awareness of that sacred purpose – that is, awareness there is a sacred purpose – is what shapes a culture’s sacred geography, is what creates its sacred landscape.”

Indigenous teachings, punished by the West, teach of this sacred wisdom. Unlike Indigenous ways, the West doesn’t seem to recognize the harmony and connectedness of nature and the need to care for our relationship with nature. Instead, we in the West see nature as a commodity for our production or a picture-perfect vista to satiate our boredom. We use nature as we will, to serve our interest. In my youth, the Grand Banks were the richest fishing grounds in the world, had been for hundreds if not thousands of years while under Indigenous care. We of the West arrogantly and selfishly scraped the sea floor in the reckless pursuit of profit, and as a result, stripped the Grand Banks of fish in just a few generations. We felt we could. It was ours to do with as we wished. What once was the richest fishing ground in the world lay barren, mud. 

We’ve drained swamps not caring how integral wetlands are to our survival, 75 of them to be paved over in building the 413. Well…on and on. On and on. Our belief in progress, of having whatever we want, is an idealism, and considering its results, is proving as subtle and as intelligent as a steamroller.

To ignore the laws that make us human, to be indifferent to the instructions for order and beauty buried in mystery, and instead, to substitute these laws with our own laws of arrogance and conceit are giving us this world of chaos: climate collapse, human degradation. 

The first step to finding our place with the world in which we live, finding a harmony for our lives, is to understand it’s not our world. The West doesn’t get that. We prance about as if it is our world for the taking with no respect for the world as its own order. And when we carry on, as if little gods – entitled little gods – then gods of the darkness visit, hooves thundering, for the order of beauty, the cosmic song is out of tune. Chaos. For the gods will not tolerate the loss of beauty.

It’s not our world. We had nothing to do with its making. We know nothing about it. Cherubim, Persephone, quantum physics -these are mere names the wise ones have given to the darkness, but in the end, we have no idea of the name let alone the nature of darkness itself. There is an order, as Indigenous peoples and as sacred writings tell, an order we can not know. Our place in that order, as the ancient wisdom teaches, calls on us to acknowledge that order as primary, to bow in awe before the presence of that unknown order. In this way, the world is made sacred. 

Jung was most afraid of the unconscious. The unconscious is the vast territory of our brain about which we have no idea. It is from the unconscious that our dreams, our beliefs, and our values emerge. When we fail to see its sacred centre, see instead only our own pomposity- then ignored unconscious turns on us, shapes our ends, possesses our spirit. The unconscious becomes our tormenting fears, our screaming, our despair, our waking up in a sweat, those nightmares possessing the Macbeths, turning them mad.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is writ large. It speaks to our capacity for mayhem, in so many places, in Gaza, Myanmar, so many others, humans slaughtering each other, and for what? The Tragedy of Macbeth also speaks to the personal ways chaos possesses our souls: loneliness, sadness, purposelessness, anger and despair. 

To lose our sense for the sanctity of the dark and the wild, to lose that, above everything else, is to lose our own soul, lose the beauty to which we were made, how we are meant to be within this spinning quantum vortex of what is, what is, actually. 

The sacred relation is home, where we belong, a part of something more than we can fathom. If we attune ourselves to the sacredness of the wild, then we return home, become a part of that sacredness – take on that sacredness for ourselves. We then see ourselves as one and the same with the sacred planet. No longer are we willing to poison its air and water, for we, too, are that air and water, interdependent with it. Our place. Our home.

The poets, the mystics, the singers of songs of love, the old woman without any teeth sitting on the curb, any of them, tell how we belong to each other. They say that listening to the wind in the trees or hearing the song of birds at the dawn of day, speak to us of this wisdom, of where we belong, speak to us of home. Attuning ourselves to the darkness as sacred, darkness as the law that makes us, well, that is wisdom and life. 

Such a perspective is not a different life for us, but a different way to live life: a different way to coach the little league team; a different way to talk to the sales clerk in the bakery; a different way to regard the old woman on the curb; a different way to go into work; a different way to sit around the kitchen table with the family; a different way to go out on a date; a different way to do school; a different way to spend time with friends; a different way to eat meals; a different way to take walks; a different way to talk to each other; a different way to live life. 

To long for the sacred, seek for the sacred in our life, isn’t another life than the one we have; it’s another perspective, another way to see the life we have and to live that life.

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in their hubris, their desire to have it all for themselves, to be as gods in this world, fell into their chaos that became their nightmares, waking nightmares, taunting them, driving them mad. 

The wild is wild. Lives in the wilderness. The rhinoceros is a jealous, ferocious, terrifying beast. ‘Forget this not,’ whispers the old woman without teeth. ‘Forget it not,’ she whispers in our ear. 

The great mystery is the unknown, endless expanse of space and time, billions of light years – an existence we can’t begin to know – so beyond us – wild, dangerous, terrifying…

In the end our peace doesn’t seem to be about some utopia we gain, a reward, some palace of our dreams, comfortable and secure. It is a darkness. The reality is darkness. Mystery. The delusion comes when we think we know better. 

It seems to be about coming home, to see all life as sacred, to find our place within the order of things, to be at home, where we belong, our heart belongs.

Listen for the deep silence of the dark say the ones gone before. Acknowledge in stillness the sanctity of life’s mystery. 

Life – as we become conscious of its tenuousness and its brevity – becomes something else for us than conquest. No longer do we chase illusions of immortality. No longer do we conspire with our Frankish forebears to command all to serve our princely desires. We abandon the great crusade to conquer the world. In its place we turn to see the world as greater, wiser, more noble than we; we incomparable. We turn our gaze to the darkness, away from ourselves, away from our ego desires. We embark on a journey through the darkness. We search for the sacred in our life, to find our home within the sanctuary of mystery. We discover a life, our ordinary life, our day-to-day life, and know it to be sacred. We see holiness in all things. We notice how holy is the old woman without teeth sitting by the side of the road. 

When the brief life we live turns in submission to the darkness, embarks on the night journey of the soul, then wonder and gratitude become the measure of one’s life. So what is left for us after the loss of our own ambition? What else is there but to reach out for each other? What else, when all is mystery, what else, but take each other by the hand?

‘Here’s my hand,’ offers the old woman without teeth, the wise woman standing beside us. 

There is a beauty in Macbeth, even a sacredness – a sadness for the chaos in his heart. To see that sadness is love.

Love seems to be the great mystery, the law that makes us, the beauty deep within. By love we take each other by the hand – with no thought for our flaws, our failings, our shortcomings, our differences. To recognize the sacred in each other redeems all. We feel our humanity as it is, not as gods, but as ourselves. Such leads us through the darkness. Here I am, with you, we together, you and me, in the darkness – the way of it, so it seems – the order of it, if we but see.

**

“Our life is a grace and the mysteries we are born into ask for acknowledgment.

From a holy imagination, everything is grace.”

Thomas Moore

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