{"id":388,"date":"2009-10-04T12:59:22","date_gmt":"2009-10-04T12:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/going-native-part-1-1.html"},"modified":"2009-10-04T12:59:22","modified_gmt":"2009-10-04T12:59:22","slug":"going-native-part-1-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/going-native-part-1-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Going Native, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I posted on Mabon<\/a>, 
\nI suggested we need to get in better touch with the energies and denizens of
\nthe places where we live.  <\/span>Only
\nthen could we really honor the spirits of the earth.  <\/span>I mentioned salmon, grapes, and apples as examples from
\nSonoma County.  <\/span>Pitch, the source
\nof many wise comments both there and elsewhere,  <\/span>suggested that while salmon were certainly appropriate,
\ngrapes and apples, as interlopers from abroad, magickally less effective, and
\nso were not.  <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nThe cheap and easy response is to
\nmention that we are not natives either. 
\n<\/span>Grapes and apples have been with us for a long time.  <\/span>They go where we go.<\/p>\n

I think a better response would be
\nto say that a great many forms of life did not originate where they are now
\nabundant, even though they preceded us in their arrival.  <\/span>Environmentalists, and I am certainly
\none, want to save the grizzly bear, but the grizzly arrived from Eurasia.  <\/span>Is the grizzly native just because we
\ndidn’t bring it over?<\/p>\n

Those are mostly rhetorical
\nresponses.  <\/span>Here is one I think
\ngoes more deeply into the issue.<\/p>\n

I think it is vitally important for
\nus to honor and respect the forms of life that had made this country their home
\nbefore we arrived.  <\/span>And that means
\nenabling them to flourish as a species. 
\n<\/span>We should be good neighbors and plain citizens of the community of life.
\nI think this is a Pagan ethic, and anything that violates it is not. If we
\ncannot learn to treat other beings with respect we will truly be a pox on this
\nplanet.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, life is
\ncontinually moving about.  <\/span>Coyotes
\nare abundant far to the east of their range when Europeans first arrived.  <\/span>Armadillos have moved north and
\nopossums have moved west. None are ‘native’ in vast portions of their present
\nrange and all are having an impact in the new regions they enter.  <\/span>Animal and plant communities are no
\nmore stable than human ones, although they usually change more slowly.<\/p>\n

So to my mind, the issue is not
\nwhether some life form is native, but whether it is a good member of the
\ncommunity into which it has inserted itself..<\/p>\n

We are part of two earthly
\ncommunities. First is the more than human community of the wild ecologies of
\nwhich we are only a small and dependent part.  <\/span>But we are also a part of the human community, and that
\nincludes other-than-human life forms that help directly support it. The
\ndifference between these two communities is that the wild community exists and
\nchanges by means of biological reproduction and the human community exists and
\nchanges by means of human thought.<\/p>\n

Things get sticky, very sticky,
\nbecause human thought changes faster than most biological reproduction, but the
\nhuman community depends on the wild community for its existence.  <\/span>So we need to harmonize the human with
\nthe wild, and I suspect only a Pagan ethic, or one similar to it, can do the
\njob.<\/p>\n

Grapes and apples, wheat and corn,
\nand much else are vital parts of our human community.  <\/span>They change not because of wild adaptation, but primarily
\nthrough human choice.   <\/span>They also
\nmerit our respect and our honor and can be considered gifts of the wild
\ncommunity to the flourishing of the human.  <\/span>Just as salmon, with the key difference that they have
\njoined our community.  <\/span>Corn, for
\nexample, can no longer reproduce without our help. The point is to honor all
\nlife and seek to enable all species to flourish.<\/p>\n

Part 2 will discuss how this all relates to ritual and magick.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I posted on Mabon,  I suggested we need to get in better touch with the energies and denizens of the places where we live.  Only then could we really honor the spirits of the earth.  I mentioned salmon, grapes, and apples as examples from Sonoma County.  Pitch, the source of many wise comments both…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,106,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-pagan-culture","category-pagan-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nGoing Native, Part 1 - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/going-native-part-1-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Going Native, Part 1 - 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