Pelicans and Me

Pelicans and me -- we go back a long way. Suffice it to say: I love pelicans.

 

Let me tell you a true story. When I was about 6 in the 1950s, we lived for a summer along the beach in a place we in Louisiana called the Rigolets (pronounce it Rig-o-lees... a pass of open water connecting the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain). That summer I would walk along the beach almost every day to see the blue claw crabs or sea shells or fish or otters -- whatever happened along.

 

One particular morning a dead pelican washed up on the beach. I remember being very upset at this discovery as I ran to tell my mom what I'd found. I can still see it in my mind's eye even today. It hadn't been shot and wasn't chopped up by boat propellers. It was just dead.

 

Years later, I remember when I was a bit older and still living in Louisiana (late 1950s and 1960s), our resident population of brown pelicans disappeared. Investigation showed the culprit was DDT and other pesticides impacting the food chain and their egg shell's viability. They simply died out.

 

Then I remember how excited people/environmentalists were when new laws did away with DDT and all, and a program of re-introducing young brown pelicans (from Florida) to the coastal areas of my state was begun. When they released the first group of birds it was like a celebration - remember, brown pelicans are the state bird of Louisiana. That they began breeding and prospering again in Louisiana was a joy beyond all dreams.

Then one day, a few years after we moved out of state (mid-1980s), we were driving home across Lake Pontchartrain on the five mile I-10 bridge (near the Rigolets), when I looked up from the steering wheel of my car and saw a pelican gliding gracefully through the air alongside the bridge!!! I had not seen a brown pelican in Louisiana for years untold, since childhood days. My heart soared  with the sight of this bird, and the circle was complete. I felt my home state had gotten things together and all would be well.

 

Katrina came and took a toll, but even this had not diminished the pelican's new foothold on their old Louisiana turf.

 

But now again human carelessness, greed, stupidity, I don't know what to call it, is presenting our beautiful pelicans with a challenge they may not be equipped to meet successfully. I fear not only for Louisiana's brown pelican population but also for those of coastal Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Florida. This calamity has the potential to wipe them all from the face of the earth. And I know in my heart that egrets, herons, osprey, gulls, terns, pipers, rails, sea otters, manatees, dolphins, shellfish, and all other kinds of fish are not safe.

 

Thus I have few words to describe my thoughts on BP and what they have done. My heart is breaking at the futility of it all. May God do what we have not or cannot.

For the Pelicans

The Gulf of Mexico is under seige by a million gallon a day oil leak which BP oil is totally responsible for causing. Louisiana's wetland bird rookeries are being coated by toxic oil. Pelicans and others nesting there are dying. It is too horrible to consider the implications this will have on all wildlife in the Gulf ecosystem.

People's greed and laziness are culprits here. Greedy to maximize profits and reduce "unnecessary" spending, BP did not have a real plan for any kind of worst-case scenario. The worst case came. Thus when the explosion happened, they were totally unprepared.

Greedy for their product, the rest of us bought what BP had to offer so that we could drive our cars.

I believe the Bible has a word for us, from Hosea 4:1-3, ESV. Read it and consider...

Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel,
for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
and no knowledge of God in the land;there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns,
and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field
and the birds of the heavens,
and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

Spiritual Maturity

This beautiful butterfly (Gulf frittilary) is a mature form of its species. Starts as a ground-hugging kind of creepy looking caterpillar that eats for a living, it then transforms into its pupal stage which we call a chrysalis. That's when it just hangs around, transformed and being transformed. At just the right moment, it breaks out of that mode and emerges as a fresh, moist-winged creature that in just a blink of an eye will be ready to fly from flower to flower with more grace and beauty than it ever dreamed of when not so long before, it was just crawling across the ground.

Often seen by people of the Christian persuasion as a living metaphor for resurrection, butterflies can also be thought of as models for emerging spiritual maturity. In most simplistic terms, what is the immature butterfly doing while it's still locked up in what looks like that dormant, lifeless chrysalis stage?

"It is a sign of spiritual maturity when we can give up our illusory self-control and stretch out our hands to God. But it would be just another illusion to believe that reaching out to God will free us from pain and suffering. Often, indeed it will take us where we would rather not go." (Henri Nouwen)

I'd say that if anybody asked the pre-chrysalis caterpillar if it ever wanted to be something different, if it was willing to go dormant to become something entirely new, it might not be real enthusiastic about the changes.

It must hurt to have wings pop out where none were before, or to have legs form in different configurations, and body mass change in rather sudden and unexpected ways. I imagine if a caterpillar knew all this was going to happen to it, it might well just decline and live its life munching leaves contentedly... just never reaching the level of sublime maturity which its Creator intended.

Spiritual maturity for people may be not too different. Which is probably why a lot of us opt to remain spiritually immature. Too bad for us.

To revisit an earlier question - "What is the immature butterfly doing while it's still locked up in what looks like that dormant, lifeless chrysalis stage?" I'd say perhaps in butterfly terms, that pre-emergent, maturing one is simply praying.

Cry for the Gulf of Mexico

Once Jesus said, "Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness..." That's all about getting our earthly and eternal priorities straight.

And from the earliest days of creation right up to this very moment, God had long since given over to human beings this thing called "dominion" or "stewardship" of the earth. In other words, God entrusted the care of all the wonderful living and non-living things he had made over to people. God expected us to keep our priorities in line with kingdom priorities. Even in terms of caring for the earth and all that is in it. Boy, have we ever botched it!

Our latest human fiasco has been in the news a lot lately. A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is hovering in the offshore waters like a dark and evil spirit. This blotch of death has begun to touch pristine coastlines off Louisiana with its black, tarry kiss. And wherever it goes, any living thing it contacts is left to wallow in pollution and slow, lingering death. That goes for birds, turtles, fish, shellfish, marine mammals -- whatever life form as may be kissed, if not rescued and cleaned, will surely die.

Who is responsible? Well it's easy to say BP, the petroleum giant, whose drilling for oil was rudely interrupted by that untimely rig explosion, is to blame. Why didn't they have a Plan B, in worst-case scenarios, waiting to be implemented in a heartbeat?

It's also easy to blame the Federal Govt. for being their usual slow, bureaucratic, ineffective selves. I mean first they say they are on top of things, then it becomes clear they haven't been there at all, and then it looks like they are trying to make BP look less liable, then it sounds like they will fine BP into the stone age. But with any amount of paying attention, it is soon clear the Feds have no idea what they are going to do. Surprised? Hardly.

Are the American people also responsible? Our insatiable appetite for petroleum products - gasoline, plastics, oil, natural gas and more drives this guaranteed to pollute the earth industry to seek out more and more sources of the black stuff (aka, Black Gold). For fun and profit, of course.

Truth is, we're all in this together. We all have our share of the blame. BP, the Feds, and We the People. And the reality is, because of us the Gulf of Mexico may never be the same. So the question is, what will we all do about it?

In a different context Jesus also said, "Blessed are those who mourn..." Me, I cry for the Gulf of Mexico.

Board

Haha! Sounds like "bored" to the ear. Oh, that is the biggest complaint of so many people - that they are "bored" with things. So we adopt and adapt to an entertainment culture that demands we never have a moment of silence or contemplation of things other than the most superficial or thrilling. Well, sometimes the discipline of silence is good. Sometimes quieting down the noise of news and music and television and idle chatter is a very good way of re-connecting with spiritual things and talking with God. Which, by the way is enriched immensely by our also listening.

And God knows we could all use more of that.