My wife and I were talking about Kudzu yesterday. As I suspect many know, Kudzu is not native to the Americas. As I have understood it, it comes from China. It was brought to the southern US for stabilization of the bare sides of road and railroad cuts through hills, a significant issue as the works projects of the depression and the TVA slowly changed the southern US.
Of course, anyone who has ever looked at Kudzu today sees only a noxious weed that grows over and invades everything. There is a hideously odd beauty in seeing several whole trees on a roadside hill covered in Kudzu. Not with it climbing the trunks, but covered as if with leafy green snow drifts. The landscape- trees, fences, curbing, walls, is turned into a grotesque, uniquely southern-American version of a topiary. I noted, as I often have, that the Chinese use Kudzu to make paper, a very practical use of a leafy plant that grows 20-50 feet per year. For us, of course, it is useless, as we cut down millions of pine trees grown for the special purpose of making paper. My wife said that a plague like Kudzu needed a plague of biblical proportion, like locusts, to control it.
Yesterday I continued my so far futile quest to find restaurant food that does not make me ill. Since the transplant, I am sensitive to salt, fat and portions, all of which are in abundance in restaurants. I spent the evening last night panting with cramps from eating Thai food. I love it, but this is the third time it has ruined an evening for me.
Poor God. God gets blamed for all of the above, and more. Whenever we find ourselves in some sort of trouble, God shoulders the blame. This gives those so inclined a scapegoat for their own failings, and an excuse to not seek for the reality of God, thus letting them ignore God's voice and instructions.
I have written previously that I am not a biblical literalist. But this in no way means I do not revere the Bible as a source not only of philosophical inspiration and peace, but as a source of perfectly practical advice and guides for living. In Genesis, Adam is given power over every living thing, and may eat whatever he likes except the fruit of the tree he is instructed not to eat. This phrase has been used as a justification to do what humans like in exploiting and modifying the physical world. That does not strike me as the correct interpretation.
Having power implies responsibility. Even in that moment, God gave Man not simply power over the garden, but responsibility for it. If Adam hunted down all the tigers, God was not going to step in and save the tigers. But, by implication, Adam was going to have to live with the results. Whether the story is literally true is irrelevant to the eternal truth philosophically. God is not coming down from the heavens to save individuals or society from its own actions and choices. It's our garden.
Looked at this way, we are the ones responsible for 'biblical plagues'. Accepting that God made locusts, they behave according to a locust's nature. We are the ones who organized agriculture in such a way that we are vulnerable to the locust's nature. In eating Thai food, I am the one who created my own miserable evening. Indeed, in accepting a transplant over death, I implicitly admit, if not a fear of death, a lust for life that led me to undergo surgery and take toxic medications. The consequences are mine, not God's. In planting Kudzu outside its native environment and predators, we are the ones responsible for the results. It is not a plague- we made it a plague. And we don't need locusts to fix it, we just need to become its predators by using it to make paper, saving money, trees and land in the process.
A swarm of locusts is a feature of the movie 'Hidalgo', a life-saving feature. The plagues of our own creation can be blessings if we can only step away from our own vanity and neediness to look at them differently. In my gastric agony last night, I hope I learned what and how much to eat. Perhaps society will learn not so much to think before acting, as to pray, and hear the voice of God. Hearing and respecting that which is greater than ourselves can help avoid so many ego and lust driven mistakes.
Ted
Of course, anyone who has ever looked at Kudzu today sees only a noxious weed that grows over and invades everything. There is a hideously odd beauty in seeing several whole trees on a roadside hill covered in Kudzu. Not with it climbing the trunks, but covered as if with leafy green snow drifts. The landscape- trees, fences, curbing, walls, is turned into a grotesque, uniquely southern-American version of a topiary. I noted, as I often have, that the Chinese use Kudzu to make paper, a very practical use of a leafy plant that grows 20-50 feet per year. For us, of course, it is useless, as we cut down millions of pine trees grown for the special purpose of making paper. My wife said that a plague like Kudzu needed a plague of biblical proportion, like locusts, to control it.
Yesterday I continued my so far futile quest to find restaurant food that does not make me ill. Since the transplant, I am sensitive to salt, fat and portions, all of which are in abundance in restaurants. I spent the evening last night panting with cramps from eating Thai food. I love it, but this is the third time it has ruined an evening for me.
Poor God. God gets blamed for all of the above, and more. Whenever we find ourselves in some sort of trouble, God shoulders the blame. This gives those so inclined a scapegoat for their own failings, and an excuse to not seek for the reality of God, thus letting them ignore God's voice and instructions.
I have written previously that I am not a biblical literalist. But this in no way means I do not revere the Bible as a source not only of philosophical inspiration and peace, but as a source of perfectly practical advice and guides for living. In Genesis, Adam is given power over every living thing, and may eat whatever he likes except the fruit of the tree he is instructed not to eat. This phrase has been used as a justification to do what humans like in exploiting and modifying the physical world. That does not strike me as the correct interpretation.
Having power implies responsibility. Even in that moment, God gave Man not simply power over the garden, but responsibility for it. If Adam hunted down all the tigers, God was not going to step in and save the tigers. But, by implication, Adam was going to have to live with the results. Whether the story is literally true is irrelevant to the eternal truth philosophically. God is not coming down from the heavens to save individuals or society from its own actions and choices. It's our garden.
Looked at this way, we are the ones responsible for 'biblical plagues'. Accepting that God made locusts, they behave according to a locust's nature. We are the ones who organized agriculture in such a way that we are vulnerable to the locust's nature. In eating Thai food, I am the one who created my own miserable evening. Indeed, in accepting a transplant over death, I implicitly admit, if not a fear of death, a lust for life that led me to undergo surgery and take toxic medications. The consequences are mine, not God's. In planting Kudzu outside its native environment and predators, we are the ones responsible for the results. It is not a plague- we made it a plague. And we don't need locusts to fix it, we just need to become its predators by using it to make paper, saving money, trees and land in the process.
A swarm of locusts is a feature of the movie 'Hidalgo', a life-saving feature. The plagues of our own creation can be blessings if we can only step away from our own vanity and neediness to look at them differently. In my gastric agony last night, I hope I learned what and how much to eat. Perhaps society will learn not so much to think before acting, as to pray, and hear the voice of God. Hearing and respecting that which is greater than ourselves can help avoid so many ego and lust driven mistakes.
Ted
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