Tuesday Morning

A little after 8 o'clock, I stepped outside to work in my garden.

The sickly sweet smell of a blooming paradise tree greeted my nose as I ventured into the warm morning. Birds sang gaily from their perches and a rabbit, startled by my appearance, vanished around the side of the house.

In the garden, hoe in hand, I whacked at weeds. The hum of machinery made a pleasant background noise. My husband was baling hay; the farms around us were cutting, raking, baling. Hard work all around.

The pleasant morning was broken by a crash. I looked up and leaned on my hoe and closed my eyes.

The timber man has returned. Not on our property, but right next door. The crash was one of the majesties of the forest, falling to her death.

The screech of a chainsaw crashed like a banshee through the morning sounds. My spine shivered.

I wondered briefly if by some miracle the neighbors might be using selective timbering, a type of sustainable forestry that leaves the stronger trees and keeps the forest relatively intact.

Knowing who the neighbors are, I seriously doubt it. These are folks who told me once that they moved down here to make money, to take advantage of these poor southern folks who are land rich and stupid enough to love the land more than the almighty dollar.

So I can't imagine that they are timbering for anything but profit, and that means a clear cut.

I watched a large woodpecker wing her way by me, flying hard and fast, and I wondered if she was fleeing the noise and racket behind her. Maybe she was leaving a nest behind, with little chicks chirping in anguish.

I thought of the deer and the little fawn I photographed the other day, and the bear and turkey that wander through frequently. They all call the forest home, and it will be lost to them.

The United States will fall and be forgotten by God, I think, not because we allow homosexuals to marry or women to have babies or stem cells to be turned into medicine, but because we worship money. We value nothing, not even ourselves, more than the dollar bill.

Jesus did not get tough on the money lenders for nothing, and yet this nation does nothing but worship cash. So it will be no surprise to me when God turns her back on this country and takes her graces elsewhere.

I love the land around me. People do not realize that these forests are not that old. No virgin timber here - prior to the U.S. government's purchase of property that is now National Forest, that land was brutalized and raped for everything she had. The land was scarred and barren of trees. Deep pits of iron mines gouged out the earth.

The land has been allowed to return to her natural state, scars showing. I've been to places in the woods where foundations still exist, where you can see the quarries and pits. Nature finds her way back, and I find comfort in that, even if it what I see falling around me will not recover in my lifetime, or maybe even the next.

Everywhere I turn I see evidence of greed. In the news, in the way our tax dollars are divvied up, or not, in the way the credit card companies charge their mountains of interest. I am not immune, I am human like the rest, and to be human is to be greedy, selfish, self-serving. To be human is to be unable to relate to someone just like you, simply because you do not know them.

To be human is to be alone and to do it all for self. Who cares about the greater good?

Will we ever find a better way?