Liberating Wings

Dare To Rise To Compassionately Care for All Beings

Here is a music video I produced that speaks to the wondrous interconnection of all life.  By truly seeing and feeling, we humans can dare to rise to compassionately care for all!

 

Gopher Tortoise - No better church!

I have fallen in love with a gohper tortoise in my backyard.  She makes all my days glad, and here I hope this time with her brings joy to your life too!

 

 

Zanesville Massacre

 

In this video, I offer a short memorial service for those 49 animals that were killed in Zanesville, Ohio on October 18, 2011, and for Terry Thompson.  May we know that their light is always with us.

 

 

 

Snakes Over a Plain

While in Belize last month I witnessed a small snake attacking and carrying off a frog, whose size was much greater than the snake's head.  I reflect on how we all are caught in the predatory/prey cycle and if we can nurture this nature, perhaps we can find a way to live sustainably as we live the solution.

 

 

 

Food, Justice, Hope

 

 

Recently as we Unitarian Universalists seek to bring justice to the world through food, I have heard pain and discouragement regarding how much we wish for the well being of all humans and nonhumans, and how far off that dream of the beloved community seems. Even after the passing of the Ethical Eating SOC, or especially so.

I know intimately this despair regarding the challenges of nourishing a world, let alone my companions in Unitarian Universalism.  For the hope of offering support to you, I would like to offer these words. I was going to speak them from the “pro” plenary mike in support of the statement, but we ran out of time right before my turn. Here are those words, only slightly changed to account for a future not asking for the passing of the statement, but for the implementation of the statement.

 Hello. I am the Rev. LoraKim Joyner and I am a delegate from the UU Fellowship of Gainesville.  I come before you today as a Community Minister in Multispecies Ministry and Compassionate Communication. I have also served as the president of the UU Animal Ministry for 8 years and am their current Reverence for Life Coordinator.  I also enjoy serving on the Ethical Eating Core Team.  In addition, I am a wildlife veterinarian working largely in Latin American conservation. I say all this to let you know that I know how difficult it is for us to talk, and to take action on food.  We doubt that we can love enough to take care of all beings given what we perceive as a perponderance of needs and claims that compete with one another. 

They do not.

I have just come from 2.5 months working in Latin American to support environmental justice and conservation of birds.  The people there who live close to the land know that their well being is tied closely to the well being of animals. One group of indigenous people with whom I work, the Miskito people of Honduras, are literally dying to protect their wild birds, while they themselves do not have enough to eat.  To insure that they have enough to eat and can nourish their families, birds, and trees, they have opened their hearts to protect all life, together.  Everything is at risk they told me, and so they are willing to risk everything.

Their hearts are big enough.

Our hearts are big enough. 

The needs are urgent; there is no time to lose.

Everything is at risk.

So let us risk everything we can today.

Let’s implement this statement by using it as a tool to crank open our hearts so that the world can fall in and fill our lives with ever increasing love and compassion.

I and others remain dedicated to what is not just a 5 year Study Action Item process, but an effort that will span our lifetimes. 

We will find a way to breathe hope and justice into this statement, making it a living covenant with all of life.

 

Owls Get a Kick Out of Soccer

 

There is nothing as liberating as a good soccer game.  It can also be dangerous in parts of the world as soccer has been the inciting stimulus for riots, death threats, murder, and in one case, a war between Honduras and El Salvador. Recently this harm extended to an owl.  A tame barn owl, the mascot of a Columbian soccer team, flew down to the field during a game and was hit by the ball.  While still stunned, Panamanian footballer Luis Moreno kicked the bird off the field.  The bird died two days later, suffering a broken wing and shock. The crowd yelled "murderer," and Moreno had to leave the game under police escort.  Since then he has received threats.  He won't be prosecuted because Columbia has no laws against animal cruelty, although the soccer league penalized him by requiring a fine and banning him from the next two games. 

 

 

This is a painful reminder of how humans in their worst moments do not have the capacity for compassion and care, even when beauty of game and bird surrounds them.  But sometimes we do.

In a 2008 soccer game between Finland and Belgium, a great-horned owl visits the game, flying around the stadium and landing on the goal posts. The officials stopped the game and the crowd cheers and applauds the owl. Smiles and laughter abound.

 

 

 

In another instance, rescuers remove another Great-horned Owl that had become entangled in a soccer net.

 

 

 

There is beauty all around us, and there is nothing as liberating as people responding by loving and saving the birds of our world.  How though do we make sense of our complicated natures where we both get a kick out of birds and kick them?

Sufi poet Rumi writes, "There is a field out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing. I'll meet you there."

On that soccer field, great apes and owls are neither wrong or right. Instead  we are caught up in our goal directed lives, and make tragic choices that harm ourselves and others. 

May we this day see the beauty within and without, and in our gratitude, not penalize the beings of this earth.

 

 

Compassionate Communication with All Beings

Dr. Ursula Aragunde Kohl, me and participants at the CC Workshop in Puerto Rico

 

 

Last weekend I was in Puerto Rico offering two separate workshops on Compassionate Communication. One was to the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Project and the other to a conglomeration of animal welfare, social services, and faith organizations in San Juan. This was the first time I had chosen to concentrate on organizations that deal with nonhuman animals. My goal in so doing was to support and nourish the humans so that they in turn could help all beings flourish.

In my home faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism I am also gearing up to offer workshops in Compassionate Communication to those interested in the interweaving justice issues that include nonhuman animals. I will do this as part of the Reverence for Life Program that the Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry is offering our congregations. Now is the time to struggle with how we covenant with earth and her beings as our association of congregations deals with the Study Action Item: Ethical Eating and Environmental Justice. In the last few weeks congregations and list serves have been abuzz with commenting on the Draft Statement of Conscience that deals with this compelling and complex topic. Comments on the draft are due February 1st and we as an association will vote on the final draft at General Assembly in June, 2011.

How shall we come up with a statement that includes the wide diversity of who we are and yet challenges us to hold the needs of all species ever more tenderly?

My response to this question, at both the workshops and to my fellow Unitarian Universalists is this:

It’s important to think of how animals feel and suffer, how their evolution has brought them to where they are , and what they are thinking as we research how their brains work. Yet, we can never know what is “best” in the morass of ethical vagueness that cloaks humanity. Let this complexity be not a death shroud for any. Instead, let us lift up the few things we can know:

    All beings have needs that connect us in an interdependent web of inherent worth and dignity.

    We can bring kindness to every moment.

    Everything is a practice ground for the skills of compassion.

 

May this be our prayer in intention, word, and action in the months to come.

Companions and Compassion

 Exodor 

I lived with a Nanday Conure by the name of Exodor for 23 years.  He died in 2003.  I still have his egg and have an image of one of his feathers as a tattoo.  More than anything the image of his beautiful and graceful self is engraved in my heart for ever.  He had such spunk, courage, deep intelligence, and loyalty. He lived with me all over including California, Alaska, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, and Guatemala.  There are hundreds of stories I could tell that would testify to his inherent worth and dignity, but perhaps more than anything I recall is the beauty of his flight as he flew across the room to join me with that high pitched call that screamed out "I'm so alive, I'm so glad to see you, I'm such a conure!"

Because of my deep bond with him I am especially attuned to others of his species.  A few years ago I was in St. Petersburg. I heard a squawk and my heart leaped. Sure enough there was family of Nandays coming in and out of a nest cavity in a palm tree in a parking lot.  I was so enamored with them that I took my spouse back there a few months later to celebrate our anniversary what we now fondly know of as "St. Parrotsburg."  We spent the day walking around the down town area chasing Nandays, Quakers, and various other kinds of free flying parrots that were far from their original lands. 

 

Nandays in Sarasota 

The countries of origin though don't seem so far away now that I have known Nandays.  Through Exodor I am forever called to pay attention to wild parrots, and care for them.  For now I know how they are like feathered angels, gifting us with a picture of heaven on earth where all beings belong. 

 (photo by Robert Blanchard) 

Others have been gifted to with this connection of wild and companion birds.  Recently I have become friends with Marc Johnson and Karen Windsor of Foster Parrots.  I am so taken with them and their projects in in Guyana.  I interviewed them and highlighted their work on my other blog, Lafeber Conservation and Wildlife.   Here's is what I found.  They know power and are yielding it well, if not with discomfort and pain on their part. Because in their work with companion birds where they love them, care for them, sacrifice for them, and witness to their beauty and their suffering, they can draw on authentic  motivations to address the situation of the free flying wild counterparts in Guyana and other countries.  They do not keep their heart and dedication enclosed into a box, but extend it out to other species, including their fellow great apes - humans.  This is perhaps the hardest piece, loving our human neighbors as ourselves in our mixed species communities. 

I have struggled mightily with this, for I wish to blame someone for the pain and loss of our beautiful world.  Somehow, though, I know that blame is not the answer. For simply, if there is not enough love, compassion, or beauty in the world, then I will do everything I can for there to be more, and not less.  This means that I must undertake to see the beauty in all of life and in the whole. This includes we humans.  We need us all at the table so we can nourish one another, so that the earth and all her beings may flourish. 

A simple message, but a most difficult one to follow through on.

So I write here to gather us all together so that we might support one another towards a more compassionate world - liberating ourselves as we liberate the birds we love.

Thank you Marc and Karen. For through your work, you give we humans the opportunity to be who we are and were always supposed to be.

 Marc Johnson, Karen Windsor, and Friends 

American Federation of Aviculture Convention: The Magic of People and Parrots

 

 

On Saturday I gave a presentation at the American Federation of Aviculture (AFA) Symposium in St. Petersburg, Florida (my spouse and I call it St. Parrotsburg because of all the naturalized parrots flying around).  Some 20 years ago I was a regular attendee at these conventions when I was more active as a veterinarian of captive birds.  I returned to be with these aviculturists because I need them, and so the people and parrots of the world.  The goal for my paper, "Wild Psittacine  Chick and Nest Assessment: A Green Paper" was to convey my conviction that we need every one at the table to help solve the complex and often overwhelming problems confronting us in avian conservation, especially in Central America.  From my view point, everyone is on the conservation team for parrots.  If you work towards the well being of yourself, others, and birds - no matter where you are - you are contributing to the well being of the planet and all communities of mixed species.  We are one planet and we share one health.  The audience at AFA gave me many wonderful and clear suggestions, and already I believe I can share this information with those with whom I work more closely with on my various conservation teams.  Imagine what we might accomplish if more people become involved?

I ask you, therefore, if you would be a participatory member of this team.  One thing you can do is read this paper, and contribute to it.  I have it posted as a google document at:   https://docs1.google.com/document/edit?id=1EsNt-a3dengFR5YVdI2iWYKTcVNiY5btWF41yHakPyI&authkey=CKOSgoMJ&hl=en#.  You can make comments, edits, additions, and deletions directly there, or email me with your changes. If you have trouble accessing the document in google, email me and I will send you a copy of the paper.

 Please do distribute this document to others so that together we can build the kind of world we wish to live in.

 

 In gratitude,

LoraKim

Fiddling While Rome Burns

“We need an inclusive movement and need to eliminate anything that stands in the way of that.”  These were words during the presentation, “Fiddling While Rome Burns,” given by Shane Mahoney  the plenary speaker for the International Congress of Conservation Biology.  I couldn’t agree with him more. In fact, my efforts in conservation in the last decade have been committed to finding ways to support the human dimensions of conservation so that we can get along, not just for greater satisfaction and sustainability on conservation teams, but for the sake of all life.  The earth needs us now, not some time in the distant future when we might decide to work with others who are different from us, or who think of wildlife differently. 

 

A pertinent and timely example of this comes from the placement of the Lafeber Conservation and Wildlife booth at this conference.  I am on “Trapper Row.” On my aisle of the exhibit hall are 3 trapper organizations and one safari group.  Just to my left are the skins of lynx, wolf, beaver, and wolverine and examples of many kinds of leg traps.  The most common question I get from people who pass by is not “what do you do,” or “what is Emeraid,” but “how do you feel being next to trappers?”  That’s a good question, I tell the people, and then they proceed to give me their views.  The thought is that trappers don’t have a place in true compassionate conservation solutions. I have also talked to the trappers on my row.  They say they love the animals and their habitats, and want the same things I do – sustainability, diversity, and abundance.  Yet, our strategies are so very different.

Though the strategy of trapping brings up pain for me, if I think that I do not share the same universal needs as the trappers, then I won’t be able to empathize with them.  If I can’t empathize with them, then we won’t be able to see each other as belonging on this planet, belonging at the table, and belonging at the conference. 

Shane ended his talk by saying that we are human because of the different other and that in all of us is some part of God.  Without talking to him about this I can’t be sure what he means. What he says to me is this.  Though my heart aches to imagine the suffering and stress of an animal bound in a leg trap, I will not close my heart to that pain and that conversation with the different other. For if I close my heart to the pain, I close my heart to the beauty, the joy, and the possibility of what we might create together.  I also diminish how I can be the change I wish to see in the world. For if I settle for blaming the trapper, the hunter, the cattle rancher, I risk settling for not looking at my own complicity in harm in the world.  So dear trappers, thank you for being at this conference so that I might just get to know your mind, and in the attempt, get to not just know my mind, but change it to feel interconnection and empathy with all beings. May the traps of the mind so free me, and all beings.