Liberating Wings

What I'm Looking For - La Moskitia, Honduras

 

 What are you looking for?

 Meaning?  Love?  Belonging?  Beauty?  A way to save the world?

 I invite you to watch this video about my recent time in Honduras where a group of us came together to build a world that we all are looking for.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Bird of Life, Bird of Death, Bird of Amazement

 

 (Scarlet Macaws - photo by University of Texas)

I am in the north of this continent, not so very far, but far enough that the sun rises much earlier and sets much later than usual.  I awoke with a vision of amazement, the Scarlet Macaw of Mesoamerica.  I cannot think of that bird without thinking of death, and of loss.  Reading yesterday in the book, “Seven Names for the Bellbird,” which is a book about how people value birds in Honduras, I came across a section on the Scarlet Macaw, the Guara Roja.  The author found that the Hondurans speak of the Guara in terms of how much loss of the natural world they have seen.  So the Guara came to me today, a bird of life and a bird of death and a bird of amazement.  I so strongly feel that to be on a journey of amazement I must also set one foot in the door of death.  For this being present to what is, which stuns me with the finality and infinity of my shared being.  So here I am at the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers in Minneapolis, hearing the call to shared ministry, which today I see as shared being.

Where do you journey for amazement, and is death a part of this path?

Teaching and Reaching the World

 

Santiago and Tezla teaching and learning bird identification 

There are many teachers in conservation and environmental justice. During our review of macaw nests in Honduras we each took our turn teaching one another.  Hector Portillo Reyes, leader in conservation education in Honduras and of this trip, chose students to accompany us and taught them as we went from nest to nest. 

Hector and Maria Eugenia 

Maria Eugenia Mondragon Hung, professor of English at Universidad Pedagogica Nacional Francisco Morazan (UPNFM) taught me Spanish when I got stuck and spent her late evenings teaching and practicing English with Hector. The people of La Mosquitia, such as Gerzon Sanchez, taught us their language as we danced between us the trilingual waltz.

 

Gerzon and Mary  Eugenia

Hermes Vega, our botantist, taught us about plants, Santiago and Pascacio taught us about roads and pathways on their lands, I taught about nest and chick health, and Tomas taught us of pain and loss.  In reality, I suppose we all helped one another learn of loss through our stories of the relentless habitat destruction in our lives.  These stories gave us purpose as we walked through grass and creeks, grazing only the surface into the beauty that flows with us into the one great ocean of being.

 

Hermes hiking with his plant press

In Tegucigalpa I was the “featured” teacher for a talk on avian conservation at the University and later the presenter for a 2 day symposium at the zoo on rescue, rehabilitation, and liberation of parrots. In my mind I was the one who learned the most, such as from the dedicated zoo veterinarian, Dr. Diana Echeverria.  She shared with me her veterinary practice among the realities of Honduras politics and resources.  The zoo workers, the biologists, the professors, and the students taught me of their precious passion that urges me on to ever greater admiration of these people, and greater commitments on my part. 

Dr. Diana Escheveria, middle left, with students, biologists, and workers and administrators of the zoo

Behind the human drama, in fact above, beneath, in front of, and all around flies those that teach us the most.  Our eyes lift up from our daily concerns and burdens to see liberating wings as our hope.  For as we liberate those with wings, they will set us free.

 

But we must do our part, and there is no script for this.  Currently there are plans to build a Center of Investigation within the UPNFM that will center on teaching practically in the field among the indigenous communities as we learn over and over again our place in the family of things. Another plan is for a research station and parrot  rescue center in the Rus Rus area, initiated by INCEBIOH (Instituto para la Ciencia y la Conservcion de la Biodiversidad en Honduras).  Such a structure will allow for teaching, research, income for the indigenous people while they preserve their way of life, and let me be direct here, international witness and protection by our presence, using our own precious bodies for all the precious bodies of the world as a shield to reduce harm in the midst of conflict.

The people of La Mosquitia told me that they would give their lives for the beauty of their land, and their commitment teaches me that I too hear this calling.  I am gathering names for those who wish to accompany me in the near future on a mission of witness, protection, and peace in Honduras (email me at amoloros@juno.com). Come, take my hand and the hands, wings, and hearts of others so that we may learn together and in turn teach the world.  Let us together in our diversity be bright rainbow shields and witnesses for peace, parrots and people as Seres Unidos, Beings United

 

 Tomas hiking under the protection of a rainbow umbrella

Examination

Weighing wild chicks in La Mosquita - Photo by Hector Portillo Reyes

Being in La Mosquitia, Honduras one cannot but help examine the state of one’s inner life and the state of the world. As biologists, conservationists, and people of the land (Los Misquitos) much of our time is spent examining the ecology around us which centers on the Guara (Macaw) nests and chicks.  We seek to know the health of this species by collecting all the data we can and then looking at the relationships within the whole.

What we found, with only a handful of nests active with chicks, is that the chicks are thin, many of the nests still have eggs (which appears late in the season to those who know the land), and much human activity around the nests showing how they chop into the trees to extract the chicks.

 

Piscacio high in pine tree examining macaw nest with machete/hatchet cuts

We also spent time learning about the health of the human communities.  What are the forces causing the violent conflicts and death threats, land stolen, forests leveled, and people and parrots displaced? The list of causes is long.  Thinking of the powerful influences here, including international petroleum extraction companies and narco drug lords, we cannot fathom what stratagies will best work together to keep parrots and people in their homes, but we can witness, testify, and stand in solidarity with those who have been  torn from their way of life.

Interviewing Tomas Manzanares under a macaw nest - photo by Hector Portillo Reyes

Last year´s confiscated birds now permanantely housed at zoo in Tegucigalpa

How exactly does one stand or fly with other beings as one?  For my part it comes from examining my own life in relationship to the whole, in concrete situations such as here in Honduras.  I find my identity and way of life slipping away into the flow of such beauty and tragedy, and then I listen to the call of my wild heart, and listen to the call to union with others.   As we hold one another, and lift one another up on wings of hopes, I hear the whispered dream and cry to freedom - we are Seres Unidos – Beings United.  Is it such a wild dream to think that we can welcome all beings home to this planet?

 

This year´s surviving confiscated birds, babies who will never know a wild home

Sunday Morning Coming Down (from Rus Rus, La Mosqutia, Honduras)

(Scarlet Macaw Flying By A Carribean Pine in La Mosquitia)

 

On Sunday, April 18, we came down the long road out of Rus Rus into Puerto Lempira. We had been staying overnight in the abandoned home of Tomas Manzanares and Alicia Lacuth  for the last several days  as we journeyed out each day to study wild Scarlet Macaws. 

(Road out of Rus Rus - my feet showing my comfortable position riding in the pick up truck with the soldier)

 Rus Rus is a small pueblo in the area known as La Mosquitia and has indigenous people, los Misquitos, who have their own language and their own culture.  Their lands and way of life is severely threatened, as are their very lives.  Tomas, as the leader of his community, tried to stop some “invaders” from taking over their land.  These men waited in ambush for him one day in December, 2009 and he was shot 4 times.  

(Tomas showing me the scars of his 4 bullet wounds) 

Today he has mostly recovered and his biggest regret seems to be that his camera was broken during the shooting.  Against advice, Tomas journeyed with us back to his town of Rus Rus, where most of the people had to flee for fear of their lives after the incident with Tomas.  He told me, as did several of the Misquitos, that they are willing to risk their lives to keep their wondrous pine savannah and forests from further destruction, and to protect their Guara Rojas (Scarlet Macaws). But already the rivers are beginning to dry up and most macaw nests that we saw have evidence of chicks being poached.

Half way back to Puerto Lempira we stopped at the army base to return the soldiers we had hired to protect us while we researched macaws.  There the commander of the base gathered his men and then I was invited to give a talk to the soliders.  Before I began, a prayer was said, asking God to help the men listen to me so that we could all work together for the people and the parrots.  With such honor and respect, offered to me, I thought that I could only return the same to them.   I told them  of how I had been moved by their people, the Misquitos, who had courage, strength, passion, and heart to love their land and to protect it.  I told them of the power they had in their relationship with the land and with each other.  I told them that it would take everything they’ve got to keep their land and Guaras from being “ desaparecidos” (disappeared). I then asked them how I could stand in solidarity with them and what they might say to the world. One solider stood up and told you, my one wild and precious world, to help them do what they must do to keep their land safe, and to keep it beautiful.

(Talking with the Soldiers at the Base) 

Though I was not back in my home congregation on this Sunday morning, I got to preach and in turn, am being saved by the gathered. My deepest thanks to these Hondurans who are helping me savor and save the world.

 

(Field Research Group Showing Their "Fly Free" Macaw Wrist Bands) 

Compassionate Conservation in Central America

 

 (Yellow-naped Parrot)

Studies confirm that caregivers play host to a high level of compassion fatigue. Day in, day out, workers struggle to function in care giving environments that constantly present heart wrenching, emotional challenges. Affecting positive change in society, a mission so vital to those passionate about caring for others, is perceived as elusive, if not impossible. This painful reality, coupled with first-hand knowledge of society's flagrant disregard for the safety and well being of the feeble and frail, takes its toll on everyone from full time employees to part time volunteers. Eventually, negative attitudes prevail.

Compassion Fatigue symptoms are normal displays of chronic stress resulting from the care giving work we choose to do. Leading traumatologist Eric Gentry suggests that people who are attracted to care giving often enter the field already compassion fatigued. A strong identification with helpless, suffering, or traumatized people or animals is possibly the motive. It is common for such people to hail from a tradition of what Gentry labels: other-directed care giving. Simply put, these are people who were taught at an early age to care for the needs of others before caring for their own needs. Authentic, ongoing self-care practices are absent from their lives. (more on Compassion Fatigue)

 

Easily recognizable in others and perhaps ourselves, Compassion Fatigue surfaces repeatedly in conservation.   By experiencing compassion, that is, deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it, conservation team members may find themselves unable to contribute and communicate as efficiently and with as much satisfaction as they would like. By combining compassion and communication as an intentional practice tool in conservation medicine, and drawing heavy on social and emotional intelligence, our medical kit becomes like Mary Poppin's magical bag, a seemingly endless reservoir of methods to attend to the multiple beings in our circles of care, including ourselves.

 

I will be leaving soon for Honduras and Guatemala on a Compassionate Conservation trip.  My back bedroom is strewn with gear of all kinds to comprise my field kit for studying and supporting conservation projects in Central America.  The projects in which I will be partaking are:

 

Lecturing at University in Tegucigalpa

Lecturing and consulting at Tegucigalpa Metropolitan Zoo

Consulting, pilot study and  survey of wild psittacine chicks in La Moskitia, Honduras

Consulting wild psittacine conservation, El Petén Guatemala

Lecturing at University of San Carlos, Guatemala

Ethno-ornithological/Integral Ecology Study

Writer/reporter/witness regarding the lives of people and parrots in Central America

 

I go as an independent consultant, Director of Lafeber Conservation (thank you very much for the grants Lafeber Company!), and as myself.  Having experienced the burn out and overwhelming challenges of front line conservation in Guatemala, I know how important it is to have support.  I have worked hard over the last decade acquiring the social and emotional intelligence skills necessary for conservation, lightening my load by letting go of some unnecessary baggage. So though my current toolkit is packed full of medicines, cameras, and outdoor equipment, probably the most important tools I can bring are those that deal with the human dimensions of conservation and wildlife management.  These I carry in my heart and mind (thank goodness as the airlines won't charge me for extra baggage!).

 

I will do my best to text/twitter from the field, so come here for updates (either as an update or as a twitter entry on the sidebar).

 

In compassionate hope,

 

LoraKim