We're All Beetles in This Dung Pile

Growth Comes with Shit

Growth brings about abundance and a greater amount of waste. Ever lived with a newborn? A toddler? Diapers only get bigger. On a ranch, the more cattle you run, the more cowpies you get. In an office, every expansion requires more toilets. The more growth, the more shit you’ll have to sort. If you are in recovery for anything, you know growth demands familiarity with your dung beetles.

We all grow, so guess what? We are the beetles in this dung pile. Yet, despite all the shit this world produces from turds to maple leaves, isn’t it wondrous? The world—including your annoying neighbor with THAT sign—is full of wonder. Even on election day in America, white cirrostratus clouds formed across blue sky like the intricate pattern on the flank of a German Shorthair Pointer. Yesterday I flipped off a political bumper sticker and encountered four flocks of snow buntings.

Which action mattered more? I felt my rage rise toward an individual I did not know. I felt hope beat in the wings of arctic birds spontaneously engulfing my view. Jungian thinkers have long encouraged us to “find the tension of opposites.” In the Gratitude Project—a 9-month course I teach to veterans and their families—we practice holding space for our “intolerables” in equal measure to what the opposite is. Sometimes, we have to figure out, what is the opposite of this momentary rage? When you are a Dream Tender, you notice snow buntings after giving the middle finger to a total stranger.

Snow buntings arrive after the merlins, falcons, warblers, starlings, sandhill cranes, blue herons, cedar waxwings, and hummingbirds leave. The swans have come and gone, a few mallards yet linger in the open waters. The eagles and ravens prowl the roadways for easy meals. Crows, blue jays, and chickadees remain in the mining town neighborhoods of the Keweenaw Peninsula, the tippy-top of UP Michigan (the Upper Mitten), a small jut of land that pokes the belly of the beautiful beast that is Lady Lake Superior. Gichegami. Snow buntings flock along roads and flare white when they burst from the ground. A wonder of winter coming. Visitors from the Arctic. Fleeting.

I have more respect for those who voted their conscience than those who did not vote at all. Yet, I have empathy for those who did not vote or voted out of survival fear. Patriarchy has oppressed/powered-over people of all walks for centuries, thousands of years if you trace the history. People have died resisting. Social systems have fooled generations into compliance. Grandfathers and uncles have sexualized the precious children in their care because incest is the ultimate act of patriarchal dehumanization. As a survivor of incest, the despair of the election cycle is familiar.

Ever had your family turn on you? Scapegoat their sense of powerlessness onto you? Gaslight you? We could rage and flip our middle fingers, but even as a child, the wonder of the world disrupted the despair.