Pave Paradise
“...Don't
it always seem to go
That you
don't know what you've got
'Til it's
gone
They paved
paradise
And put up
a parking lot...”
Joni
Mitchell (refrain “Big Yellow Taxi”)
I woke at four this
morning with this refrain floating through my brain. “Don't it
always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's
gone...” There was a real incident at the time Joni Mitchell
wrote this song in 1970. She was visiting Hawaii and staying in a
hotel that had been carved out of “paradise” with parking lots as
far as the eye could see. This sort of “progress” happened a lot
in the 1970's and '80's. Shopping center after shopping center was
built on once wooded land. Now more than half of them stand empty and
moldering away because, of course, now we shop on-line. Near my
neighborhood stands a mall, 750,000 square feet of retail space with
wrap around parking lots, that has been completely empty since 2009.
I drive by and wonder why the city, which owns it, doesn't convert it
to living space for people who are homeless or into Section-8
housing. For that matter, why not tear the whole thing down and plant
trees?
Simply put, we do a lot
of things using only short-term vision. Not just cities, states and
countries, but individual human beings. I drove through my old
neighborhood the other day, and realized that if I had stayed there
instead of moving from pillar to post, I would be debt free now.
Hindsight is always so much clearer, isn't it? Joni's song had a
prescient quality to it. One stanza says: “Hey, farmer, farmer,
put away that DDT now. Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the
birds and bees...please.” If we lose our honeybee population,
as we are rapidly doing, we will be in deep do-do, but people are
still pouring pesticides on their lawns. I saw a news segment two
nights ago about a laboratory where stem-cell specimens of endangered
animal are being collected and stored in hopes of curtailing the
number of entire species rapidly disappearing from the earth.
Short-sightedness may be our downfall.
Don't let another day go
by without realizing how much we have that is simply grace in action.
We didn't earn it, and for sure we don't deserve it, but here it is—a
gift from the Source of creation. When you step out into the world
today, be aware of the birds and bees. Give thanks and praise. Then
follow that with action. Do what you can to restore the natural order
where you live. We don't want to actualize Joni's words—“you
don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.”
In the Spirit,
Jane
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