Discuss: To the Dairy Queen and Back

This is a rich, densely layered, beautiful essay.  I have read it now, 3 times.  I love how the writer is teaching his sons ways to view this world.  I view it differently also.  Beautiful.

This was my experience, of very close to it, riding with my two boys along a high and winding bike path from the old Stockade of Schenectady, New York, west toward Johnstown along the old Mohawk River, really the Mohawk Barge Canal now. They were, yes, 3 and 7 I think when we first rode it, and did many miles and such sweet, far away memories smelling flowers and plants, seeing lovely birds fly with us awhile, which they will if you spread your arms (but don’t try “no-handed,” if you’re a kid: only if you’re a “show off” adult kid like me.) I did it, yes… and when I did, the birds would also “take off” and fly right alongside. But I wonder if my sons remember these great, extra-ordinary, times of love for Earth and each other, of encouragement and beauty. May we all live forever in these memories. Thank you for sharing yours. Perhaps I can find time and gain their audience again to share mine even half so well as you have!  Brought tears, and joys, and felt it in my legs, too.
Sally now in Rio Grande Valley.

“Like most boys, Alexi and Mathieu love to play at hunting and killing. I don’t dissuade them from these natural inclinations, but rather watch for opportunities to help them reckon with the seductions and impacts of this energy and its three-million-year-old dance with the sacredness of life. At home in our playroom, our boys destroy whole cities several times a week, while in our kitchen they place animal bones in the trash as opposed to dumping them there, mindful of the life they once supported.”

While death is a natural part of life, unnecessary killing cannot be justified. Rather than feed children meat -which almost inevitably involves unnecessary animal suffering- why not instead offer them a life-affirming vegan diet: one that rejects meat, dairy products and eggs? See, for example: http://www.TryVeg.com and:
http://tinyurl.com/djodu

Sadly, most adults have yet to learn or acknowledge the unjustifiable cruelty of a diet that includes animal products. The need for a vegan diet is a lesson that needs to be learned with increasing urgency for the sake of our fellow sentient Earth residents, our own health, and that of the planet. Teach your children well!!

“We live in the Twin Cities about ten miles east of the confluence of two great rivers, the Mississippi and the Minnesota. Ponds and lakes sprinkle our neighborhoods; walk a few blocks in any direction and you’ll find geese along the soaked edges of an outfield or cattails crowded behind someone’s garage. Local maps—of Roseville”
Roseville is 10 miles north of the confluence of two great rivers.  That grinding crash makes it hard to orient to the lyric prose that follows.

My nine year old grandson made this comment, “Grandma, I find God at the Nature Center.  It is better than church,”  I have often thought that my spiritual experiences in nature are more powerful than the ones in a church community.