Paying Respects

I was at a human funeral today.  For the last few years I haven't seen much of the woman, an older woman of great-grandma status, but still a vigorous woman.  The kind of places I would tend to see her would be at funerals, weddings, and picnics.  Her death was sudden, and I realized how little I've processed it, because I caught myself almost wondering why she wasn't at the service, herself!

Tonight, my Dad told me a true story about a non-human funeral he saw once.

He was outside, and saw a line of ants on the porch.  What is this line of ants? he wondered.  He bent down and saw two ants standing by a dead ant.  And one by one, every ant in the long line came to the dead ant, touched it with their feelers, then moved on.  When the line of ants ended, the first two ants picked up the dead ant and followed the line.  

I think that is just awesome.  But it messes with your mind to watch animals like that, because you start wondering if they think.  And if they think and are sentient, then it's really horrible that we put so much effort into killing them.  Yet if we don't, they encroach upon our indoors world... it's easier to believe they are just little organic machines.  

But I had a dream once that for some reason I had to kill a mouse with my bare hands, and then in my bare hands it became a small child, because some evil person had created an illusion that it was just a mouse.  So when I woke up I was freaked out.  People like Hitler convinced a lot of people that certain kinds of people were not really people, and therefore okay and appropriate to kill en masse.  Insanity can lead people to believe they have a good reason to kill someone.   I know those are extreme situations to call to mind.  Why should I worry about "what if Hitler happened again?" or "what if I became deranged and thought my neighbor was a dangerous grizzly bear?"  That's a bit far-fetched, you know.  But I like to theorize.  How could I protect myself?

I'm not a tree hugger, and I do like to get my protein  & iron the convenient meat way, but I think a balanced respect for all living things is good.  I'd prefer to think of ants as organic machines, but I'm not going to use that as a reason to kill them gratuitously.  And knowing ants sometimes hold funerals for their dead, will always make me a bit sorry when I have to kill them.

So killing ants would be easier if I was ignorant.  It's easier to kill something you don't respect or know anything about.  Hating varmint raccoons would be easier if I never saw a rescued baby coon suckling on a baby pacifier.

Is that how life can be kept simple, then... choosing to be ignorant?  Disregarding lives that are not relevant to ours, because our souls are too finite, our bodies too limited, to love more than a little?  Because we are so limited, we just are.  I cannot go on a campaign to protect every ant in my neighborhood, I'm sorry.  For one thing, that would involve hurting other life.

I'm pushing this to the point of exhaustion--on purpose; to say how thinking about these things is tiring, and then I realize how I'm longing for a perfect Eden, for perfect harmony with God, with people, and with all of creation.  Such a thing is impossible in life right now, but longing for the perfection takes the edge off my sorrow that, so often, my life depends on the death of others. Innocent others.