Giddy with excitement, we sawed an old Scotch broom, exhumed its roots, and packed it lovingly out of the park. In its place, a smattering of brilliantly saturated yellow petals lay at rest on the mulch. The moment before we started, I watched those yellow blooms, delicately folding in on themselves, dance with a bumblebee in the breeze, and I felt a pang of regret for what we were about to do. To take the life from this particular plant in this particular place was good for the whole, on balance. But to disturb the soil, to take the flowers from the pollinator–these things still don’t settle easily in my heart. The injured salamander tail, the severed worms, waking up the knotweed, the unease of the neighbors–the only certain way to avoid these hard things would be to lay down our shovels in retreat, to disengage from the work.
This I cannot do.
I cannot surrender to paralysis and inaction as ecosystems continue to be damaged and destroyed, as biodiversity loss accelerates, as our climate collapses. So instead I wrestle with the complexity–our actions, even the ones we deem good, are not always pure and unadulterated. There is harm tangled up in the good of our restoration actions, the very actions intended to heal. All of this–the work, us–is messy and imperfect.
It feels scary to say out loud. Is acceptance of the gray just a way to justify bad things? What if sitting in that space muddies my discernment? What if the only way to guard against evil is to draw a bright, clear line? That feels safer. And yet wrong. I know the next right thing is to stay in the messy, mucky grey. It is hard.
The seduction of certainty is strong, even when–especially when–it, too, must be set aside. It is part of what has led us to the brink, part of what keeps us from turning away from the edge, part of what keeps us from saving ourselves.
Scary as it can feel, we must chart a different course through heavy mist and fog.
I take a deep, stabilizing breath as I take the next step into the grey, with you. Exhaling, I feel the expansiveness of embracing the mystery. I hope you do, too.