Girdlers

What topics have I ducked in this blog so far? How about guilt?

Walking in the cemetery today and looking at the stones, I noticed dead branches with intact brown leaves littered on the ground around one of the oaks, and then under another. Inspecting one of the branches, I noticed the branch had not been torn off the branch, but carefully chewed off, and that there was a small hole in the center of the twig.

It turns out a long-horned beetle called the twig pruner or girdler is to blame. It lays its eggs under the bark of a young twig. The egg hatches into a larvae that eats its way down the center of the twig, then cuts its way out toward the bark with a series of concentric, circular cuts. When there's only a belt of bark attaching the twig to the tree, the beetle retreats into the tunnel it has eaten away, barricades itself in with sawdust, and gets ready to pupate over the winter until it turns into a mature insect in spring.  A winter storm and the girdled twig falls to lie on the ground unnoticed until the adult emerges to looks for mate and a new twig. Cunning, if there were a conniver.

Our ash trees, our hemlocks, our maples, the very backbone residents of our forests are under attack. Beetles are often to blame, but we don't think of them as guilty, only as obnoxious. Guilt seems more about letting someone down.  The brilliant strategy of the beetles is bad news for the trees, but the beetles are just doing what they need to do to make sure they're around for another season.

Sometimes vague feelings of guilt haunt me, especially when busy, stemming perhaps from the idea that somehow I am not or have not been doing what was legitimately expected, but since who and how I've disappointed, I can't name it's more guiltiness than guilt. But it's easy to think of actions I might yet commit that, apart from legal judgment, would set the worm guilt gnawing me till I die.

A couple of days ago, an 80 year old Californian shot in the back a female intruder in his home even as she begged for mercy. "She says, 'Don't shoot me, I'm pregnant! I'm going to have a baby!' And I shot her anyway," he said. Nothing in the news clip I saw, not his face, his voice, nor his words, suggested that he felt guilt. He took the blame for the two shots that caused her death; and the prosecutors and courts might consider that makes him guilty of breaking a law, or not. Whatever they decide, he might still wake up one night aghast--'What did I do?'--and a terrible sense of having crossed a line into a place of outer darkness. Or perhaps he'll continue to sleep deeply. There are many such in the world.

There are lots of situations that we're thrust into without our consent or full awareness where 'it's damned if we do, and damned if we don't', a Sophie's choice, for instance. Our lives can end up haunting those excruciating moments, wishing vainly we could have done otherwise.

Whether we're to blame or not, we can feel guilt. It's like a form of exile, ultimately from what we conceive as our best selves. Sometimes we willingly cinch ourselves tight with the penalties appropriate to our deeds--losses, foreclosed options, amends, ankle-bracelets of hyper-scrupulosity and vigilance--and yet still don't feel we can, even if forgiven, return to that place that feels wholly home. We still wince remembering.

It may be well then to remember some important things: that encounters still occur; that opportunities for friendship, exploration and friendship arise continually and that the invitation to 2nd person relationship forever extended by God-in-love to the Beloved always, always, includes us, even the guilty.

The way to control twig girdlers, by the way, is simply to pick up and dispose of the twigs before the insects emerge. The tree can't do this for itself but we can.  Perhaps we're guilty of interfering with the 'natural order of things,' but for the oaks, the girdlers and ourselves, life does continue to  unfold.