I'm a support worker who works with people with autism. One of my clients, Fred (not his real name), has an allotment he loves spending time at, tending to the vegetables and flowers there and making sure the place is always a neat and presentable place to work in.
It was a lovely sunny day down at the allotment, and Fred took out with some pride his weed burner with which he intended to scorch the undesirable plants growing between the cracks of the paved flooring. I hadn't seen a weed burner until I started helping out at the allotment, and really it's just a long metal tube similar in form to a litter picking grabber, but with a can of butane attached to the handle, making it a flame thrower one can use in a residential setting. My fellow support worker with me at the time commented that together with the backpack I had on, I looked like a budget Ghostbuster.
As Fred began scorching the weed-filled crevices to enhance the aesthetic of his plot, my colleague, who initially was gazing with interest at the way the intense blue flame would make the edges of the weeds glow bright orange before they morphed into charcoal, suddenly became extremely anxious at the sight of some insects that had been living in the cracks clambering up to the surface and dispersing in panic. Ants, small spiders and woodlice all came rushing out looking for a place of refuge while the ladybirds wisely made emergency take-offs and took to the skies. My colleague, who I've since come to learn is a deeply empathetic person in all manner of respects, urged Fred to turn his weed burner off at once so she could take those insects closest to the flame away to a place of safety. Fred abided, and soon the insects had been gathered up and transferred to a nearby flower bed. After a short time, insects stopped emerging from the cracks that had received a taste of the burner's menace, and so Fred resumed his task again.
The acuteness of my colleague's emotional response, and her efforts to rescue these insects before they became ash caused me put myself in their shoes for a while and consider the experience the unfortunate ones on the front line who had perished in the blaze had just been through.
One moment you're chilling in a nice cosy little nook on a summer's day, undisturbed by the universe, enjoying shelter from predators among the rogue blades of grass and dandelion leaves around you, maybe even snacking on a greenfly or two or just lounging on bean bags made of soil, and then, without warning, you look up to see a huge body from the heavens appear, casting a shadow upon your world before a fire of biblical proportions rains down upon your neighborhood.
Imagining myself as one of those insects left me with a renewed perspective of religion reflecting later that evening, the religion I was brought up to believe at least. I wondered how the insects might have responded if they had been brought up as atheists or as Catholics, like I was.
In the final brief moments before realising they were about to die in the raging fire engulfing them, the atheist insects could be forgiven for assuming that this furnace from above they were powerless to stop, was simply a cold hard reality of life - that what was happening was a random and indiscriminate chance event which unfortunately for them just happened to be happening now. A natural disaster.
"Such is life!", exclaimed the woodlouse to the ant.
"Oh woe is us! Nature is inherently cruel in its indifference towards our lot, and we are simply unlucky fodder at the mercy of its whims!", lamented the spider to the earthworm; who hadn't heard a thing the spider had said as earthworms are stone deaf.
Similarly, the Catholic insects, not knowing why they were suddenly being torched, could also be forgiven for assuming that there was a reason why this blaze that seemed heaven sent wished to annihilate them. They might conclude, without any solid evidence of course, that there was a specific reason why this was happening right now, that the inferno was in fact an act of God who had cause to take aim at them personally, a cause they'd probably appreciate a bit longer than a few seconds to work out. These insects had royally pissed off God somehow, and God couldn't be bothered to tell them what it was they had done. What a rotter!
"The powers up above want to destroy our way of life!", cried the ladybird with an air of authority rarely displayed before.
"Yes! This is no random happening. It is the intention of God to punish us for living the way that we do. This has happened to me before, but I was lucky to escape with only a charred wing. God hates those insects who choose to live in the cracks! He considers us lowlifes! This is no natural disaster I tell you! It is the work of a higher power! ", shrieked the greenfly in sheer desperation, while also maintaining a safe distance away from the ladybird, just in case.
And the Catholic insects would be pretty spot on in their assessment to a large extent. The inferno they were powerless to control wasn't a random event at all. There was a definite reason why it was taking place. And many more paving cracks would be left charred that day. The Catholic insects should also be forgiven for a second time - for envisaging an all-powerful, all-seeing God who wields complete dominion over their world, going potty behind the celestial controls because nothing winds him up more than insects communing among dandelions in narrow openings.
You can't really expect a woodlouse or an ant, no matter how smart they are, to deduce that a person with a learning disability in a wheelchair, brandishing a weed burner only because their lack of mobility limits the degree to which they can participate in manual tasks, and whose aim is to simply to make their allotment prettier, is the reason for their suffering. It was never Fred's intention to knowingly destroy the habitat of another culture and claim it was necessary in order to serve a higher purpose - that of beauty. He would be truly mortified to find himself thinking in this way.
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