THE GREEN MAN -- Volume 1, Number 2

[Sean Donahue]

THE GREEN MAN
January 8, 2008
New Moon in Capricorn
Volume 1, Number 2

"If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us.
Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made
for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we
hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our
words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic.
Once we have tasted this wildness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied
us, and the more we eat the more we will awaken."

-- Stephen Harrod Buhner

A strange figure appears in the architecture of old churches throughout
Europe a man with leaves growing from his face and head. He represents
something wild, innocent, and strong that can't be hidden or suppressed. In
a world out of balance, that spirit of the Green Man offers hope for healing
our bodies, our hearts, our spirits, and our planet. This newsletter and my
practice are dedicated to manifesting that spirit. -- Sean Padraig Donahue*
 
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IN THIS ISSUE:

Best Laid Plans
A Gift to Yourself in the New Year
An Appeal
Beyond the Germ Theory
Poetry: City Limits
Useful and Interesting Links
_________________________________________

BEST LAID PLANS

So . . . Back in December I said this would be a weekly newsletter.  Then came the whirlwind of the holidays.  And then came a broken computer.

Perhaps publishing twice a month is a more realistic goal . . .

A GIFT TO YOURSELF IN THE NEW YEAR

Reiki can provide you with great support as you begin making changes to benefit your physical, mental, and emotional health.  I'm available for Reiki sessions throughout the coming month.  Just drop me an e-mail.

Connecting with ki, the universal life energy, is everyone's birthright.  Now is also a great time to ask yourself if you are ready to begin bringing that energy more deeply into your life and to begin sharing it with the people around you by taking a Reiki class and receiving your first attunement.  More and more people are feeling the call to deepen their healing work as the planet is going through such trying times.  Drop me a note if you want to explore working with ki.

AN APPEAL

If the personal is political,  then changing the ways we heal and relate to our bodies can be profoundly radical.

One of the greatest gifts this past year brought me was an introduction to herbal medicine.  Working with pllants like elecampane, Siberian ginseng, and burdock helped me discover my body's capacity for healing and transformation and deepened my connection with the living Earth.  In the process, I began to discover the deep connections between healing our bodies, our culture, and our planet.

Herbal medicine is people's medicine -- decentralized and available to all of us, impossible for governments and corporations to fully commodify and control.  The wild plants that grow around us can support our bodies' own processes of healing, restoring the dynamic balance we lose when we are subjected to constant stress and a steady supply of poisons in our air, water, and food.   Their medicine is living medicine, constantly evolving along with our own biology.   Working with them we begin to discover new ways of seeing and interacting with the world.

This year I am hoping to deepen my knowledge of and connection with healing plants by studying with Gail Faith Edwards, an amazing herbalist, teacher, and writer in Athens, Maine.  Rooted in the Wise Woman tradition, she draws on oral tradition, science, ethnobotany, and her own deep relationships with herbs.

My goal is to gain the knowledge I need to:
-- Provide low cost and sometimes free health care to people who aren't served well by current medical system.
-- Teach and empower people to use the plants growing around them to aid in their own healing -- especially in communities where people feel disconnected from the land they live on.
-- Write and speak about the connections between personal, cultural, and planetary healing.

But I need help raising the money to make this vision a reality.  Please consider making a gift to help me move forward with this new work -- You can donate through paypal or by sending a check to me at 33 Morningside Ln., North Andover, MA 01845.

Thank you so much for your generosity,

BEYOND THE GERM THEORY

The theory that our diseases are caused by tiny creatures infiltrating our bodies, and best treated by killing those creatures, is a recent one, advanced by Louis Pasteur in the late nineteenth century.   Its rooted in a mechanistic theory of biology which sees our bodies as well ordered machines whose function is suddenly disrupted by the presence of contaminants that jam its cogs.  It ignores the reality that rather than being discrete entities, our bodies are a complex community of many kinds of cells, some of which can't survive on their own and some of which function independently but symbioticly.  Biologist Lynn Margulis has convincingly argued that at least some and possibly all of the individual components of plant and animal cells were once independent, free-roaming bacteria who came together to create new kinds of living communities.  The distinction between "germ cells" and "healthy cells" is an arbitrary one. 

Pasteur had his detractors among his contemporaries..   Stephen Harrod Buhner writes in The Lost Language of Plants that:

"Pasteur's germ theory was not the only one; there were many competing schools of thought at the time.  Researchers such as Max von Pettinkofer and Elie Metchinkoff insisted that it was not the bacteria that caused disease, but an interruption in the normal healthy ecology of the body that allowed pathogenic bacteria to infect it.  To prove their point Pettinkofer in Bavaria, Mechtinikoff in Russia, and a number of others around the world ingested liquids filled  with millions of cholera bacilli.  Other than experiencing a mild diarrhea none became ill.  Their point was that human beings live in a sea of bacteria all the time, and the human body has learned throughout its long development to deal with them.  Something must be upsetting the body's normal ability to respond to such bacilli and that is what allows them to grow unimpeded.  That is the source of disease."

For the late Dr. Marc Lappé , the advent of AIDS raised serious questions about the dominant model of treating disease in our culture.  He wrote "It is the body which ultimately controls infections, not chemicals. Without underlying immunity, drugs are meaningless.  He expressed concern about the role of environmental toxins and poor nutrition in undermining our immune systems.  He was also concerned that flooding ecosystems with chemical antibiotics excreted in human and animal wastes was causing bacteria to evolve at rates that outstripped our bodies' abilities to develop new immune responses.  In a 1995 interview, he told a public radio reporter:

"Not only do we have an intimate relationship with the bacteria that live in and on us, but we're in a very tight ecological relationship with virtually all the other bacteria in the world. But this image that we're facing an inimical horde of bacteria in part has led to the attempt not only to isolate ourselves from it, but with the mistaken belief that we can actually annihilate bacteria with antibiotics or other controls We've essentially created our own nightmare by neglecting the value of vaccines, immunization, and natural controls and instead have relied entirely on this myth that a chemotherapeutic approach is an impenetrable barrier. We also share ecological niches wherever we live with the bacteria and viruses around us. When we disturb those niches, by taking enormous amounts of antibiotics, our bodies respond by allowing new organisms to overgrow our natural organisms. That's the origin of the epidemic of yeast infections in women, for instance. But on a grander scheme in the natural environment, for instance when we use antibiotics in feed lots, we cause an epidemic of resistance to the very antibiotics that we intend to use for treating disease later in humans.  At this moment we are controlling the evolution, not just by decimating species and annihilating swaths of rain forest, but by shifting the balance towards organisms that can thrive in the environment that we create."

 

But rather than seeking to identify, understand, and correct those imbalances, conventional medicine identifies bacteria as the problem and seeks to eradicate them.  An infected wound and a case of bronchitis are treated in much the same way.  And doctors seldom address the factors that make their patients susceptible to infection.

A lack of discrimination in diagnosing diseases and imbalances leads to the use of indiscriminate methods to address very different situations -- and those methods tend to involve the use of powerful weapons that exact heavy "collateral damage."

In the case of bacterial infections, conventional medicine favors the use of antibiotic drugs that kill all manner of bacteria.  Chemical antibiotics first saw widespread use in World War II.   A newsreel from that era proclaimed that

 "Disease, whose guerrilla warfare against the Red Cross flag has hitherto out-generalled even the greatest commanders, suffer[ed] a setback, thanks to the new miracle drug penicillin..."

It seems appropriate that penicillin and saturation bombing were developed at roughly the same time.  Penicillin will kill streptococcus bacteria in the throat just as readily as it will kill any bacteria moving into a gash in the knee.  The problem is that it will also kill the bacteria in the gut that are essential to digestion.  And gut function is closely linked to immune function.  So after a course of antibiotics, the body is more vulnerable to disease than it was before.

Living systems are almost infinitely creative and adaptable.  Under attack they come up with more and more ways to survive.

Buhner describes how antibiotics spur bacteria to develop and pass on new strategies of resistance:

"Bacteria have the capacity to generate scores of unique chemical compounds. As soon as a bacterium encounters an antibiotic, it begins to generate possible responses.  This takes time, usually bacterial generations. But bacteria live a lot more quickly than we do: a new generation occurs every twenty minutes in many species, some 500,000 times faster than people.  And in that quickened time scale, bacteria have found a lot of solutions to antibiotics.  [ . . .]

"Once a bacterium develops a method for countering an antibiotic, it systematically begins to pass it on to other bacteria at an extremely rapid rate of speed. In response to the pressure of antibiotics, bacteria and the first thing that they do is share resistance information, using a wide variety of resistance mechanisms." 

In fact, the presence of antibiotics provokes such rapid evolution in bacteria that they often develop resistance to drugs they haven't yet encountered.  In one experiment, the E. coli bacteria in the feces of chickens who had been fed low doses of tetracycline were found to be resistant to tetracycline, ampicillin, streptomycin, and sulfanamides.  This resistance was passed on to the E. coli in the digestive tracts of a nearby group of chickens who hadn't been fed antibiotics, and eventually to the bacteria in the guts of the members of a nearby farm family who had no direct exposure to the chickens.

Its worth noting, as Buhner does, that E. coli bacteria, which occur naturally in our guts, were not pathogenic until very recently, when the bacteria picked up genetic material from Shigella bacteria and evolved into a deadly new strain, E. coli O157:H7. 

E. coli bacteria in turn are believed to have passed their antibiotic resistance on to Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, leading to the emergence of the virulent

methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains that are now responsible for more deaths in the United States each year than AIDS.

How do we get out of the mess where in?  Albert Einstein's maxim applies -- the problems will not be solved by the consciousness that created them.

Herbalist Susun Weed points out that conventional medicine tends to define health as "the absence of disease" -- and so lacking a pro-active definition of what health means it tends to focus on suppressing symptoms and destroying the organisms it holds responsible for those symptoms.  Much of what passes for alternative medicine falls into a similar trap, simply replacing the idea of disease with the idea of toxins, and embracing an ideal of purity.   Weed suggests another approach, drawn from the oral tradition of herbal medicine passed on by rural women in Europe and North America over hundreds of years:
 

"The Wise Woman tradition says that health is defined as flexibility. It can include disease and disability - it can even include death. Because health is not the opposite of sickness. Health is wholeness. It is not 'fixed' and It's not cleansed. You nourish what is there, and don't make it a fight - It's not a fight between the good and the bad, the dark and the light. It's wholeness where we can say 'Of course I am good; of course I am bad. Of course I am light; of course I am dark. I am wholeness.'

Such an approach views the body as a complex ecosystem and looks to restore balance where it has been lost rather than seeing it as a machine whose operation in impaired by foreign objects. 

Dr.Lappé advised people concerned about disease to focus on maintaining healthy immune systems:

"First of all they can keep from annihilating their immune systems. Don't go out and sunbathe, for instance. Good nutrition, rest, are the key elements for maintaining the immune system. Be sure that you have an adequate intake of key vitamins that are essential for the function of the immune system, like vitamin C. Vitamin A is an immune stimulant; vitamin E is an important anti-oxidant. Stay off meth-amphetamines and things that run the system dry, and avoid medical products and devices like silicone-containing devices that screw up the immune system. Because chronic inflammation may activate the immune system in totally non-evolutionarily adaptive ways."

When the immune system is compromised or an acute infection sets in, plant medicines can work with the body's own chemistry to promote healing -- a process far too intricate for our best chemists to replicate with synthetic chemicals.  Biochemistry is a language whose grammar and syntax the pharmaceutical industry has yet to grasp.   As Buhner writes:

"The millions of plant chemistries that are released into ecosystems are done so in response to environmental needs -- to communications directed to plants -- while pharmaceuticals are released into ecosystems in the billions of tons without any reason whatsoever.  Both types of substances affect the same metabolic pathways in living organisms and so cause significant changes in the functioning of ecosystems.  However, plant chemistries are filled with meaning; they are a language, pharmaceuticals are not."

Plant chemistries are also constantly evolving in response to the same environmental conditions as our bodies and the microorganisms that inhabit or colonize them -- and so plant medicine naturally adapts to changing conditions.  And the subtle and complex messages of plant chemistry are less likely to provoke new forms of resistance than the relatively simple chemical structures of pharmaceuticals.  Ethnobotanist James Duke writes:

"When we borrow the antibiotic compounds from plants, we do better to borrow them all, not just the single solitary most powerful amont them.  We lose the synergy when we take out a single compound.  But most important we facilitate the enemy, the germ, in its ability to outwit the monochemical medicine.  The polychemical synergistic mix, concentrating the powers already evolved in medicinal plant, may be our best hope in confronting drug-resistant bacteria."

A good herbalist also relates to each of her patients as an individual, finding the right plant allies to assist each body in restoring balance rather than assuming that the same response is always appropriate for similar symptoms.   We've come the long way around to reinitiating our relationships with plants that have co-evolved with us for thousands of years.  And those relationships offer us the gift of coming to understand our own bodies as mini-ecosystems and our own world as alive.

CITY LIMITS

Walking in the woods
at dusk

just beyond the city limits

a snowy owl flies across my path,
reminding me just north of here
the forest still stretches
further than I could walk
in three days.

And I remember
in Cambridge
when you showed me
where motherwort
and plantain
grow on the banks
of the Charles --

This is how an empire crumbles --
burdock and wild carrot
take over vacant lots,

coyote edges into the suburbs,
stalking field mice
and feral cats.

Wild raspberries
reclaim the clearcuts,
aspen takes root
in burned out foundations

Every field
that was paved
will grow wild
once more.

USEFUL AND INTERESTING LINKS

Herbs for Mind and Spirit

Gail Faith Edwards writes about the role herbs and nutrition can play in healing depression.

Rachel's Democracy and Health News

An amazing newsletter exploring threats to the health of our bodies, our democracy, and our planet.

"Sometimes there's nothing left to do but make love to the fear." -- Astrid Mannrique, ASFAADES (Association of the Families of the Disappeared), Popayan, Colombia

"When you are open, no one can hurt you.  But we are afraid of being open.  So we get hurt again and again, hurting ourselves.: -- Krishna Das

SEAN DONAHUE
Green Man Healing Arts
http://www.greenmanhealingarts.org
Eyes of the World Media
http://www.seandonahue.org