Hauling Secrets

We all subscribe in different ways and degrees to a set of beliefs about this big universe we inhabit. (Or, as I started to call it in the Waste Chain post, this big Wastestream.) This set of beliefs arises pretty organically from the things we do and the roles we perform as Haulers every day. (Though I am guilty of promoting or accentuating these beliefs from time to time.) Anyway, you might find some echoes of your own beliefs in what I plan to explain in the coming weeks, what I’m calling the cosmology of waste.

Part I: WASTEMAKERS IN THE SKY

It’s something of an instinct for us to think of everything coming from something else. So it’s hard to accept the ex nihilo argument – something from nothing – for the existence of God. From our end of the great Wastestream, the whole debate has another coloring. Not only does there have to be some raw material involved in Creation, there has to be some waste. If there isn’t, it’s like something needs to be explained.

Just as it’s impossible for any one of us to give a definitive one-size-fits-all answer to which results of our human activity qualify as ‘waste’, it’s impossible to precisely categorize the results of God’s activity. Now someone might say that nothing made by God could be waste. Or maybe the achievement of the “zero waste” dream is what makes someone divine to begin with. But isn’t that a bit boring? We prefer the following formula: just as everything humans produce is always potentially waste, so is everything made by God. Thus our Maker becomes, by a slight change in perspective – our Wastemaker. All of Creation is Waste Creation.

And as long as we’re being fanciful in developing a cosmology – or letting one settle on our activities - why just one Maker? Why not a host of characters looking down on us, a pantheon of great Wastemakers in the Sky?

Or we could trash this awkward, bulky theism and emphasize the Wastestream as a sort of Way-Stream, a Tao. You only have to replace the word ‘Tao’ with ‘Wastestream’ in a few passages from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching to arrive at a basic understanding of our basic understanding…

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Wastestream.

It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.

The Wastestream is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

The Wastestream is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Wastestream.

If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow…
Immersed in the wonder of the Wastestream,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.

The great Wastestream flows everywhere.
All things are born from it,
yet it doesn’t create them.
It pours itself into its work,
yet it makes no claim.
It nourishes infinite worlds,
yet it doesn’t hold on to them…
Since all things vanish into it
and it alone endures,
it can be called great.

The universe follows the Wastestream.
The Wastestream follows only itself.

All things end in the Wastestream
as rivers flow into the sea.

When man interferes with the Wastestream,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct.

The Wastestream gives birth to all beings,
nourishes them, maintains them,
cares for them, comforts them, protects them,
takes them back to itself,
creating without possessing,
acting without expecting,
guiding without interfering.
That is why love of the Wastestream
is in the very nature of things.

In any case, we mortals, we Haulers, what we do – at the most fundamental level – is transport the products of divine activity. We make no claim to origination. We are merely custodians, attendants, guardians at the end of the Wastestream.