This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 24, 2011 - Jesus said in the Gospel of St. Mark, "A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house."
I've thought recently that wisdom obtains in the case of Peter Raven, who retired last year from nearly four decades of service to the Missouri Botanical Garden, and as I see it anyway, hasn't received nearly enough recognition for his work in St. Louis - work that has been enormously influential in America and around the world.
His achievements are prodigious, and he began to accumulate them as a boy when he became a member of the California Academy of Sciences. Last weekend, in front of a gussied up audience of about 900 men and women at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, Raven received a good measure of the honor due him in his own country, among his own colleagues and in the company of a good assembly of friends.
Once a year, this group of men and women who share a taste for serious exploration of one thing or another put aside their quotidian garments and put on either evening clothes or native dress and head for the Waldorf on Park Avenue. There a gala gathering of a quite impressive association awaits them, The Explorers Club. (Full disclosure, I'm a card-carrying member and proud of it.)
This party - code name ECAD for Explorers Club Annual Dinner -- is a fundraiser. Along with cocktails and groaning boards of hors d'oeuvres and a three-courses dinner, ECAD also serves up a rich menu of intelligence-nourishing activities, a serious and thoughtful plateful not often found at galas conjured up in glittering ballrooms of legendary midtown Manhattan hotels.
The club was founded in 1904, a resonant year for those of us who live in this region, the year of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Forest Park. The fair served up more than ice-cream cones and rides on a monumental Ferris wheel. Some of the exhibits, such as the Igorot village, were shockingly benighted, but others that concentrated on technological advancements and artistic achievements, were brilliant and markedly progressive. The fair harkened back a century to one of the greatest explorations ever pursued, the Voyage of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, which started out in the Illinois territory near what is now Wood River, proceeded onward to the Pacific Ocean and returned in glory to St. Louis.
The club is extraordinarily diverse, but united in a dedication to advancing knowledge in the pursuit of truth in the most basic but most profoundly abundant manner, by exploring primary sources. Entry is gained through a rigorous application process, in which a candidate's seriousness of purpose and credentials are laid out in detail. Clark, Lewis and their patron, Thomas Jefferson, would understand both the rigor and the reason for being of the club, a dedication to promoting "the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space by supporting research and education in the physical, natural and biological sciences."
St. Louis made a good showing at ECAD this year. At least three tables were filled with club members and spouses, partners and guests. Raven provided a special draw. He was there to receive one of the club's most auspicious prizes, one that helps to recognize his prophetic powers and to bring some of that honor absent in his own house to him. The award is club's Citation of Merit. Raven won it for having "championed global research to preserve endangered plants, while helping strengthen scientific expertise in developing countries."
Raven's prophesying is not based on speculation or emotion or whim, or contemplating the arrangements of the stars, but on research and observation. The content of it regularly is jam-packed with what we do not want to hear, because the fundamental message of warning reminds of our fecklessness, and that we befoul our own nests and that in consuming conspicuously we profligately waste irreplaceable resources.
In his remarkably brief but prophesy-laced acceptance speech, Raven proclaimed with grace and authority and conviction both an irrepressible joie de vivre and unshakable alarm, both gained through passionate living and dedicated intellectual explorations.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I am deeply honored by the recognition that I am receiving here tonight. Thanks to caring parents who encouraged my love of nature, the youth programs provided by the California Academy of Sciences, great children, and a wonderful partner, Pat Raven, I have lived and am living a life filled with wonderful opportunities, outstanding friends and colleagues, and the enjoyment of diverse, beautiful places all over the world. I have been blessed beyond any reasonable expectation, and am most grateful for the opportunities I have been given."
Therein, Raven's reflections on the joy of living abundantly.
Herein, alarm, and a call to action:
"However, there are three people in the world now for every one who lived here when I was born. Every night when we sit down at the dinner table, there are 200,000 more of us here than there were the night before. Our relentless drive for ever-higher levels of consumption accelerates steadily, and we continue to employ many destructive technologies that are diminishing the very sustainability of the earth.
"In view of the severe challenges we face together, the encouragement of our children and grandchildren will not only lead them to lives filled with satisfaction and interest, but will help them to become concerned, caring and active citizens of this rapidly-changing world. Thank you."
Other wise and true men and women were recognized with honors at ECAD, and perhaps somewhat because of pride of place and a genuine respect for this extraordinary person, I felt so happy the club, (and for the past year or so my club), had bestowed honor on Peter Raven. In doing so, it acknowledged his labors and wisdom, and provided a bully pulpit for him, from which to issue his call for responsible behavior.
After the concluding remarks, my partner and I stepped out into the chill and exhilaration of the New York night, and as I tried in vain to develop a sophistication and city-wise strategy for beating the crowd to an on-duty taxicab, I was pulled up short.
I realized that once again, certainly without meaning to, I'd stepped into one of conspicuous consumption's ubiquitous traps, and that its jaws had clamped tight on my conscience and on my heart.