Well, What Do We Know?
On the beach in Santa Barbara years ago, walking with a friend from Liberia, a ripple of ocean washed over our feet and tumbled some small stones at the water's edge. One of the stones tipped onto its rim. As it did so, it became briefly translucent: the late afternoon sun shone through it and transformed it into a shimmering green window, an oval of stained glass. We turned to each other, excited and grinning.
"It's alive!" my friend exclaimed.
A moment later, it lay flat, 'merely' a stone again. We wondered, could this have occurred with any stone or was this one special? At the time, I thought that particular stone was different. I brought it home, wanting to keep its miracle close. (I later returned it.) Now, I would say all stones are alive. What does this understanding require of me in the ways I behave and speak?
Like many of you, as the pandemic unfolds, I have been in circles of conversation, considering, together, the essential questions we humans must face at this time. In a recent webinar, Dr. Thomas Cowan spoke of the pandemic in terms of pollution, of airwaves saturated with 5G, and the murder of water in our frenzy to contain and purify it. He says, "The poison is the problem. The virus is the response." How, then, to respond to the poison?
Yesterday, a friend shared a dream of seeing a bear just on the other side of a low patio fence of a home in a rural area where bears were once ubiquitous and now are rare. The bear in the dream was calm, peering with gentle curiosity into the garden. If one loves bears, and the wild, as many of us do, this dream merits a thoughtful response. What might such a response be? How would it shape us?
As the lockdown continues, I find myself rekindling old friendships that had atrophied. Perhaps you are doing the same. Last week, one such friend told me of his brother's recent suicide, which led to involvement with a suicide prevention organization. The head of that initiative is a suicide survivor. A couple of years ago, he jumped off the Golden Gate bridge. A bystander called 911. As the man hit the water, he did not die, though he was seriously injured, with several broken bones. But he thought, "I will not die now!" Then he saw a dark shape circling him, and he thought, "I will not be killed by a shark!" But it wasn't a shark, it was a sea lion. The sea lion swam under him and lifted him to the surface and kept him afloat until the Coast Guard arrived. That story went deep: for days, I couldn't shake it. I didn't want to. I was so grateful for its company. When I shared it in a recent circle, one friend said, "How can a story like that not change everything?"
Here's what I know: Dreams are more reliable than minds. Synchronicities are more reliable than facts. Experience is more reliable than data. I know this firsthand. Perhaps you know it, too. Here in the U.S., the dreams that are coming now contain great teachings about right relationship. What are dreamers dreaming in India? In Yemen? In the slums of Nairobi?
Our current systems of commerce and governance have failed us because they have failed the Natural World. They have failed the vulnerable. Politicians have squandered our trust. Each of us has experienced the divine in our own way. It is time to live what our bodies know to be true.
For me, the love of the wild is a continuous pull that shapes and reshapes me. Inexplicable synchronous events reveal patterns, directives, and mysteries worth exploring. Unexpected connection engenders delight and a kind of reverence that insists I find deeper ways to tend to the unseen world from which the most reliable guidance consistently comes. I didn't grow up reverent. The inexplicable has taught me and I am still learning.
It is a good and beautiful way to live - to pay attention, and to consider how to deliver the gifts we were given in the time we are allotted. In the midst of this current crisis, the question of how to live has taken on a new and multifaceted urgency: how to stay alive, and protect those that we love, human and other-than-human; and how, in Joy Harjo's words, to live the stories 'trembling with fresh life'.
The I Ching speaks of the 'smallest possible gesture' required to solve a problem. If such a gesture is aligned with the Way - with the larger rhythms we can only glimpse, it changes fate. Tempting as it is to focus on the big stuff, and seek the sweeping changes required to birth a new time, perhaps this is a medicinal moment to start with the small. I think about the 'butterfly effect' - the flap of a butterfly's wings in a cloud forest that sets something in motion, a subtle movement of air that brings a downpour. Of course, the butterfly is just being itself, with no thought for whether or when to flap its wings and seemingly little notion of the consequences. That, too, is a gift: a knowing-how-to-be that contributes to unified balance. Then again, perhaps it would be better to assume that it's all intentional, that every living being has agency that deserves our meticulous respect.
Last night a friend spoke of his anguish at feeling that, despite the carefully curated intentions and actions that have shaped his work, he feels he has failed to deliver, to be effective in what he came here to do. Many of us feel this, too. How has it happened that under our watch the world became so ill? Over decades we have worked hard: where are the results that alleviate suffering and bring restoration? We must do everything differently: it is time to be guided by something deeper than data or theory or expertise.
Sometimes, it helps to think less about solutions and more about the conditions needed for all Life to thrive. What amends must be made, and new bonds forged? I think of the expression, to amend the soil before planting. In my cosmology, this includes making amends: apologizing for past abuse and seeking to repair the damage. And when I think of making amends, a vision appears of a great burst of apology and forgiveness: European countries apologizing for the colonial madness that has brought us to this brink; humans apologizing to each other and to the Natural World for wrongs real and imagined; releasing our hearts from the guilt of misdeeds. A sincere apology ripples through all dimensions. A Kenyan peacemaker, Babu Ayindo, says, "If I don’t forgive you, then I remain in some form of imbalance, not just within myself, but with other realms of existence. It is my quality of relationship with other human beings that contributes to my rising vertically to the creator, to the ancestors, toward the gods, or the supernatural beings. And that’s why you always wish that you do not have enemies because when you have the grudges of this heart then that limits your capacity to relate to other realms of existence." What a blessing it would be if this current hardship brought us to the table for a great feast of forgiveness.
What is the deep knowing that has burnished each of us, but that we may have hesitated - until now - to act from? There is a pollinator-friendly garden to seed at this time: how do we prepare the soil of ourselves?
