In honor of Earth Day I’ll be posting and blogging about ecospiritual poems this week over at inscendence.
And forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~ Kahlil Gibran
And forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare paws and the winds long to play with your fur. ~ my dog Saxon
I enter the airport grateful for the automatic doors that allow me to pass with ease, given the load I’m carrying. I scan the concourse in search of the nearest counter and make my way there, shuffling, cursing myself for not having invested in the kind with wheels. I enter the queue, and am guided by barriers to the front of the line.
The grace that is the health of creatures can only be held in common.
In healing the scattered members come together.
In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.
~ Wendell Berry
This quote is from “Healing” a piece in Berry’s What are Humans For?
It’s a question that I have been contemplating, and the excerpt by Gary Snyder posted recently at Turtle Rock Farm raised it again. Snyder talks about the beings of the world as having been called forth by their fellows and by the larger creative, evolutionary process. I encourage you to read it and ponder. There’s a similar idea here in “Healing” — that health, in its broadest sense, arises from the connections and relationships within the whole. And that this wholeness is holy.
I want to write more about this healing, but I’m going to be doing it at another blog. My new blog will be more focused on nature and spirit. On discovering one’s true nature in nature. On inscendence.
I have been deeply inspired by the way other bloggers are exploring this theme, mostly implicitly. It just comes out of the way they are being in the world. So beautiful. Many thanks to Genie, Kai, Maximillian and Mike, to name just a few, for the way they share their gifts of reverence and presence. My hope is that my new blog will allow me to add my voice to the same cosmic liturgy.
Thanks for reading soul-in-progress. I’m not sure if I will be posting much here any more. But I’d love to have you join me over at inscendence.
Bald Eagle over the Big Pond at Turtle Rock Farm, Winter, 2011
When we begin to understand the divinity, the cosmology of all life, we will no longer take our beautiful planet for granted, the Grandmothers say. In these days...we are the ones who will determine whether or not we will destroy our Mother Earth and ourselves. Each one of us must decide now whether or not to live wisely and with a selfless love for the benefit of all.
credit: Andy Reis
We serve life not because it is broken, but because it is holy. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
A friend recently shared a beautiful article by Rachel Naomi Remen about the difference between helping, fixing, and service. Her basic point has to do with the importance of approaching good works from an attitude of love and connection.
Coming from the position of the detached expert who is going to fix the problem is inherently disempowering and objectifying. In the article, Remen shares an experience of shame created by this sort of fixing. Many practitioners of holistic healing arts make this same point, and do their best to ensure that they are not reinforcing clients in unhelpful passivity or victimhood. Similarly, social activists emphasize the importance of empowerment, dignity, and solidarity.
This is essentially about the energy of the process. Remen suggests that service emerges from the energy of oneness and reverence, and that helping/fixing comes from the energy of separation and brokenness.
What I want to add is that this same idea applies to environmental work. It was clear to me during my years in environmental nonprofits that the culture was very much one of fixing instead of loving, sacred service. Because that type of approach remains in the energy of separation and brokenness, its efficacy is ultimately limited.
I am convinced that when we work in the service of ecological restoration it is absolutely vital to hold the vision of the earth as both holy and whole. While we may at times feel grief when we witness destruction and suffering, we must also hold space for nature’s wisdom, tenacity, and power. She is sacred and she will prevail. With or without us.
Again, these words from Remen’s piece apply to our service to nature:
Service is not an experience of strength or expertise; service is an experience of mystery, surrender and awe. Helpers and fixers feel causal. Servers may experience from time to time a sense of being used by larger unknown forces. Those who serve have traded a sense of mastery for an experience of mystery, and in doing so have transformed their work and their lives into practice.
credit: Andreas Krappweis
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes. ~Rumi
This human self-awareness is tricky. In the context of our mainstream culture, where the goal of life seems to be to acquire material things or status markers that will make us feel good (i.e. safe), self-awareness gets hijacked and tethered to superficial pursuits.
We can get lost in it, ending up in a blind alley of narcissism and selfishness. I think spiritual teachings that encourage us to focus purely on transcendence can lead us to a similar sort of place, though the accompanying narrative is more meaningful. There’s a feeling of detachment and isolation in the notion of moving beyond the messiness of life. And we can become obsessed with our progress in doing so.
In both cases, our self-awareness seems to be put in the service of answering that very human question: “How am I doing?”
In contrast, Rumi’s version of self-awareness reflects a profoundly intentional embodiment, connectedness, and sense of the greater unfolding in which we are embedded, and its beauty and value. I think we are self-aware in order to praise the sun. And to praise our self-awareness in the midst of that appreciation and delight. I think we are self-aware because it allows a special kind of gratitude. What a privilege to dwell inside that thank you.
credit: Barun Patro
We must also remember that we are the Spirit’s intention, each of us. Each of us is an expression of Incomprehensible Holy Mystery’s intentionality, its effort to engage in the world, to become more present in the world, to tangibly incarnate a greater portion of itself in and for our Earth community. ~ Judy Cannato
When we really start to understand what Judy is talking about it becomes all but impossible to live without reverence. And attention. Then we begin to know that we are always moving in and through wholeness, connection, and ultimately, love. Then we begin to appreciate that way of knowing that is not conceptual, but perceptual, embodied, experiential.
We have forgotten. But we can remember.
