Yesterday morning I heard a familiar muffled, buzzing yet melodic “Meeewww” and saw the small slate gray form of one of the catbirds that frequent the backyard where I’m working. (Or is it me frequenting their territory?) They’re known to be evasive, but in my experience once they get used to you, they’re comfortable sharing space. I like the way they’ll turn their heads when I call, and for a second my eyes will meet theirs as they size me up. 

They’re also copycats, like mockingbirds, perhaps slightly less showy about it. They’ll mimic other bird’s calls, other animals, even human voices, add some scat of their own and bundle it all into their own lively mix. They’re inquisitive and smart and have been documented to live in the wild up to 17 years. 

Around noon the home-owner came by and rounded the corner to the backside for their home-in-progress where I was working. As she did, a streak of gray zipped into the backyard thicket with a soft stern warning sound. Startled, I told her it was a catbird, and remarked to her how much I was enjoying them here. They seemed to be relishing the quiet of the carpenter and his power tools being on vacation this week. She said she was excited to soon set up the three bird baths from their current home in this new yard. I assured her they’d be much appreciated in this heat!

So it was with great sadness that in between rounding that same corner after lunch to get a tool, then returning, I was stunned to find this little one lying on the ground. It hadn’t been there a moment before. I’d not heard a thing. There were no signs of predator attack, no marks on the body, no lost feathers. I gently nudged it a few times, hoping perhaps it had just knocked itself unconscious flying into one of the nearby windows. I held my breath and waited. 

As I carefully collected it into my hand, it became obvious its neck was broken. I gently ran my fingers across the exquisitely varied, fine gray feathers, each with specific purposes. I noted the deep charcoal gray cap and russet colors beneath its tail.  I pondered: How old are you? Are you female or male? For a brief moment I held it, sensing the near-weightlessness and perfection of its fragile form. At least you were singing right into your final hour.

No matter how sweet our song, how elegant our dress, how joyous, clever, or playful our behavior, we’re all headed to the same destination: feeding other life.  We’re all part of this group dance until our curtain drops. I dug a shallow grave with my scraper and laid it in it, under the tree where I’d often seen it perch. 

Later in the afternoon I heard another catbird calling, and assume it was its mate. I told it I was sorry its partner wouldn’t be returning to the nest this evening. No doubt similar scenarios of loss have played out billions of times over millions of years on this earth. The partner that’s left somehow makes do, life goes on. 

I was grateful I’d heard the unique calls of this precious one, and that just hours before had let someone else know how much I appreciated its company. I hope you heard us singing your praises, Birdy. 

Or maybe you were the type of soul that, without a need to bolster an ego, enjoyed singing your beautiful song, and intuitively knew it was worth singing and sharing solely for its own sake. 

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“I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.

This is the way I look at the world. I don't see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism. I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life.

I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn't stop me from trying.

I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown. I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveler on the road to nowhere.” 

~Henry Miller, in “Black Spring”
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​We like knowing what’s ahead. Even though humans have a history of being extraordinarily adaptable as a species, it’s disconcerting to absorb the jolts of change. Three people I knew died recently; three wakes in five days. One was a young person I’d barely met and knew more through friends; another was near my age, a casual friend, I have tighter relations with several of his siblings; and the third was a young man, 34, in the prime of life with whom I was once very close. We’d come into and brightened each other’s lives for several years during particularly challenging times for us both. I’d mentored him while his joyful spirit uplifted me. Each of those who passed had their own special glow, was much-loved, and had a positive impact on those in their sphere. 

“Tell me, what is the measure of a life well done? Tell me, how do you count an uncountable sum?…” my dear poetic friend, Bob Sima asked in a song. Like many of us, at times I’ve pondered if I’m fully applying myself, giving back enough within this short miracle we call living. 

Today I wonder, why do we even feel a need to measure? Maybe it has to do with America’s Puritanical roots, which long ago became entrenched as a societal push to be “productive.” Perhaps it’s also spurred by a longing for purpose within a culture that has defined our purpose as being consumers, patriots, or worshippers.  Lots of people have pointed out the speed of changes are exponentially accelerating, so it makes sense this further rattles our bearings. 

Joseph Campbell said a culture’s mythology is that which defines a people’s place and purpose within the cosmos. So maybe some of my (our?) ache stems from our lack of a defining mythology, and the often incongruous salad of purposes in our own diverse society, as well as our complex our relation to the larger global culture and indeed, the planet.

Convenient technological wonders (like social media) have vastly increased the rate of our exchanges. Regrettably they’ve also replaced direct communal rapport with an abstracted facsimile. Whether it’s global news, local happenings, or personal stories, even as we gain “information” so often by its nature these means leave out the heart of the communication. We now know the “consumer-focus” of these tools are designed to prey upon our instinctive cravings, tapping into our psyches, similar to how corporate products perversely make us crave fast food — unhealthily so, in both realms.

A silver lining of the Frankenstein monster that is Artificial Intelligence may be its increasing realism will force us to more fully recognize the limitations we’ve been overlooking these last 30 years. Because AI so muddies the veracity of reality presented through digital tools, it may spur a lessening of our digital addictions (for some of us at least). Perhaps nudge us to more direct, in-person encounters with all their messy, awkward, beautiful uncertainties. Maybe return us to eye to eye conversations, to accept and offer the gentle touch of supportive hands, to share real hugs where we can feel one another’s hearts. Please. 

All these technologies can give us a false sense of connection; one that melts when death arrives. We’re amid what seems to me a transitional point. We’re on the brink of believing we can detach ourselves from the woolly and unpredictable “natural” world. We console ourselves that we can predict whatever is on the horizon. Our many conveniences and robust distractions almost have us convinced we can masterfully manipulate our way through everything. No matter what the natural systems require: from ignoring inherent limits of sustainability to defying we are part of and exist within ecosystems, to shielding ourselves from the inevitable, precious passage we all will make. 

No matter the level of our cultural denial, death comes. Or rather, changes continue, since being fully alive is actually to participate in a cycle that is not divided into life and death, but encompasses the constant growth of different life forms. The same dynamics that offer us such bountiful variety and beauty require nurturing and acceptance of the whole process.

Yet words are relatively easy. Letting go of loved ones is a challenge, especially when we have been trained to envision our selves as separated beings. I (we) often feel a searing sense of loss, maybe regrets for not staying more connected. But love is not an abstract concept, it’s a unifying opening. In its most genuine form love reveals our oneness. The heart-shattering crack we feel is a break, but in the falsehood of separation, not in the bonds with one another.  

Still, I lean on Grace to guide me through profound circumstances like grief. Hopefully I also remain open to allow it to guide my heart through this daily miracle of being alive. Appreciation and kindness keep the cycle of love flowing. In his song, Bob answers his questions: “When your hands are empty and your heart is full, you can smile on your very last day.” I can live (and die) with that. 
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​When I sat in my rocker yesterday evening I was distracted by a persistent, up-lilting “Tweeet! Tweeeet! Tweeeet!” I’m used to a few quick ones when I water the hanging fern where the house finches have built a nest. Normally there’s a light squeal as the mom flies away as a distraction. But this time the sounds were more emphatic. First the soft maroon-colored male popped onto the chain of the plant beside it; in an instant the female alighted on the adjacent chains and both chirped firmly. It took me a few minutes to realize the youngins have hatched. 

Were they chiding the babes to keep quiet, or telling me about the new brood? Or both? I recently re-read “Becoming Animal” by David Abram, a very intriguing and insightful author. He proposes we are missing a crucial, life-giving rapport and much-needed wisdom by minimizing our communication with other life forms. It’s a radical concept, with far-reaching possibilities, and the failure to make this vital connection has contributed to our terrible environmental circumstances. 

We’re familiar and accept dialogue with our pets, but in our culture we’re bound to get odd looks if we dare listen (or worse, speak) to wild critters. Those of us who spend time in our gardens (which is very different from “maintaining a lawn”) might occasionally make casual conversation with a random butterfly that floats a onto our hat, a beetle we dig up, or spider that crawls out; the gnats or groundhogs might receive a few choice words; we may even offer some supportive comments to a seedling struggling to grow. But few of us have the courage to publicly discourse with bugs, trees, rivers or the land that sustains us. 

Yet in fact, in the history of humans, a case can be made that modern society is the odd one out. My mother used to say of my dad “He hears what he wants to hear” and this seems generally true for us all. How can we hear what we are not listening to? This is exacerbated if we have not learned (or more accurately, our culture has forgotten) the many dialects of the more-than-human world, so we mostly tune out the chorus we’re immersed within. 

“Sensory perception is the silken web that binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem.”  D. Abram

Our science acknowledges our senses filter out sensations, but then we ignore the implications and consequences of what we are missing. Consider that “Never having separated their sentience from their sensate bodies—having little reason to sequester their intelligence in a separate region of their skull where it might dialogue steadily with itself—many undomesticated animals, when awake, move in a fairly constant dialogue not with themselves but with their surroundings.” 

For sure our “human-focused” brains have offered many conveniences in  communicating, like me sharing this via this medium. It’s fairly established that in direct encounters with other humans, 80% of our communication is nonverbal. (It’s easy to identify the many missteps and to critique all the issues digital texting and social media promotes!) Still we rarely have bothered to assess the ledger of what’s gained by ease and speed vs what we lose through these technological wonders. In broader strokes, the net losses in terms of our relationship to the planet are becoming terrifyingly obvious. 

Cultures which are not (or minimally) reliant upon writing as a means of communicating, sometimes referred to as oral cultures, generally site humans within ecosystems, and further, appreciate everything as holding, or a manifestation of, “intelligence.” To me it feels the height of arrogance for us to define “intelligence” in such a way that it narrowly confines the idea to humans. 

Sometimes folks like to romanticize this into certain things or species having special wisdom; or another compromise is allotting gradations of smarts, of course humans at the pinnacle and then steps down by some abstract measurement. But I feel both miss that we exist as manifestations of Consciousness, not as beings that possess or “have” consciousness. The latter seems built on an a flimsy premise and false foundation. I’ve never felt comfortable with the arbitrary definitions of our culture’s science that attempt to pin down what is “alive” and what’s “inert,” or what is sentient and what isn’t. 

A malformed root is our notion we are separate. It seems more consistent to me that if I view all that exists as interwoven and impermanent, then the very concept of “things” needs to be reconsidered. Is it valid to call a tree an isolated “thing” when the integrated mycelium network and micro-ecosystem of life within the surrounding topsoil are all sustaining it in a mutually essential, ongoing exchange? Are the cells in each “thing” (our body, a sesame seed, algae) more “alive” than the relational aliveness of an ecosystem or planet or star or galaxy as a whole? Is this energy holding spacious atoms together any less vital than the energies within a cell? What are the boundaries of thing-ness?

I appreciate our sciences create convenient categories and divisions of various types for practical purposes. There are pragmatics to sustaining life. But it also seems our values ought to influence our conduct, and if we are inter-being with other life, how we treat it reflects how we are treating our selves. 

I’m also aware there are huge limitations and a degree of hypocrisy in attempting to articulate some of the faults in our subject/object way of treating the world, through our language which is based upon nouns (aka: things). Categories and labels and words are useful tools; the thing is, they should not be mistaken for reality. Reality is an indivisible, unquantifiable, timeless whole; in spiritual terms: “God”, “Consciousness”, “Awareness.” 

We constantly apply categories and names, because having known identities gives us a sense of control: to humans, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, storms, galaxies—essentially all of what we know and define as “things.” But we tend to  mistakenly assume this makes them fixed and self-contained; even as all that we can know is vibrating and affecting all else. So while we are constantly in exchange with and responding to the energies expressed in all our interwoven experiences, generally we refuse to even acknowledge our continuous, unconscious rapport. 

Yet most “un-modernized” cultures view human life in relation to this world (and the cosmos) as an ongoing dynamic exchange. For me this fits more neatly with our understanding of contemporary physics, and somewhat ironically, validates our scientific understanding. The crucial point is that we already exist in a dynamic relationship with the world (and universe), so, in a sense, we are already “communicating” with non-human forms. The crux of the matter is the arrogant notion we like to insist communication must be in our culturally-ingrained “language.” But this is like assuming if someone speaks French and you only speak English, they must not be capable of speaking! It also fails to consider all the nonverbal means of communication! 

Only in the last few decades have we put in the time and effort to studying how various animals communicate without presuming it must be less sophisticated than us. The nascent beginnings in this fertile field have focused on “social animals” (elephants, wolves, orcas, etc—of course because these are more “like us”) and even so they reveal elaborate hierarchies, emotional discrepancies, and personalities as robust as humans. The key was we needed humble and patient researchers, willing to take the time to listen and learn a non-human language. Accepting the findings breaks down walls of human-specialness (a foundational aspect of several major religious institutions—hence its relatively recent and still hesitant acceptance).  Excitedly it’s begun to expand into all sorts directions as we look into and explore with more open-minds communicative capacities in the world of fungi, insects, and plants, as well as interspecies exchange. 

Our linear-minded, writing-based society required such validation, but embracing the full implications still seems far off. I suspect because it rattles almost all aspects of our society, which has long been a way of living that views all non-human life solely as a resource for us to use. If we humans are within it, and only as important as all other forms, it deflates so many concepts of ego and power that are the bedrock of the modern way of life. Yet it takes the briefest glance, through the eyes of our own science, to recognize where this guide-map of “humans as sole possessors of intelligence” has brought us: suicide by ecocide. 

I don’t know if our modern culture can accept and adapt to a less human-focused society. I only know I’m content and evermore eager to be open to absorbing the language of the sparrows, the trees, and the landscape, rivers, and winds into my being, where it resonates and vitalizes me without a need for words and explanations.

My work-life as a house painter is maintaining surfaces that have worn. I caulk cracks that appear as old houses settle, firm up trim that’s loosened with new screws, add coats of paint or stain to stave off decline. Last week I brushed two coats of stain on a 100 ft. long, six ft. high fence. Despite wishing I had the help a young Mr. Sawyer, the repetitive work of many hours offered time to reflect. The coating will add several years to the lifespan of the wood as a fence; a few more coats in the coming years will add more. But eventually all I touch will rot and crumble. None of our structures evade the slow process of returning to the earth. 

My familiar oak table, or the most seemingly-dense granite, or the toughest carbon-steel,  even the hardest diamond, when understood in their subatomic structure, reveal more space than “solid” particles. Electric and magnetic force fields bind them together. The varied cells that create our own skeletal framework and muscular form, and the organs powering our bodies are all semi-permeable, and largely composed of water. Each cell is in a relatively continuous exchange in its environment — taking in nutrients and releasing waste. We are permeable.

The skin on my neck was sunburned last week, I’m healthy, and grateful new layers below are already pushing off the harmed ones. I get sore muscles and given a good diet and rest, they renew. Far as I know my organs are regenerating as well. I’ve broken bones and witnessed the miracle of them regenerating without my conscious effort. But as nothing is static, eventually this body will not replenish, and one way or another I’ll “die”, returning elements to the original recycler, this ever-thriving wonder that we call life. 

Recognizing all the above, right down to my own ever-evolving human form, reveals the grand denial of our culture, the notion that any aspect of our world or experience is permanent. 

To a degree this convenient notion is a practical tool: to function we have to accept some level of expectations in material things, in people’s behavior, and from our own senses. As I ease my butt into the rocking chair on my porch I don’t have to fear it, the porch, or the land my home is built on are not “real.” But there’s a danger in allowing this ideology of expectations to fully guide our relationships — a danger to our selves, to one another, to all we that we call life on the planet. 

When this notion of permanence manifests as a denial of a deeper reality, we lose. We lose a sense of the preciousness of each moment, and the interwoven effect of our actions on the dynamic within which we are integrated. We get mired in our self, and other abstractions, and in doing so we tune out potential communication with all else. When we set our selves apart, individually or collectively (as a tribe, nation, or species) it may offer some immediate “benefits”, but does this mindset truly nurture the longterm health or well-being of our family, community, or nation if we ignore the integrated life of the whole?

We experience this world through filtering senses (otherwise we’d be overwhelmed with stimulus). But in part because of this, we mostly miss the constant dance of inter-relating forms and bodies happening within our sphere, across the globe, and throughout the heavens. There’s a universe of constantly exchanging energies we mostly never notice. 

A cloud floats overhead and momentarily blocks the sunlight from 93 million miles away. It grows heavy with humidity, and becomes drops of evening rain, pulled to earth by gravity. These rise in the morning as a foggy mist, leaving cleansing dew on a leaf, which drips and moistens the soil next to a fence. This enables the roots of a simple buttercup to draw sustenance, nurturing a bud. The bud expresses itself as a blossom, which opens to the sunshine. Maybe it gets sniffed by a mouse poking its nose inside, which leaves a small fertilizing turd in return. Later the bloom is pollinated by busy bee, that carries excess pollen back to a hive. There another cycle of other lifeforms gets interwoven, as someone collects the honey combs and we partake in a delightful treat. And on and on…

I can simplistically outline some of the biological paths, but the complexity of the exchanges affecting one another in the vast ecosystems of our world is beyond comprehension. Maybe this is why we prefer to ignore our place within it all. 

I can’t express why it has long felt so obvious to me that we’re as integrally threaded into this web as everything else. Maybe my art background helped me to see differently. Or maybe I was drawn to the arts because I felt uncomfortable embracing the norm all around me. 

The fallacy of “endless resources” and continuous economic “progress” (both naively based on our supposed-separateness) seem to have blinded so many in our modern society. Indoctrinated from birth, schooled in it, many of us are shackled to work and lifestyles that require we continue honoring the masquerade. A perhaps more literal irony is how many smart folks can’t gain a perspective outside of our modern societal box, yet the view they miss is that we exist within, not outside of, the earth’s dynamic ecosystems. 

The Great Work of our time, is “…to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.” ~ Thomas Berry

I don’t pretend to have a solution, but I do recognize several crisi we’ve initiated have destroyed and continue to eradicate a wide variety of other life forms. We also know diversity offers the most resilience and abundance, so it is not difficult to sense the looming tragedy, including our own interlinked species. 

How do we begin to alter our imagined paradigm that we are a special, independent species? How do we transform from ignorant, wasteful users of resources into responsible participants within the weave? How do we alter our entrenched trajectory when it is so embedded in our lifestyle? What will move us into a “transition from a doomed economy of industrial growth to a life-sustaining society committed to the recovery of our world.” ~ Joanna Macy

Natural processes are often sparked into change because a tiny percentage of the genetics within a rare few begin acting differently. This tendency is a “natural” inoculant, improving the odds something will survive the ever-shifting environment. What may be nearly imperceptible shifts in human terms steadily affect the options. These may eventually allow that form of life to thrive through a crisis, a crisis that perhaps weakens those retaining the original more consistent form. 

So it goes, the dynamic of the world and universe begins to renew and express itself in a novel way, one blossom at a time unfolding into life-sustaining diversity. Here we all are, as Mary Oliver put it, “as common as a field daisy, and as singular...” All I know to do is to try to stay aware, recognize one flower at a time, feel our shared place in the whole. There are lessons in the wild, available if we listen.