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.
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.
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