Life has a way of provoking us into Awareness by disrupting our routines.
I was hard at it on the job, keeping track of the overlapping coats of stain I was brushing with my 4” brush as the sun neared the horizon. It can be challenging when seasons are shifting: the wind was blowing twigs and debris atop the deck. One has to work in an efficient and considered way, maintaining a wet edge yet not creating puddles nor leaving sloppy drips.
The second coat adds to the durability of the protective covering, extending the life of the wood. We’re keen to keep our homes looking good, and our investment in them secure. I like to think maintaining a home isn’t entirely about vanity, nor investment, but also a desire to care for and preserve places that have nurtured us.
We were in the last days of warm fall weather. Amid the noise of constant gusts of wind, I was trying to sustain my focus as I brushed stain on the large deck. Oak leaves rustled in the trees overhead and then again as they dragged across my work surface. The fierce winds released them ahead of schedule from the grand trees nearby.
A loud thump on the glass startled me; I knew my clients were not home. I turned to the sound in time to see a small bird roll onto its back and twitch. For a moment I was hopeful it might just be knocked numb, and recover, as I’d occasionally seen other birds do. Within seconds a stream of blood poured from behind its neck, and a small pool formed on the deck. Its feet clenched a few times, then sadly, it lay still.
I retreived my hammer, clawed a small hole in the soil, and found a few large pieces of bark. Crouching next to it, I couldn’t help notice the elegance of the subtle taupe and gray tones on the feathers of this no longer alive cedar wax wing, named for the tips of yellow on its wingtips. I gently collected it in the bark, and carried it down the steps, placed it in the crude hole, and pushed the soil over it.
It rattled me for a bit and guided my ponderings the rest of the day. In our culture, we rarely witness this most profound of transitions, life into death. But is such wording accurate? Over the years, admittedly with some effort and not without grief and sorrow, I’ve come to understand these “events”, aka Death, as a small process within a vast cycle.
In the moment I felt a pang of sadness. Then later wondered, where does this emotional tug come from? Why should this small bird elicit concern, while I barely regard the millions of life forms that died the same day, or even the same instant elsewhere on the planet, including thousands of humans? What amount of sadness is “appropriate?” Can we measure outpourings that spontaneously flow from our hearts? Should we? Where does “life” begin and end? Where do species or individuals start and stop?
Recently I’ve been reading about fungi and lichens. It seems clear our scientific boundaries defining “species” and distinctions between life forms, while helpful for us to name, categorize, and sort out the incredible complexity of life on earth, have a tradeoff. In the quest for accuracy and order, our carefully defined data may blind us to the larger unfolding. We tend to “see” and focus upon details and tune out the rest. Our minds literally work by tuning out sensory input lest we’d be overwhelmed in an instant. Helpful in many ways, yet we can forget that we all find what we are looking for and rarely open our vision up to take in a broader view.
Social media makes shrewd use of this useful, instinctive tendency. Helping cement our insecurities by encouraging echo-chambers, vilifying those different than ourselves, selling us all forms of “protection,” and when we’re overwhelmed by the onslaught, offering distractions.
We follow the lead of our language, which defines all as subjects and objects. Heads down, with an intense focus on singular “things” we can acquire information within the spotlight of our view, but often miss the overall dynamic. We end up imagining life is a cluster of nouns when in reality it is a verb. We identify discreet objects but ignore their ephemeral nature and temporary role in the flow. Not only do we tend to pay less attention to the flow, we often fail to recognize that we are not outside entities documenting, but are also participants within the current of life. And short-lived ones at that.
Our labels enable us to assign and arrange lots of information, but they don’t necessarily engender understanding about life nor the experience of being alive. Can lists of data convey the feeling of flying? Can heart monitor readings and realtime brain scans really record what a much-needed warm hug offers our being? Can the most advanced AI analysis define and quantify the affect of a loved one’s kiss?
I read recently that many serious thinkers feel it’s likely we’ll soon have the technological capacity to keep a human alive for well over a hundred years. Corporations are racing to figure out how by replacing parts, adding infusions or catalysts that will enhance or renew worn organs, systems, and tissue, we may be able to do this “infinitely.” The marketplace of our consumer culture and capitalism are potent addictive distractions from the flow.
We’re focused on one-off, mechanical cause and effect. Especially regarding technological “advances” and “progress” it seems to me we don’t ask “why?” often enough. Increased convenience is a lazy rational. When do we consider the longterm consequences, the uncertain, emergent results beyond the parameters of our projects? All life is connected. To paraphrase John Muir, tug at any one thread in nature and one finds it is connected to all else.
Bring back a dire wolf or woolly mammoth? Cool! Bravo! How exciting! Think of the gaps we’ll fill in our understanding of these lost species by doing this! Plus the irresistible attraction to seeing a mammoth — imagine the profit it’ll generate! But if we inadvertently bring alive an extinct virus from their world that kills other existing species (or say, the majority of mammals) who no longer needed the resistant genes, well, oops! That’s the risk of progress, there’s profit to be had! Inject a protein that will self-generate to conquer a newly spawned virus, great! Consider the longterm effects on bodies as it carries on in its host post-virus— not so much.
Wood rots, oak leaves stop absorbing carbon dioxide and let go, the intricate beings that are waxwings and humans stop breathing and expire. Even though life is a process of continuous change, it seems our selfish society often promotes ways to control because we so fear change. I’m in the club. While I agree with the Buddha that most of our discomfort in life is related to resistance, I’m still learning to let go: whether simple frustrations I feel when folks dont meet MY expectations, or deeper sorrows when people abuse others or the earth, or when loved ones change form.
The sadness I felt as the bird died was not entirely about resistance. It wasn’t entirely about clinging or wishing against fate. I wasn’t attempting to will the waxwing alive, or sad because it felt unjust. It somehow touched a deep aspect of my being. Even though it was instantaneous and brief, it was a more profound.
Maybe such moments are a brief engagement in the fullness of being alive — what we might call “Communion.” In this sense, the compassion I felt, maybe all genuine compassion, is not necessarily sadness (or joy). These are fleeting emotions that come and go with the wind. I liken it more to opening an energy conduit, a momentary shift that revealed the usually veiled connection to another seemingly separate life form. A hint of Awareness of the larger view.
What is it about our culture that wants to insist we’re not part of the flow? At what cost to the life on earth do we make “technological advances” happen? How can we not consider the effects of any economic goals on the global ecosystems, the real “banks” that we ignore and yet rely upon and which harbor all life? They’re already on the brink of cascading into turbulent changes—how can so many in our era ignore this?! When did our society become incapable of reflection?
Our arrogant, modern dysfunctional lifestyle falsely assumes it’s separate from the cycle of life. The web of AI can’t exist outside of the universal web of life. In pursuing purely intellectual “knowledge”, detached from the heart of wisdom, we keep seeking more distractions to avoid facing the insecurities our screens cultivate. Now we’re supercharging our desperate quest via ever more “techno-solutions”. It strikes me as pathetic.
Is this really the path we want to embrace? Can we even find the courage to reclaim our fuller humanity, our Communion within life on Earth while living within this culture?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I recently had the honor to travel with a friend to her parent’s gravesite. It’s in a beautiful wooded landscape, surrounded by an intentional community of homesteads. Her parents happened to be Muslim, and my friend attends a mosque and considers herself Muslim. She appreciates and respects rituals but is not confined by one set of them; rather, she is guided by her heart.
Inspiringly, she also attends other places of worship, including lately a fundamentalist Baptist church — “mostly because I love how committed they are to doing community work in our area!” In another exchange she explained: “Yes, I’m a Muslim, but first, I am a Sufi.” Sufism openly embraces the notion all life is One, and is not restricted by names, labels, forms or categories.
As we strolled the grounds, we passed squirrels, donkeys, and ducks, each being instantly eliciting soft coos toward them from my friend. In the graveyard, as a few deer passed, I realized she wasn’t just making sweet sounds, but saying something: “Jun, jun, junam.” She explained it was Farsi (the native language of her homeland, Persia). It essentially meant “life.” “It’s a thing we Sufis say as an acknowledgement and reminder.” Implying indirectly, they (the animals) and we are all part of this wondrous, ongoing Circle.
A local resident came to visit. We sat together on a small bench and talked quietly as my friend lovingly washed the headstones. As she cleaned, she spoke about her parents and shed a few tears. When she finished her task, she came to join us but the bench afforded no room. Rather than sit on the wet grass, she unselfish-consciously sat on her own grave marker. I smiled. The contrast with our death-defying culture was too striking to not recognize. She laughed and with her permission I took a photo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I was working on that deck, despite my attempts to focus on my brushing, I was forced to be aware of the unfolding beyond my self, first the wind, then the trees, then their leaves floating past me in the gusts. I could only smile as some inevitably landed in the fresh stain on the deck. They came from centuries-old oaks that had grown to majestic heights. Ancients that thrived through the complementary support of minerals and fungi and topsoil from previous oaks that had come and gone for eons, and sunshine and water and all manner of animation and expiration. At first I imagined it would be hard on the trees letting leaves go so early (oaks usually retain them into the winter).
But then I recognized not all were released, and the variations each year increased their capacity to adapt. The leaves also blanketed the forest floor. There they’ll contribute to harboring other life. Ever so slowly these leaves as well as the waxwing (feathers, blood, flesh and bone) will continue to transform and in doing so will vitalize the topsoil. They ensure it will be teeming with microscopic activity, paying forward a network of processes on a scale we humans can barely comprehend. Steadily, quietly, rejuvenating our world. Maybe there is no “life” nor “death” but simply continuous changes in form.
Our intellect can miss or tune out what our hearts feel profoundly. The compassionate connection we sense when we open our hearts is always accessible. But it’s routinely covered by the limitations of a life in a culture that’s come to be ruled by our intellect and distracting surface emotions. I want to cultivate a balance of heart and head that enables my being to access and absorb an understanding larger than the sum of either.
It seems to me we’d all benefit from more openness and acceptance of our role in the larger-than-human scheme — embracing and appreciating our purpose in sustaining this grand cycle of life — including both tears and smiling, amid the wonder of it all.
I was hard at it on the job, keeping track of the overlapping coats of stain I was brushing with my 4” brush as the sun neared the horizon. It can be challenging when seasons are shifting: the wind was blowing twigs and debris atop the deck. One has to work in an efficient and considered way, maintaining a wet edge yet not creating puddles nor leaving sloppy drips.
The second coat adds to the durability of the protective covering, extending the life of the wood. We’re keen to keep our homes looking good, and our investment in them secure. I like to think maintaining a home isn’t entirely about vanity, nor investment, but also a desire to care for and preserve places that have nurtured us.
We were in the last days of warm fall weather. Amid the noise of constant gusts of wind, I was trying to sustain my focus as I brushed stain on the large deck. Oak leaves rustled in the trees overhead and then again as they dragged across my work surface. The fierce winds released them ahead of schedule from the grand trees nearby.
A loud thump on the glass startled me; I knew my clients were not home. I turned to the sound in time to see a small bird roll onto its back and twitch. For a moment I was hopeful it might just be knocked numb, and recover, as I’d occasionally seen other birds do. Within seconds a stream of blood poured from behind its neck, and a small pool formed on the deck. Its feet clenched a few times, then sadly, it lay still.
I retreived my hammer, clawed a small hole in the soil, and found a few large pieces of bark. Crouching next to it, I couldn’t help notice the elegance of the subtle taupe and gray tones on the feathers of this no longer alive cedar wax wing, named for the tips of yellow on its wingtips. I gently collected it in the bark, and carried it down the steps, placed it in the crude hole, and pushed the soil over it.
It rattled me for a bit and guided my ponderings the rest of the day. In our culture, we rarely witness this most profound of transitions, life into death. But is such wording accurate? Over the years, admittedly with some effort and not without grief and sorrow, I’ve come to understand these “events”, aka Death, as a small process within a vast cycle.
In the moment I felt a pang of sadness. Then later wondered, where does this emotional tug come from? Why should this small bird elicit concern, while I barely regard the millions of life forms that died the same day, or even the same instant elsewhere on the planet, including thousands of humans? What amount of sadness is “appropriate?” Can we measure outpourings that spontaneously flow from our hearts? Should we? Where does “life” begin and end? Where do species or individuals start and stop?
Recently I’ve been reading about fungi and lichens. It seems clear our scientific boundaries defining “species” and distinctions between life forms, while helpful for us to name, categorize, and sort out the incredible complexity of life on earth, have a tradeoff. In the quest for accuracy and order, our carefully defined data may blind us to the larger unfolding. We tend to “see” and focus upon details and tune out the rest. Our minds literally work by tuning out sensory input lest we’d be overwhelmed in an instant. Helpful in many ways, yet we can forget that we all find what we are looking for and rarely open our vision up to take in a broader view.
Social media makes shrewd use of this useful, instinctive tendency. Helping cement our insecurities by encouraging echo-chambers, vilifying those different than ourselves, selling us all forms of “protection,” and when we’re overwhelmed by the onslaught, offering distractions.
We follow the lead of our language, which defines all as subjects and objects. Heads down, with an intense focus on singular “things” we can acquire information within the spotlight of our view, but often miss the overall dynamic. We end up imagining life is a cluster of nouns when in reality it is a verb. We identify discreet objects but ignore their ephemeral nature and temporary role in the flow. Not only do we tend to pay less attention to the flow, we often fail to recognize that we are not outside entities documenting, but are also participants within the current of life. And short-lived ones at that.
Our labels enable us to assign and arrange lots of information, but they don’t necessarily engender understanding about life nor the experience of being alive. Can lists of data convey the feeling of flying? Can heart monitor readings and realtime brain scans really record what a much-needed warm hug offers our being? Can the most advanced AI analysis define and quantify the affect of a loved one’s kiss?
I read recently that many serious thinkers feel it’s likely we’ll soon have the technological capacity to keep a human alive for well over a hundred years. Corporations are racing to figure out how by replacing parts, adding infusions or catalysts that will enhance or renew worn organs, systems, and tissue, we may be able to do this “infinitely.” The marketplace of our consumer culture and capitalism are potent addictive distractions from the flow.
We’re focused on one-off, mechanical cause and effect. Especially regarding technological “advances” and “progress” it seems to me we don’t ask “why?” often enough. Increased convenience is a lazy rational. When do we consider the longterm consequences, the uncertain, emergent results beyond the parameters of our projects? All life is connected. To paraphrase John Muir, tug at any one thread in nature and one finds it is connected to all else.
Bring back a dire wolf or woolly mammoth? Cool! Bravo! How exciting! Think of the gaps we’ll fill in our understanding of these lost species by doing this! Plus the irresistible attraction to seeing a mammoth — imagine the profit it’ll generate! But if we inadvertently bring alive an extinct virus from their world that kills other existing species (or say, the majority of mammals) who no longer needed the resistant genes, well, oops! That’s the risk of progress, there’s profit to be had! Inject a protein that will self-generate to conquer a newly spawned virus, great! Consider the longterm effects on bodies as it carries on in its host post-virus— not so much.
Wood rots, oak leaves stop absorbing carbon dioxide and let go, the intricate beings that are waxwings and humans stop breathing and expire. Even though life is a process of continuous change, it seems our selfish society often promotes ways to control because we so fear change. I’m in the club. While I agree with the Buddha that most of our discomfort in life is related to resistance, I’m still learning to let go: whether simple frustrations I feel when folks dont meet MY expectations, or deeper sorrows when people abuse others or the earth, or when loved ones change form.
The sadness I felt as the bird died was not entirely about resistance. It wasn’t entirely about clinging or wishing against fate. I wasn’t attempting to will the waxwing alive, or sad because it felt unjust. It somehow touched a deep aspect of my being. Even though it was instantaneous and brief, it was a more profound.
Maybe such moments are a brief engagement in the fullness of being alive — what we might call “Communion.” In this sense, the compassion I felt, maybe all genuine compassion, is not necessarily sadness (or joy). These are fleeting emotions that come and go with the wind. I liken it more to opening an energy conduit, a momentary shift that revealed the usually veiled connection to another seemingly separate life form. A hint of Awareness of the larger view.
What is it about our culture that wants to insist we’re not part of the flow? At what cost to the life on earth do we make “technological advances” happen? How can we not consider the effects of any economic goals on the global ecosystems, the real “banks” that we ignore and yet rely upon and which harbor all life? They’re already on the brink of cascading into turbulent changes—how can so many in our era ignore this?! When did our society become incapable of reflection?
Our arrogant, modern dysfunctional lifestyle falsely assumes it’s separate from the cycle of life. The web of AI can’t exist outside of the universal web of life. In pursuing purely intellectual “knowledge”, detached from the heart of wisdom, we keep seeking more distractions to avoid facing the insecurities our screens cultivate. Now we’re supercharging our desperate quest via ever more “techno-solutions”. It strikes me as pathetic.
Is this really the path we want to embrace? Can we even find the courage to reclaim our fuller humanity, our Communion within life on Earth while living within this culture?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I recently had the honor to travel with a friend to her parent’s gravesite. It’s in a beautiful wooded landscape, surrounded by an intentional community of homesteads. Her parents happened to be Muslim, and my friend attends a mosque and considers herself Muslim. She appreciates and respects rituals but is not confined by one set of them; rather, she is guided by her heart.
Inspiringly, she also attends other places of worship, including lately a fundamentalist Baptist church — “mostly because I love how committed they are to doing community work in our area!” In another exchange she explained: “Yes, I’m a Muslim, but first, I am a Sufi.” Sufism openly embraces the notion all life is One, and is not restricted by names, labels, forms or categories.
As we strolled the grounds, we passed squirrels, donkeys, and ducks, each being instantly eliciting soft coos toward them from my friend. In the graveyard, as a few deer passed, I realized she wasn’t just making sweet sounds, but saying something: “Jun, jun, junam.” She explained it was Farsi (the native language of her homeland, Persia). It essentially meant “life.” “It’s a thing we Sufis say as an acknowledgement and reminder.” Implying indirectly, they (the animals) and we are all part of this wondrous, ongoing Circle.
A local resident came to visit. We sat together on a small bench and talked quietly as my friend lovingly washed the headstones. As she cleaned, she spoke about her parents and shed a few tears. When she finished her task, she came to join us but the bench afforded no room. Rather than sit on the wet grass, she unselfish-consciously sat on her own grave marker. I smiled. The contrast with our death-defying culture was too striking to not recognize. She laughed and with her permission I took a photo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I was working on that deck, despite my attempts to focus on my brushing, I was forced to be aware of the unfolding beyond my self, first the wind, then the trees, then their leaves floating past me in the gusts. I could only smile as some inevitably landed in the fresh stain on the deck. They came from centuries-old oaks that had grown to majestic heights. Ancients that thrived through the complementary support of minerals and fungi and topsoil from previous oaks that had come and gone for eons, and sunshine and water and all manner of animation and expiration. At first I imagined it would be hard on the trees letting leaves go so early (oaks usually retain them into the winter).
But then I recognized not all were released, and the variations each year increased their capacity to adapt. The leaves also blanketed the forest floor. There they’ll contribute to harboring other life. Ever so slowly these leaves as well as the waxwing (feathers, blood, flesh and bone) will continue to transform and in doing so will vitalize the topsoil. They ensure it will be teeming with microscopic activity, paying forward a network of processes on a scale we humans can barely comprehend. Steadily, quietly, rejuvenating our world. Maybe there is no “life” nor “death” but simply continuous changes in form.
Our intellect can miss or tune out what our hearts feel profoundly. The compassionate connection we sense when we open our hearts is always accessible. But it’s routinely covered by the limitations of a life in a culture that’s come to be ruled by our intellect and distracting surface emotions. I want to cultivate a balance of heart and head that enables my being to access and absorb an understanding larger than the sum of either.
It seems to me we’d all benefit from more openness and acceptance of our role in the larger-than-human scheme — embracing and appreciating our purpose in sustaining this grand cycle of life — including both tears and smiling, amid the wonder of it all.
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