“Nature has a different culture. Make a lot, give a lot, and don’t attach to much.” – Margaret Greene, spiritual director
As I look out at the tall cherry trees behind my deck busting out with fist-sized ball of flowers, I can’t help thinking of her comment. There is nothing stingy about those trees, nothing at all.
I am part of Nature whether I say so or not. There is no escaping my connectedness to all that is. I am connected to you, to your choices, to your mistakes and successes, just as you are to mine. And not only that, but we are both connected in a truly interdependent web of existence (as the Unitarian Universalist Seventh Principle says).
Every single thing we do affects and is affected by every other thing. Every thing, every word, every gesture, every choice, joins in an irreducibly complex web of matter and energy. The water moves through the water cycle. The carbon through the carbon cycle. The soil microbes chew up organic material. The birds fly and nest. Gaia turns and so Sol rises and sets. Luna pulls the tides and releases them. The galaxy spins.
Through it all, we live our tiny human lives, filling and emptying the cups of our hearts, making choices, not making choices, acting and reacting. We are just as small as those soil microbes, in the scope of the Milky Way. Tiny, tiny, tiny, but never insignificant to one another, nor to the planet of which we are a part.
Common-Sense Gaia
The Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that Earth may be understood as a single organism, seems to me just common sense. If we’re all connected to all our people, which we are, and we are all connected through our relationships with other Earthlings, which we are, then it stands to reason we are part of the place we call home. We may call Her home, and yet we are not separate from Her. (Then again, we’re not separate from our houses, either!) And She is not separate from any of the rest of the universe.
Just as we are connected and yet unique in all of history and time, so is Gaia.
“This is my home. / This is my only home. / This is the only sacred ground that I have ever known. / And if I stray through the dark night alone, / rock me, Goddess, in the gentle arms of Eden.” (“Gentle Arms of Eden,” David Carter and Tracy Grammar)
If this land where the cherries blossom, the snow or pines or maples cover the mountain tops, the savannah extends to the horizon, the desert breaks into bloom some years, the coast is covered and revealed over and over by the tides… if this our only home, how do we live here?
I’m not asking this question as a way to berate us for living so heavily on the lands we call home. We certainly could go that way, but for now I have a small suggestion, just a place for where we, the often overwhelmed, can begin.
Offering Attention
Let’s offer attention. Spend time noticing the other parts of ourselves, our greater selves, ourself that is the Goddess, that is Gaia, Earth, our backyard, our city. Just become acquainted, say hello, greet the day and say good-night to the evening. Consider how we do or don’t act like the natural world, writ large.
Then, for my part, I’m going to ask, “How may I make a lot, give a lot, and not attach to much?” After all, another way of saying that is, “In all things in the Household of Earth, we embrace for a while and then let go.” (Jonathan White, Stone Circle Wicca (USA)) As I embrace the sliver of existence that is my life, let me, please Gaia, live with open hands, aware that I am always receiving, always giving.
Blessed be.
