Thou

Life teems.

From my perspective

(a single breath in the winds

of the Universe)

what is, was; and what will be,

is now.

But that is illusion,

a vagary of the glimpse I have

of these moments, of this Now

in eternity.

Life teems, and thrusts-

asserting itself into generations

of which it is unaware

but, nonetheless, bidden.

Driven by upward forces

toward the sun,

pushed across barren soils

toward rivers and seas,

called by the future

toward a presence

in the harmonic symphony

that is always being written.

I am

in the midst of it

Now.

I am the teeming desires

of my ancestors to see

what they would not see,

to touch what would be

beyond their grasp,

and to feel the wind, the warmth,

the wonder of it all,

which they had known.

I am their thrusting, lusting,

desiring need for

presence in the panorama

of continuing Creation.

I am the accumulated starstuff

of dying suns, ocean tides, volcanic eruptions,

thunder, lightning, simmering summers,

melting glaciers, and rivered canyons.

I am part of the meandering tapestry

of the Earth’s green response

to planetary cataclysms; and

I am part of the hungry, crawling,

expanding and replicating,

movement of consciousness through time.

I am their resurrection.

I am their Life.

I am.

Hummingbirds belong in manicured back yards

hovering near red plastic feeders bought at Walmart

(On Sale, $6.95),

zoom-zooming back and forth for the amusement

of those of us behind plate glass doors

within thermostat-cooled rooms,

our toes nestled in thickly carpeted

representations of the bug-filled grass outside

(just beyond the redwood deck, and Weber gas cooker).

But these hummingbirds-

2 of them, 3, no..4 !

These hummingbirds are watching

for pink lipped blossoms

full of sweet kisses.

These hummingbirds sit in mesquite trees

(for a moment)

planning erotic dances

with the wild sisters

newly arrived from the Yucatan.

These hummingbirds have not been to Walmart;

but they have flown over a thousand miles of

white-capped oceans .

From the jungles of Chiapis

they heard the voices of 10,000 generations

calling them to grass-filled plains

and shale hills to the north

where mockingbirds and vultures,

prairie hens and quail,

crows and robins, cowbirds, sparrows, and cardinals

have gathered since before the moon set or the sun rose

as backdrops against a single, human-lit campfire.

These hummingbirds have never tasted sugar water

tinted with red dye #2 from the local IGA.

But they have tasted the essential and subtle

syrups of primroses

(growing in profusion).

They have licked the sugary insides of

Trumpet creeper stamens and

and honeysuckle pistels,

whose names are without meaning

in the brilliant beckoning

of the flowers’ sun-drenched petals.

Now, they are flying close enough to watch me.

The buzz of their wings is too fast for me to see;

I can only hear their blurry presence,

their so-curious hummed inquiries

and look quickly into their eyes,

as they determine that there is no pink, red, magenta,

or scarlet signs here worth further investigation.

I say “hello,” before they leave, while regretting

(a little, and for several minutes, a lot)

that I will never see the pyramids of Teotihuacan

or bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico

with them.

What the dragonfly sees is not what I see. He sees three-dimensionally, while I see the width and depth of the world in a way that only allows me to imagination its depth and distance. He’s looking through 30,000 facets at a world I see with 2.

His eyes function to immerse him within a radius of about 10 feet. The insect ganglia do not allow him to interpret the data of light he is receiving; then again, he doesn’t need to! His brain is sufficient for moving his body toward the object of desire revealed by that light show he is flying inside of. It is not a decision he makes to fly toward a food source, it is an inevitability of the food-shaped light entering his brain!

No matter where I am standing, I can see to the horizon. The higher I am standing, the farther away that horizon will be. But I can’t see beyond 25 or 30 feet very well, even with my 20/20 vision. Small things drop out of sight quickly and even large things, farther away, lose their specificity. The dragonfly and I both share a very limited range of seeing, adequate for our particular needs, but absolutely useless to the other.

When I see a dragonfly, I might say “He is flying over the water.” But that is true only from my point of view. His world is not my world! His is a 20 foot diametrical ball of color and form which I cannot even begin to imagine. The content of his vision and the meaning of what he sees are utterly alien to me, as mine would be to him.

Whose world is it? We humans can call it ours all day, but dragonflies have been functioning on this planet for 100 million years before the dinosaurs, and more of the world has been reflected through dragonfly eyes than ours, many times over. Nothing they have done within their environment has damaged in any way the existence of the environment itself or any life forms within it, except those they’ve eaten. 

It’s a good thing (I guess) that there are no proprietary laws in operation, other than in our human courtrooms.

Or, maybe there are?

Twilight of the Clockwork God, John David Ebert, editor, Council Oak Books, 1999

From the inside cover: “A fascinating look at the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary thought, [this book] represents a profound shift in the way we look at the once colliding cultures of science and religion and our own place in the universe. Ebert demonstrates that we can no longer conceptualize our universe as a mechanical thing- a machine, a clockwork. It has revealed itself as a living entity, unpredictable, sentient, and bursting with creativity.”

This is a book that- for me- quickly achieved the status of a walk-around book; i.e., I read it, even as I am walking from one place to another. I don’t want to put it down because it is shouting truths at me. It resounds with expressed ideas that I’ve been unable to process on my own but which have been thumping against my mind and soul for years.

Our cosmologies mean everything. If we see a person, a river, an animal, a tree, or our planet as a duplicable part of something larger, something we might even improve upon, then we have usurped the role of the Spirit. If we see the role of Spirit as unmysterious, knowable, and reducible to chemical and mathematical equations, then we have flattened the very creative vitality of the universe which it is our role as humans to report on, and safeguard.

If Science is regarded as a threat to moribund and antiquated mythologies that do nothing more than preserve the status of their human power brokers, then we will never know about the brushstrokes and palettes of the Spirit beyond our own limited ability to imagine. And if we are ignorant of them, we will continue to tread upon and ruin them.

The re-marriage of science and spirituality, centuries after an increasingly messy divorce, is necessary. The consummation of that relationship is imperative.  If it doesn’t happen, we will all be screwed.

We communicate with each other, remember together, and maintain a sense of community through our shared symbols. “Rally ’round the flag, boys!” and “With this ring, I thee wed,” are the kinds of statements which rise from the outward and visible symbology of inner and abstract ties that bind us all.

We need symbols. They serve us because they reflect that which we are unable, often, to put into words. We can talk about patriotism, or love, but specifically satisfying words can elude us. The symbols of those words speak volumes.

There is a symbol which perfectly embodies the worldview we must share, and also commemorates how we- as a universe, communities, families, and individuals- have moved through both our common eternality and personal temporality.

It is the Nautilus shell.

The Nautilus Belaunsis is a cephalopod, whose skeletal structure is external and grows in size to accommodate the maturing mollusk.

The newly hatched Nautilus has a four chambered exoskeleton. As it grows, it moves into a larger chamber which has grown ahead of it, in order that it will fit. And on and on until it reaches maturity.

Each new chamber is larger than the one that preceded it, and is dependent on the structure of the previous, smaller chamber. Thus, each of the smaller chambers remains as a functioning part of the whole, vital to its completeness, even as its specific usefulness as a chamber in which to dwell, has been superceded.

And therein is the story of everything else. A baby is born with an infant’s consciousness: everything, beginning with Mom, is an extension of itself. As a 1 to 2 year, the toddler begins to understand the distinct nature of itself. The second level of consciousness supercedes the first, even as it is wholly built upon it. Cognitive abilities continue to increase as the child grows older: from the manipulation of its environment to the complete separation of its personality from parents and others, to an always heightening understanding of cause and effect, then adopting a social self, a critical self, a self-critical self. Each point in the process is built upon the previous one, and is always a part of the previous state of consciousness and understanding.

The whole is a result of previous and lesser sized parts, one built upon the other. No part loses its significance, even as its specific usefulness ha been transcended.

An acorn becomes a shoot, becomes a sapling, becomes a young tree, becomes a mature oak. Everything about the acorn is still a part of the great oak tree, but has been transformed and functions as a much larger and much more complex part of the tree’s wholeness.

I sat in first grade and traced the letter A over and over. Today I’m sitting at a keyboard writing this. Everything that grows, matures, evolves, or changes through time- and that is everything, from the universe to my fingernails- fits into this spiraling model, perfectly seen in the Nautilus shell.

Thus, it is the perfect symbol for communicating with each other easily our own realization that nothing alive is stagnant, that our beginnings are vital and necessary to each stage of growth, and that we share in this universal commonality.

We are rock, we are sunshine, we are movement and growth through time. What has come before is as important to us as we are to what comes after us.

Born in the crush of gases and dust as stars are born, water is created in the compressed heat of a solar system’s infancy. What is here now, was here then. We bathe in the historical artifact of New Creation; we slake our thirsts with that in which pre-cellular life began to coalesce.

We are children of the sun, and brothers and sisters of the oceans. Water is the essence of our physical eternality.

The river becomes the cloud becomes the rain becomes the corn becomes the cow becomes the milk, and we gather around dishes of ice cream. The wave washing ashore this day in Burma is a messenger of the pterodactyls which flew over it 150 million years ago, and is a prophet to living beings of tomorrow for which we have no name. We breathe the ocean, feel the seas pulse in our veins, and are immersed in the wetness of all time.

“Water” by Mary Oliver

What is the vitality and necessity of clean water?

Ask the man who is ill, and who is lifting his lips to the cup.

Ask the forest.

from Parabola, Winter 2007

by Kahlil Gibran

The strong shore is my beloved
And I am his sweetheart.
We are at last united by love,
And then the moon draws me from him.
I go to him in haste and depart
Reluctantly, with many little farewells.

I steal swiftly from behind the blue horizon,
To cast the silver of my foam upon the gold of his sand,
And we blend in melted brilliance.

I quench his thirst and submerge his heart;
He softens my voice and subdues my temper.
At dawn I recite the rules of love upon his ears,
And he embraces me longingly.

At eventide I sing to him the song of  hope,
And then print smooth kisses upon his face;
I am swift and fearful, but he is quiet, patient, and thoughtful.
His broad bosom soothes my restlessness.

As the tide comes we caress each other,
When it withdraws, I drop to his feet in prayer.

Many times have I danced around mermaids
As they rose from the depths
And rested upon my crest to watch the stars;
Many times have I heard lovers complain of their smallness,
And I helped them to sigh.

Many times have I teased the great rocks
And fondled them with a smile,
But never have I received laughter from them;
Many times have I lifted drowning souls
And carried them tenderly to my beloved shore.
He gives them strength as he takes mine.

Many times have I stolen gems from the depths
And presented them to my beloved shore.
He takes them in silence,
But still I give for he welcomes me ever.

In the heaviness of night,
When all creatures seek the ghost of slumber,
I sit up, singing at one time and sighing at another.
I am awake always.

Alas! Sleeplessness has weakened me!
But I am a lover, and the truth of love is strong.
I may be weary, but I shall never die.

It is all about- always about- perspective. Our opportunities to see our world, our universe, in a more expansive way than our ancestors did, is a precious gift. For many, it causes an uncomfortable and precarious walk on the narrowing path between mythology and reality.

But that is not to say that mythology is not true! Mythology is always the human response to explaining that which is a Mystery in ways that are comprehensible. We need to make some sense of a thing before we can step toward it. And the tools we have to make sense of anything change over time. It does not mean our eyeballs and imagination were lying to us and the rest of the world when humans comprehended the Earth as a Woman, into which seeds were placed, which grew. That image served its purpose for millennia and  gave rise to the agronomy and biological sciences which feed the world today.

This video of Earth, from the view of a flyover of the Moon, reminds us how easy it would be, living on the Moon, to have a Moon-centric view of the universe, and to regard ourselves, as Moon dwellers, as the center of that universe. That would of course give us a skewed view of Mother Moon and Sister Earth, and cause us to walk sideways and uncertainly into a future which demands that we see ourselves as a “part” of the whole, rather than “on top of” everything else.

(She really is a wonderful world, isn’t She? Oh, yeah.)

 George Dmitriev, oil on canvas, 20″X28″, 2005

Since those first moments when human consciousness intersected with having the time necessary to contemplate such questions, “Why are we here?” has been among the first and most frequent questions asked. The question has led to the development of philosophical, religious, and cultural foundations upon which social systems have evolved, educational institutions were begun, and religious wars are still being fought.

It is the question which forms in some combination of metaphoric yearning among sixth graders on their first camp out under the open sky, and at bars and coffee shops in Oxford and Princeton. Theologians search their scriptures for the answer, shamans cast their runes, and scientists by the hundreds are dedicated to its pursuit.. But the question is always new, always a vital part of each person’s cognitive abilities to think abstractly. We ask the question, each of us, in an attempt to discern meaning beyond our own physicality and temporality.

So..Why are we here?

My answer is not a complete answer, but only a tiny part of the Great Musings represented by all of the above-mentioned seekers. My part of the answer is this:

We are here to paint paintings like this one.

Not all of us, of course; not all humans have the talent of Dmitriev, or training in use of the proper materials, or even the particular vision with which to behold such a scene. But each of us, by virtue of our consciousness and our ability to study, reflect, and record our thoughts; each of us are on an assignment from the Universe to do something that has never been done before in our 13.6 billion year history: that is, we must speak for the Universe.

We- humans- are the first ones during the entire existence of the Universe, who have been able to see beyond our immediate environment and ask “Why?” We are the only beings to have had the physiological development, and eventually the inclination, to ask “How?” We are able to wonder, and to communicate that wonder to new generations, and to record in the myriad of ways humans have been able to keep records, of what we are seeing, what we think it might mean, and how we are connected to all of it.

Dmitriev does it that way. I do it this way. Each of us has the gift, the responsibility, to do it some way. Because in doing so, we begin to find ourselves.

“Why do people all over the world flock to the sandy shore? I think it is because the instant they touch the sand, the moment they hear the surf, the evil spirits flee and they feel at home in the world.” (Richard Bode, Beachcombing at Miramar)

The beach calls to the edges of our temporality. It makes blurry those events we call our birth and death. The beach confuses us, and pleasantly so, about what we believe, how we came to believe it, and how those beliefs are determining the ways we live.

This morning’s kelp, after all, has been rolling onto this shore for millennia before there was any human here to perceive it. The gulls have been busy at their finding and eating of sand fleas long, long before there were names for either of them. And the very ground, now between our toes, is a billion year old artifact of volcanic eruptions and the always-rewritten record of teeming shell life beyond our sight.

“Who am I?” becomes one of the questions drawn from us by the beach’s eternal dialogue.

“Who cares?” is one of the liberating answers, if we are listening.

And that answer is not to negate any of us who are clinging to our individualities for definition and meaning. It is, rather, an answer that allows us to begin to transcend ourselves- to see and start to understand our lives in the context of eternity, rather than the prison of time. All that we are seeing at the beach is part of something that came before. It is all still there. The ocean waves of a thousand years ago are no longer seen, but their substance laps at our feet. The shells of 200 million year old ammonites and other crustaceans have been ground into a luxurious, hundred foot pile carpet for us to walk upon, and for the sand fleas to hide within. The wind, born of the ocean and the moon, again and again and again, is the same wind which lifted pterodactyls yesterday, and gulls and pelicans and terns this day.

Watch the piles of kelp over several days, and you’ll see the thin black history of the Earth’s Carboniferous Period leaking into the sand strata beneath them.

It is possible, sitting here at the edge of Life’s beginnings, to- for moments- forget even our names. It is possible, breathing here the salt air of Creation, to feel absolute freedom from our selves.