The Symbol for Everything

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part of the whole, vital to its completeness, even as its specific usefulness as a chamber in which to dwell, has been superceded.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.

Water

 

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

Song of the Wave

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.

Earthrise, Earthset

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.)