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part of the whole, vital to its completeness, even as its specific usefulness as a chamber in which to dwell, has been superceded.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

Moon and Sea

 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.

 

Moon

“Because what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is..” Bright Eyes, “Lua”

In moonlight, lovers make promises and con men ply their trade. The ancients made sense of the moon’s phases with stories of hungry dragons, and the moon defines almost everything we take for granted about our calendars.

The Moon is our nearest universal neighbor. It is out there- 240,000 miles away; but its presence is deeply, intrinsically a part of each of us, too. Resulting from a cataclysmic crash of an asteroid with the Earth four billion years ago, the gravitational pull of the Moon’s daily revolution around the Earth affects every drop of water on earth. We mechanically speak of and measure the oceans tides; we know their high and low times in any given location. In reality, the movement of the oceans is continuous- a never ending wave that endlessly circles the Earth.

Seas, lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, and even water puddles are also being affected. The movement within smaller bodies of water may seem negligible from a human point of view, yet that movement has affected every part of our genetic being, just as water itself has. The moon is not merely out there; it is wound around us, tied to each cell of our bodies and of every living being.

Even without knowing the physical and genetic hold of the Moon on humans, St.Francis of Assisi properly spoke of and understood intuitively the intimate nature of the Earth-Moon-Life relationship:

“Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.”

Much of the million-year holy, evening-lit relationship between humans and the Moon has been lost within mechanistic worldviews that treat universal bodies as interesting but personally irrelevant parts of some thing outside ourselves. But, be quiet and hear the Moon’s real voice in our heartbeats. Feel the Moon’s allure as our own desires are drawn from us in the soft reflected glow of the Sun’s light from its surface.

The attractions between us and the Moon are real. They are not only the stuff of poetry; they are part of the Universe’s rhythmic symphony within us. And we must, must begin to learn again that we are the choir..

Our Grandmother (as a little girl)

 

She looks north, across an African plain, toward the hills which her family will ascend together over the coming weeks.

She waits, by a garden near the Tigris River, as her mother stirs corn soup.

She watches her father’s boat returning through the surf of southeast Asian seas.

She looks back, across the Mediterranean, remembering the place her band once lived.

She sees the faraway bear in the valley near Lascaux.

She watches the sacred fire rise into the Australian sky.

She is our grandmother. She is in us all. Watching still.

“`

photo by Bart Nino, photo.net