The cobwebs of humanity: a birthing basket.

My overgrown toddler and I were driving home the other day, him gazing out the window with the wind blasting his wispy tangled hair, just the way he likes it.  Suddenly he declared in a soft voice, “mama, did you know I love myself?”

All at once, in every cell of my body, I knew that he would be alright here.  That small proclamation set my heart at ease, knowing that kind of love is essential in order to love anything else.  I also know that if I water this child’s ability to feel his own self-love, I’m protecting all that he’ll come in contact with, including the planet.  Looking deeply into the rearview mirror I said with a shaky voice, “puppy, thank you for telling me that.”  

 Shaky, because it’s hard to love our species right now.   It’s pretty dismal out there from all angles.  The pervasive view of us humans is that we simply can’t help ourselves from engaging in destructive behaviors, and will eventually destroy ourselves and everything around us.  You feel it?  We ‘just can’t help’ creating waste, abusing animals for the sake of eating them, mining the depths of the earth to power our screens, pillaging the sea, the list is endless…and so we must just be doomed.  Why else would the richest people in the world be set on finding other inhabitable planets except to grab untapped ‘resources’, or secure an escape route when it all comes crumbling down?  The available story is one of destruction, superiority, and fighting for our place.  But these stories damage our sense of self worth and self love collectively, keeping us rooted in shame.

 The toxicity of what human supremacy has turned us into is not our true nature, but it has eroded our ability to love ourselves as a species, and for many, as individuals.  A dominator has to turn away from their reflection, lest they see the harm they’ve done.  This separation has had a profound impact: we’ve stopped being able to fall in love with the earth in a way that a child does mother, without domination or desire leading our hearts.   Instead, our relationship has turned quite abusive.

A young girl was visiting my home recently, climbing around in the cherry tree that graces the center of the herb garden.  She said something about “your tree”.  I toyed back with her that the tree wasn’t mine, to which she said, “Yes it is!  You grew it didn’t you?!”  I didn’t, the tree has been here much longer than I, but her words rang like an out of tune bell.  I remember saying back to her, “your mama grew you, does that mean she owns you?”  For an independent five year old, that was not a welcoming thought.  

This planet is so much more than the sum of it’s parts—or  resources—than our human supremacy mentality has reduced it to.    This idea may not feel present at first, but it’s deeply lodged in all of us, all the time.  If you had to describe the human relationship with Earth, what would it be?  Honest, selfish, abusive, generous?  Equal?  The truth is painful.

When this burden presses down and grief feels like a brick on my heart, I force myself to come outside and practice laying my mind down on the land.  I do mean come, not go.  Being out is taking a step inward, like stepping onto a compass and suddenly feeling oriented.  Grief is right there, but with the heartbreak is also gratitude.  They spin around each other like

one big disco ball,

lighting up my chest. 

Through breath, they swirl into each other.

So into to the garden I go.  In this practice, I am not learning through a program, for a degree, or with books.  No certification sought.  I am learning with my body.  I Feel the curve of the rock echoed in my own sacrum, see the reach of the branch reflected in my spine.  Looking out and in simultaneously.  Noticing the invasion of certain species and the invasion of certain thoughts and seeing how those two things are not separate.  How does the light change the color of the moss, and my skin?  How does looking closely reveal the hidden stories—through tracks, birdsong, plant growth?  It’s not about knowing all the birds, being able to read all the tracks, or having vast amounts of information stored away in my head (much less a device).  It's about being inside of my own book, and learning to replace the language of thought with the language of sensation.  What does it feel like to be a part of something? 

 Here, with my senses eager to engage, my presence makes sense, is important even.   Hands reach to tend reflexively.  If I didn’t tend this wild land, diversity would collapse into a few aggressive characters (you know who I’m talking to, Crab Grass!).   And native plant diversity, well, that’s what invites the hummingbirds alongside the raptors, the flicker and the oriole pair…the fox in the back field, the deer family and quail family, the incredible gopher network and the occasional bobcat.  Even the wind would pass through differently without me here, holding this parcel of land with two hands.  I am a keystone species, if I choose to be.  Here in the garden, the kind of human I am makes sense…hands are for holding, tending.

And one doesn’t need a garden—or  have the obscure “green thumb”—to  know this.  There are many entry points to the land, because what we call land is simply a great tangle of webs that we are all weaving together.  We know ourselves by knowing the web, knowing the terrain and the weather that we live inside.  Think of the body as a landscape, the landscape as a body, and lean in. 

It’s this work that will remember us to ourselves, and heal the pathways of love between our own species and the earth.  There’s a simple-ness to it that makes it unbelievable, but simple is often where the most profound shows up.  When we are in love, how could we possibly destroy and turn away?  I know, grief is here too, where heartbreak happens.  It’s not an easy emotion to metabolize, but it’s not something to fear.  (remember the disco ball.)  Grief is what lets us know what and who we belong to.  With a strong sense of belonging, what might our grief help us discover about how generative and vital we are here, what new story might emerge?  It could be the story of our present selves - with all the history we've been through - making choices that bring us back into a healthy relationship with the earth, and therefore ourselves.  We have all the tools we need to be well, right here in our bodies.  They include our eyes, our olfactory senses, our porous surface, but the key ingredient is our willingness to drop the power play and return to a listening stance rather than a demanding, domineering one.  Although this message does not have anything to do with policy or politics or machinery, all of those things would transform were we each to do this work of returning language to the land and listening.  To put the book down, to walk out in the rain, and wait until the rhythm of the droplets blooms in our minds. 

Like the hummingbird making use of old threads to weave this year’s nest, we too can turn the cobwebs of humanity into a birthing basket.  And it is a birthing moment.  We’ve all gestated our personal, diverse questions about humanity this past year, had our own physical challenges and spiritual reckonings, just like every pregnancy.  And just like any birth, the presence of love is palpable.  Now, holding new possibility with tenderness—and our own raw hearts with the deepest love possible, what might beat into existence?   

What might be different if we could all simply declare, with innocence, that we love ourselves?

*special thanks to Altair Bay for his continued teachings as a lively human, not 4 years here.