We are in the World and of the Earth;
children of the
Universe;
descended of stars
long-ago gone
supernova.
-
Earthen Rann # 1
[Recited in Morning
Meditation]
When I go a-walking, sauntering
out either to places known or to a destination I have never yet visited, I oft come
into a deeper awareness of my surroundings and of my own being-in-becoming than
I had before tripping out the door and setting foot to a path. This ongoing deepening of awareness is fostered
and facilitated by my having been engaged in ambling, sauntering and sojourning
for decades; it is an ever-evolving praxis.
Practiced at it, when I am waeccan
in my situ; that is, when I am awake
to my situation; being in the World and of the Earth—I realize that I am at-home in Earth & Cosmos and that
I am an animal. A spiritual
and a creative animal, for sure; but
an animal nonetheless.
I understand this as a touchstone
of self-awareness and of ongoing awakening in the World. I am
embodied. I am a physical
creature; in scientific terms: a vertebrate, a mammal, a primate and one particular
instance of our own species, Homo sapiens. This awareness has come to me over time; not
all at once—I have come to accept my being an animal via a decades-long
spiritual and poetic adventuring, accompanied by philosophical explorations and
heightened experiences in Nature; out in the Woods on the hoof!
I didn’t always think of myself
this way. Over the decades I have imagined that I was many things; a crewman
on the submarine Seaview (when I was
7 – 10 years old), a Witch, a Born Again Friend of Jesus, an Atheist, a Pagan,
a Monk, a Celtic Mystic, and now a Poetic Naturalist—all of this naming indicating
that I have been an Imaginer and a Dreamer all my life. _And I still am! By the art of devout walking, I have come to
consciousness – over and over again – of the fact that while I can imagine
being & becoming all kinds of
things, I am first and foremost a biological
entity, breathing and eating and sweating and experiencing; and having
experienced everything I have ever experienced—as well as imagining everything
I have ever imagined as an embodied being; suspended between birth & death,
regardless of what – if anything – may lie beyond that final ‘doorway’ at the
end of my embodied journey. I am an
animal.
It is this realization—
That I am a biological
creature;
An animal in the
evolutionary sense;
A physical entity subject
to the laws of physics;
– which
grounds me in what can be called an “earthen humility.”
The word “humility” is connected
to an older word: humus, which meant
‘earth’ or ‘soil,’ and as I reflect on this, the first sensation that comes to
mind is of being ‘down in the dirt’ in a positive sense; playfully, as when gardening.
Working with earth; with plants and the
soil itself, is, for me, a restorative and meditative praxis. The second sensation that comes to mind is of
being out in Nature and feeling oneself enveloped in the ‘aesthetic atmosphere’
of a place; its aromas, sounds, physical sensations – when out on the
hoof.
An Earthen humility eventually arises
out of the growing awareness that we are of
the Earth and depends on being awake (“waeccan”);
awakened by our experience and what we have learned of ourselves—to the fact
that we are dwellers in the Earth. We are of-Nature; not poised ‘above it’ or existing merely as a ‘consumer’
of the abundance of the planet—but a living part of the life-web that covers
and suffuses it! And once we wake up to
our animal nature; our physicality – we also grow to realize that we are mortal,
no matter how much we may resist this truth.
We are here for but a short time and then we are each of us gone.
The fact that we are animals like
other animals is always a source of amazement and wonderment to me! Why does this surprise so many people? _And so upset others? Yet, like it or not, science can find no ontological
‘divide’ between us and ‘the other animals’ in their being, as if we were ‘something
else.’ In any case, what would we be? “Strangers here” – or perhaps ‘unearthly’
beings ‘passing through this mortal coil?’ There is (yet) no evidence of such an extraterrestrial
origin, and at the same time seemingly incontrovertible evidence that we are at-home
on this planet; we evolved here—our
genetic code proves it as much as the paleontological record.
When I affirm this, I experience
a kind of naturalistic ‘piety.’ It awes
me to contemplate our common ancestry with all living things on this
planet. There is no deeper meditation on
our humanity than to reflect upon the history of life on this planet and our
place in it. I meditate upon this ‘on my
knees,’ figuratively if not literally! I
am humbled before the vastness of the cosmos and the deep time in which we
exist. Often, when in the woods, I am
stilled in my tracks by some tapestry of Nature into which I have stumbled;
like a gocker in an Art museum!—and am then caught up for a few moments – or minutes!
– in an aesthetic reverie of awe and wonder.
The practice of what can be
called ‘spiritual disciplines’ can facilitate this wakening to our animal
nature, our mortality and that response to Earth & Cosmos called earthen
humility. As you could well guess from
the list of ‘imagined selves’ I cited above – I have practiced a variety of spiritual
disciplines from a number of traditions and perspectives, and what I now experience
as earthen humility was nurtured earlier in my life by myths that I lived by, by spiritual teachers and by my
study of philosophy and poetry, storytelling and aesthetics. I found the seeds and touchstones of earthen humility
along the way in many sources, Pagan, Christian and Secular. I remember Christians who spoke of our being
“in Nature” and Nature being God’s Creation – and therefore not to be despised
or evaded – from my years walking Christed paths.[i] I remember Pagans – Goddess worshippers and
witches – who affirmed our oneness with Nature and our being “of the Earth;”
being Nature’s children. I have read
many secular scientists and philosophers who also affirm our animal nature and
the need for humility in the face of Nature.
My adventures in religion also
taught me that, being human animals, we are also spiritual animals; that is—we
seek for better ways of living life, desiring to live it to the fullest. An earthen spirituality is a praxis for
living this life in which we find ourselves – once we wake up (i.e., become waeccan). A spiritual praxis brings us to wholeness; it
aids in our becoming the best version of ourselves that we can be—and this
quest is simply an extension of the kind of cultural tools and physical
inheritance that we have as the particular kind of animal that we are. We are
unique in certain ways (one, of course, being our capacity-for and use-of
language & technology, which is how I am communicating with you)—even while
having more in common with other animals than we have differences. You cannot be a spiritual animal unless you
understand what it is to be an animal.
And understanding being a human animal is a path to earthen humility.
Spirituality deepens out of an
awareness of our mortality. Religious
spiritualities taught me this, and I find it no less true as a naturalist[ii]
and a physicalist[iii]
that an earthen humility acknowledges our ‘mortal coil’ and nurtures an awareness
of our limits. We need not be surprised
at our being mortal nor at our frailty and being vulnerable (e.g., to
infections, disease and other afflictions).
Our experience of Nature should reveal this, if we are paying attention
to its cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth. Awakening to an earthen
humility empowers you to be the particular animal that you are, with all your
gifts, limitations, brokenness and aspirations toward wholeness and
self-realization.
“We are at home in the Earth.
We are of the Earth.
We are Here.”
-
Earthen Rann # 2
[Recited
during the day when re-centering is needed]
What happens to the Earth happens
to us, in one way or another.
How much better to live in the World and realize that you are of
the Earth. By the
World I mean the humanly constructed ‘World;’ the social and cultural
systems that we human animals have created to help us survive and, more
importantly, live our lives as fully as possible,
given our individual gifts and abilities balanced against our mortal
constraints. We are in the World, but we are of
the Earth. You can alter your
cultural allegiances, your beliefs, your way of life and your social
connections, status and function, yet you are still, and always were, a
manifestation of this planet-home we call Earth. We are of
the Earth.
The art of walking[iv]
opens a person to the Earth as experienced.
A devout scientific and aesthetic study of the Earth and its ecosystems deepens
our experience of being-here and brings us to a rational as well as emotional
understanding of our connection to the planet, revealing runes of our place in the
Cosmos. Why ‘devout?’ Because the Earth and its history are in some
sense our ‘ultimate concern.’ Without
the Earth, we would not be here. If life on Earth dies, so do we. There is nowhere else in the local cosmos
where we might yet live; not without what science fiction writers call
‘terraforming’ a planet—that is, turning it into a likeness of Earth. We cannot just leave the Earth behind; we
must take it with us if we are going to survive elsewhere. We are of
the Earth, and in the Earth. To study the Earth and its c. 4.5 billion-year
history; to explore the evolution of life in all its diversity—is to study who
we are and come to know where we have come from.
Ultimately, the result of such
devout study is a realization that everything
is connected. Though this idea
became a cultural meme and almost a cliché at one point, it is grounded in a scientific
understanding of the evolution of the cosmos.
As Michio Kaku said in Hyperspace
(1994), speaking as a scientist:
“Instead of being overwhelmed by the universe, I think that perhaps one of the deepest experiences a scientist can have, almost approaching a religious awakening, is to realize that we are children of the stars, and that our minds are capable of understanding the universal laws that they obey. The atoms in our bodies were forged in the anvil of nucleo-synthesis within an exploding star aeons before the birth of the solar system. Our atoms are older than the mountains. We are literally made of stardust. Now these atoms, in turn, have coalesced into intelligent beings capable of understanding the universal laws governing that event.” (333)
We are “children of
the Universe; descended of stars long ago gone supernova.” Every cell in your body is made of elements
that were, at one time, forged in the hearth of giant starts. To meditate upon this rune is to deepen into an
earthen humility.
Meditating on our evolution out
of Nature’s ever unfolding and spiraling web, we come to appreciate that we are
also a manifestation of naturally occurring elements at the chemical level. DNA – a complex hydro-carbon molecule – is
the engine of life. The DNA which codes
for my being-in-becoming is the same
genetic code that is in you; whoever you are.[v]
We are each – all of the billions of us
now on the planet and everyone who has come before and those who will come
after – a variation on a wondrous chemical theme called deoxyribonucleic acid. Our diversity and individuality are linked to
all of the wondrous possibilities carried within that double helix; even our nature
as cultural animals with the ability to build social worlds and manipulate
Nature through technologies is rooted there.
That each individual human being
is a manifestation of their DNA means that we
are all related. Every single human being
you meet on this planet is a human being; an individual arising out
of the species code—not a ‘foreigner’ and therefore not an ‘enemy’ until we
make them such by prejudicial choice and/or narrow-minded action. It is the arrogance of social and cultural
traditions that allows – even encourages – us to demonize other human beings,
rather than embracing them first and before any other consideration, as ‘brothers
and sisters.’ We are – as far as science
has shown – a single species. And as such, by social analogy, a single ‘family;’
the ultimate family—one to which we all belong.
Once we deepen into an earthen consciousness,
it seems natural to extend this sense of ‘family’ to include all of
life, as every life-form on the
planet, so far as we have found, has its own DNA or uses DNA to its own
purposes—and has its own evolutionary history.
We are not ‘alone,’ here. We live
in the company of an unimaginably vast extended family that includes everything
from microorganisms to elephants and whales and everything in between. While there is no room for sentimentalism
about the life forms on this blue-green ball – many of them are dangerous and
can undermine our individual existence, even being capable of wiping out great
numbers of us in a short time (think of the Black Plague in Europe in the
Middle Ages) – our existence subsists within the Web of Life in the state in
which it has been suspended and supported over the last few millions of years.
This is the ‘environment’ in which our species came to be. A strong-minded love of Nature, therefore –
the acceptance that our existence is intertwined with that of our biosphere – is
a vital ingredient in the kind of consciousness one can call earthen humility.
Earthen humility fosters an awareness
of who, what and where we are, as individuals, as a species and then as one
particular life-community on the planet.
If a ‘god’ created us, we now know that in some way the process of that
creation was evolution, and that biological evolution is a manifestation of the
vast and expanding universe in which our home is situated and by which it is
sustained. As a species we may still be
struggling with an ‘adolescent’ understanding of the Cosmos as a whole, and yet
– in spiritual as well as empirical terms – our present understanding is a
giant leap beyond the pre-critical fairy tales on which we have nurtured
ourselves over the last few thousand years (e.g., religious creation stories),
even if those stories were ‘divinely inspired’ aids to get us through our
spiritual childhood as a species![vi]
We are at a crux; we are being urged by the revelations of science to be growing up, spiritually,
and our understanding of Earth & Cosmos may yet undergo as-yet un-imagined
revolutions as Science and the Arts that interpret it advance. Yet we
are here_ guided by the understanding that we now have. And so_ here
is where we must be(come) waeccan (i.e.,
“awake), living out this journey toward self-realization: in the World and of the Earth, awake to being children of the universe, descended of stars long-ago gone supernova!
This is my runing of earthen
humility.
Blessed be!
[i]
Because many may be more surprised by this idea than that Pagans and Scientists
affirm our being of-Nature, I include her four runes of a Christian affirmation
of Nature as Creation that have a positive attitude toward Nature. Evelyn Underhill, for instance, said in Practical Mysticism (1943), that:
“To elude nature, to refuse
her friendship, and attempt to leap the River of Life in the hope of finding
God on the other side, is the common error of a perverted mysticality. So you are to begin with that first form of
meditation which the old mystics sometimes called the ‘Discovery of God in His
Creatures.’“ (15)
St. Bonaventure in the 13th century said, in
The Journey of the Mind to God, that:
“In our present condition,
the created universe is itself a ladder leading us toward God. Some created things are His traces; others,
His image; some of them are material, others spiritual; some temporal, others
everlasting; thus some are outside us and some within us.”
Etienne Gilson, a 20th century Catholic
theologian, said in The Spirit of
Mediaeval Philosophy (1940) that:
“Just as it is not Christian
to run away from the body, so neither is it Christian to despise Nature. How can we possibly belittle these heavens
and this earth that so wonderfully proclaim the glory of their Creator, so
evidently bear on them the marks of his infinite wisdom and goodness?” (89)
Agnes Sanford, a woman known for her healing ministry
in the 20th century, said in The
Healing Gifts of the Spirit (1966):
“The simplest and oldest way
in which God manifests Himself is through and in the Earth itself. And He still speaks to us through the earth
and the sea, the birds of the air and the little living creatures upon the
Earth, if we can but quiet ourselves to listen.” (51)[i]
Through such sources I was wakened to being in and of the Earth, not simply “on” it—eventually becoming ‘at home in the Earth.’ As I grew up, oft frequenting woods and
fields and there experiencing Nature at first hand was deepened and made ‘mystical’
by devout study.
[ii]
I use this word to imply that there is nothing “supernatural” in Earth &
Cosmos.
[iii]
I use this term to imply that matter and energy – including Dark Matter and
Dark Energy; regardless of what these turn out to be – are what make up the
universe.
[iv]
On the Art of Walking, see my blogs: “Autumn Walking” (24 September 2013), “The
Art of Walking” (2 November 2014), “Winter Walking” (2 February 2015)
[v]
Unless you are actually an alien from
another planet! _A possibility I don’t
deny outright, though there would be a quick and easy test of the claim someone
would make that they are an alien. A DNA test!
[vi]
Like the nursery rhymes and fairy tales we still tell our children, religion’s
‘creation stories’ were meant to help awaken us, in particular, creation
stories attempt to explicate our relationship to the Divine and the Nature.
