Daniel Quinn, the author of the book ISHMAEL, writes,
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet.
I think Mr. Quinn sheds light on a lot of interesting things about our culture that we don’t see on the surface, or at least things that we don’t let ourselves acknowledge much of the time. You might say that the story we are in right now is one that sees the earth as a resource – a thing to be used – complete with a hierarchy of power with the richest of humans at the very top. You might say, as Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee does, that “We are the inheritors of this culture {story} that has banished the relationship to the sacred from the Earth.”
Yet even if we know all there is to know about how stuck we are in this story, we are still stuck. Today, April 22, is Earth Day in the United States. To be fair, I’m glad the current story has an Earth Day. But I want to be in a new story that doesn’t celebrate Earth Day– because the characters in the new one won’t need a reminder to live as one with the whole of the earth. How do we shift our thinking into an awareness that breaks free from our conditioning and our fear of doing things in a radically different way? How do we tell a new story?
Much of the time, I have no idea. Or I have ideas but too much fear to act on them in full. Or I come up with some kind of plan to do things differently, and then get distracted by the everydayness of life. Or I forget that every failure has the potential to be a foundation for success, eventually, if I would only see them as stepping stones instead of black holes.
But maybe, when we recognize that we are in a story that doesn’t end well, we CAN take action to change it. It won’t happen overnight, even though we want it to. It will surely take planning and doing things that make us feel uncomfortable and stretch our boundaries. It will likely be frustrating since many people around us will want to remain totally invested in the old story and unable or unwilling to listen to the new one that is finding its voice through us.
Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, “how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?”
Can two stories live side by side if some people choose not to recognize the illusion of the broken one they have been in for so long? Maybe they can for a while. I am inclined to think that the old story has to fade away for the new one to continue and thrive. For the earth to regain wholeness and vibrancy, we need to see with new eyes and remember the sacred in ourselves that IS the earth. Then maybe we can get unstuck and into a new story – one that sets people up to live in accord with the world.
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What you just read is an excerpt of an essay included in Woodland Manitou: To Be on Earth, and that particular essay was written quite a few years ago now. Climate disruption has continued, and there are many folks who say we are past the point of no return, that if we don’t change our collective ways at a massive scale and rapid rate, life as we know it will be coming to an end sooner than later as communities are displaced by sea level rise or drought. I read an article a while back that said national borders will likely become largely irrelevant if we stay on this course due to the sheer volume of climate refugees increases: people who need to move because their land-base no longer supports life. It can sound really hopeless when you dig in to the research and scientific projections.
But as I’ve written before, and I will surely write again, we don’t have to give in to hopelessness and despair. We can practice active hope, and take action even if we are skeptical whether or not our actions will make any difference at all. In a 2019 issues of Orion Magazine, there was an article about a theater company called “Phantom Limb” that tells stories of climate crisis, specifically stories of Antarctica, Methuselah (the world’s oldest tree), and most recently, Fukushima after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear accident. Artistic director Jessica Grindstaff wrote,
The small things you do actually do make a difference. Billions of people doing small things adds up to a big difference. We all have to figure out how to step out of this totally overwhelmed PTSD state that we’re in politically and environmentally and wake up and do some small thing. Now. And every day, until you go to sleep.
Even when a story-line feels unchangeable, we can still act. We can still help a neighbor. We can still grow some vegetables. We can still look for ways to use fewer resources. We can still look toward the sun rising in the east as spring blossoms bloom or butterflies visit (despite the odds) and feel deeply in our bones the turning of the season. We can still remember and tap into the parts of ourselves that are nature. We can wake up and do some small thing. And then another, and then another, until waking up is no longer an option.
From the parting words section of Collisions of Earth and Sky:
Eva Saulitis wrote, in her final collection of essays, Becoming Earth, “I died and you died and the ever-moving earth continued on and on. There is a future, and it is not us. It is the mountain. It is the earth.”
At the end of the day, living well is not just about our personal journey—it’s about living in such a way that we honor the life that’s going on all around us. Especially for those of us who can be called settlers, it’s about decentering ourselves and getting out of the way to follow when it’s someone else’s turn to lead. It’s about doing the work we need to do to add healing to the world.
You and I, our neighbors and those in far-off lands, animals and plants, atmosphere and bedrock, the threads that weave us together as one body—all of this is earth and sky colliding in a dance of mystery. On some level, our ancestors knew this, even if we have to dig back a thousand years to uncover the relatives who were truly attuned to the earth’s rhythms. We need to acknowledge where we come from, journey as we’re called to, and integrate what we learn so our descendants get the chance to experience being fully alive on a vibrant planet.
The trees need our songs of lament and promise. The soil craves the replenishment we are able to give. The stones want us to listen closer. We do not need to know all the answers, but we need to listen and be open to what we hear. Nature is an essential partner in the dance of living.
To dance with mountains—to become earth—to harmonize through generations, is something done every time we draw breath, from the first to the last. After the final breath fades away like the whisper of a dream, still earth and sky collide.
Happy Earth Day. May you always remember the part of the self that IS nature.
Upcoming Events:
I’ll be at the Yoga Branch in North Branch, Minnesota, on April 27. There will be a short reading at 11:30am and books available for sale, along with many other wellness and yoga related offerings.
And then on May 11, I’ll be in conversation with Mary Rehm of Twinflower Books at the Women’s Expo at Big Rock Creek (St. Croix Falls, WI) at around noon on the event stage.