Since my last posts in October, there has been an election. The results have interrupted the trajectory of my writing, creating a gap between where I find my post-election self and where I left my pre-election ideas. For the time being, at least, I’m not interested in what other people were thinking before the election either. I’m not listening to podcasts or reading articles from before the election. In their wake, however, immediately following the election there has been a plethora of expressed thought and opinion. I’ve been looking for something that entices me—hits me squarely in all the right places, beckons me forward on some path that makes sense.
I have taken no position since the election—offered no guidance, taken no steps, come to no conclusions. My thoughts are all over the map. They are not congealing. Yet there are things I am noticing. For instance: Like many others of us, I view the election’s outcome as a kind of diagnosis of death. How, exactly, or what it will look like is uncertain, but it is clear that we have a fatal disease. And so, in the weeks leading up to the inauguration, I have the strange feeling that I am doing things for the last time. On the one hand there is, naturally, poignancy and grief. But beneath those emotions is a recognition—that what we will be losing, while precious in its familiarity, is, at its core, defective. It created in us a kind of addiction while at the same time conveniently providing for us a kind of heroin. There were times in our history when we almost kicked the habit—almost made something of ourselves after all. But in the end, the heroin got us.
And so, I believe, The Great Unravelling will soon be upon us. And perhaps, instead of continuing to limp along as we have been doing for several decades, never really fixing our underlying problems and dying a longer, slower death, it is best that it turned out the way it did. While the shutting down of our internal organs over the next four years will be extremely painful, at least it will all be over quickly. I just wonder for how many years afterwards, our country will parade around as a zombie.
So, with thoughts like these rattling around in my head, I decided not to write anything new! During Trump’s first presidency, I wrote a few pieces about human hubris. From them I selected Hierarchy, dusted it off, and stitched it up in a few places. I think it does the job of examining an original sin from which many of the perversities of our civilization developed.
Striking an equilibrium between the relentless busyness of the thought world and the empty but fertile ground of my being, has always been vital in order for me to thrive. Never more so than now. How else can I possibly navigate the decomposition that lies ahead with any kind of grace? So alongside Hierarchy, I am also providing the previously-written poem, Fertile Darkness, which plumbs the depths of meditation. I hope it bring you some equilibrium too.
Also, I so hope you’ll engage with me on this. What are you thinking, feeling? Whose thinking has spoken to your soul? Let’s make a community. We are going to need each other.
Hierarchy
Among certain early Semitic tribes the teaching emerged that humans were made in the image of God. By virtue of our physical resemblance to Him, the scripture suggests, God endowed humans with dominion over all of the earth and “every living thing that moves upon the earth.” By this twist of prominence Mother Nature was reduced to a servant’s role.
About two and a half millennia later, at the time of the New World’s discovery, The Church sent its missionaries and conquerors forth, armed with the “God-given” Papal Bull of 1493—authorizing “full and free power, authority, and jurisdiction of every kind” over “island and mainlands,” discovered “and not hitherto discovered” (in which “are found gold, spices, and very many other precious things of divers kinds and qualities”) and any non-Christians they might encounter. By this edict, our dominion over our old servant, Nature, was extended to include the raping and plundering of everything of value, wherever it might be and no matter who or what lives had depended upon it before our arrival.
These self-contrived declarations of superiority and dominion, one could argue, are what set the stage for the great unraveling we are presently experiencing.
Hindsight being 20/20, it now seems quite clear that life on earth as maintained by Mother Nature, was much more sustainable than it has proved to be since humans seized control—especially in the last few centuries of our existence. If there is a ”balance of Nature,” we, unlike other species, consistently upset it—extorting well beyond what She can replenish. Her reciprocation becomes ever more furious. If we remain unable or unwilling to repair the havoc we have wrought, one might ask whether Nature would be better off without us—or certainly wouldn’t miss us. Yet in spite of all evidence to the contrary, we persistently and erroneously behave as if Her preservation is a choice we are free not to make.
In truth, Nature has repeatedly demonstrated our position quite clearly. She has shown us that our future as a species depends utterly upon the level of respect we pay Her. If we want to be embraced instead of banished by Her, it appears we’ll need to accept a much more modest role. Only the full realization that we are merely a part of Her—entirely sustained by Her—will finally compel us to act according to the parallel principle that what is best for Nature must, by design, be best for us as well. Only when we realize that we cannot be rulers, or even equals, will we consent to humbly accept and perform our actual role—as servants in fulfillment of Her plan.
But serving Nature’s plan would require, it seems, a re-membering of Her ways—ways that we have completely neglected to retain. How is it possible to recover such knowledge? We might begin with an immersive study of our cohabitants—Nature’s other creations. How many birds, for example, do we see and hear every day? Yet we never learn their language. What about the trees? To encounter the soul of a tree is to be forever changed—yet we barely take time to glance at them. Thankfully, while we lose ourselves in our own busy worlds, our cohabitants remain coherent to the exact letter of Nature’s laws. For us to do the same—as we must if we wish to carry out Her plan—it would behoove us to learn this primal form of communication
Any penetrating encounter or communion with other-than-human beings stimulates recognition of a liminal intelligence—one mind, one language, shared by all: the elements, the plants, our dreams, the ancestors. For now, we can only try to imagine, to remember, this new, old language beyond words, whose subtle transmissions engage elements of our being we didn’t even know existed.
We may, through this means, discern the intimate omniscience of Nature—how everything is happening all at once, everywhere, in one all-encompassing, harmonious symphony. This realization effectively undermines belief in a hierarchy of Nature, especially one that positions ourselves at the top—even, somehow, above Nature. Adherence to such a system only exposes our ignorance.
In the liminal space in which one is able to recognize the multi-dimensional Oneness of Nature, concepts of supremacy are nowhere to be found.