Grief or Compassion?

They Sometimes Feel the Same

When I look closer at something in the natural world I start to love it unconditionally. Maybe it’s a way to practice a gentle kind of acceptance, but less from a human-centric perspective? It feels closer to seving ancient curiosity, but I like both possibilities. The human one is just less matter-of-fact. I get intermittent twinges -- little electroshocks of discomfort I may not even realize at the moment, much less process. I think they are asking, "Do I really want to know something deeper?” I mean, in the spectrum of “knowing” you can be completely ignorant of something, a published PhD or just a good Jeopardy contestant. That seems to be our modern scale. I know I’m ready, I consciously committed years ago. I know that when I was little it was easy; I was still part of the natural world then but I didn’t have to hold my breath to live there like I do now. They say “you can never go home” but I’m living to prove that cliche wrong. I have been inching into the freezing water of loving something much bigger and wilder than myself for a while now. There is a great deal of grief in knowing something, and I cramp up still. I have to forcibly change the picture in my mind a lot. Just when I think I'm starting to get used to the freezing temperature of this love, here comes the sharp, startling stick that spears me in the bottom of the foot reminding me that there is no space in this love for complacency. I hear the universal, know-it-all, asshole opinion that “one person doesn’t make a difference.”  

The person I have to thank for telling me that we, as humans are indeed necessary on this earth is Robin Wall Kimmerer. She is a biologist who uses that science along side the traditional methods, practices and language of her Potawatomi heritage as a way forward. Her book “Braiding Sweetgrass” changed my outlook and has given me back something I had inside but didn’t know what to do with. (Me describing her work and her writing here is a recipe for me to get it really wrong to the point of appropriating an idea then fucking it up, so please do yourself a favor and read her book. It’s so outstanding and hopeful.)

I’m going out on a limb here to say that what I learned from her is that Earth is always trying to fix itself -- we are not alone if we are trying to fix it. Earth will quadruple our donation, take that baton and run with it, do the heavy lifting, etc. It’s already on boil. It is infinitely more alive than we understand. 

Doing “what we can” is not a useless waste of effort that makes no difference, even if it’s small. We can’t ignore the big picture, but this newsletter will try not to be a judgment or a prescription. It will be more about what it does to our feelings and self worth and how it keeps us from ourselves and nature. I am not a scientist, I’m a musician and writer, and not a well-educated one either… but I’m here like you are and our discussions about everything from ticks, to moss to paper wasps, are valid. We do not have to have degrees from a university. Somewhere in here between the empirical, patriarchal, western idea of science and straight-up self-serving "woo-woo" is a place where we are fully legitimate.