Reflections

Deep Becoming.

A storm approaches,

A beautiful powerful flow of energy and life sweeps across the sky, with muffled thunder enfolded in the deep dark blues and greys of the swirling and transforming clouds.

I come inside to write and reflect on our becoming, on Deep Becoming – the Deep Future of Being.  Just as in Deep Time, Deep History and Deep Spirituality, I am using the word Deep to connect into the before and after of the human.  For that is what we need to do.

We all need stories to live by stories that give us meaning and purpose, as Yungblut says:

With the rapidity with which discoveries are being made, our present myths of creation proposed by scientists may be outdated in a few years. We need to get on with our own personal myths of meaning. C.G. Jung noted that of all the patients that had come to him over thirty-five years of age, every single one of them was suffering from a loss of myth. Without a personal myth of meaning, one is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a sense of meaninglessness. A myth which one embraces wholeheartedly can be enormously helpful in putting one’s life together, thus constellating one’s entire life in a pattern of wholeness.
(John R. Yungblut, ‘Shaping A Personal Myth To Live By’, p.4)

So, if we are to have life and be alive, these stories need to be about more than our own life journey, they need to encompass the before and the after of our being.  If they are just about our personal future, be it salvation or annihilation, or gathering of wealth, then they are not lifegiving, for us or for the earth.

Our stories must be about the more, the more than me, the more than my people, the more than human, the more than earth, the more than life.

I cannot tell you what your story should be, I can only invite you to look into your life, your current story and ask yourself, perhaps ask your community, perhaps, if you can, ask the earth, ‘Does my story bring me into deep relationship with all my kin?  Does my story open a way to a future that is beyond me and beyond my story?’

And then you might need to ask, ‘How can my story change and grow so that I am in kinship and open to the Deep Becoming – the Deep Future of Being?’

My faith in redundancy.

Redundancy in the universe and particularly in the life systems of earth is a powerful teacher.

The tree, where the seeds are produced in such abundance that we are often filled with the overwhelming sight of earth covered in the hues and shapes of fallen seeds, or where the pollen is so thick that it fills the air (and now causes us breathing difficulties). Of all the seed that is produced by one plant only a minute fraction will take root and grow.  If even a slightly larger fraction were to be productive, the earth would be overwhelmed by plants.  Imagine if all the seed from the trees outside your home were to take root and grow, then extend this out to all the plants that share the space you inhabit.  Now do the same for all the myriad creatures that live about us. If every egg grows, every seed, every larva, we would be overwhelmed.

This is the powerful and wonderful redundancy of life.  For a tree to be successful in having even just a few offspring, ke (see Robin Wall Kimmerer) must be prolific and produce volumes of seed.

And are we different?  Many animals produce only a few offspring, either as a nest of eggs or as live birth litters or as single children.  But if we look beyond the birth process within any species to the larger dimensions of species, again we see that redundancy that is in play.  Many members of a species will be lost; natural deaths, accidents, killed and consumed by others, yet the numbers of a species ensure its survival.  And if we look at humans, is it any different?  If we say, yes, is it because we are giving each human an interiority, a uniqueness that is somehow special, something that we do not (or will not) give to other species?

Yet, each seed of the tree is unique, each has the potential for germination.  Each member of any species is unique, there is no other, no non unique.  So why then would we see humans as different? Because we are looking from the inside.  If I look at my life and say I am not necessary, then I can get very depressed and really can simply choose to stop.  But tree produces volumes of seed, but which seed will germinate, which will not? It requires all the seed to be produced.  This the wonder of redundancy in its best meaning, not the small work based human meaning we have invented.  Redundancy is abundance, prolific life potential that requires every possibility to be created so that the few that will germinate can do so.

In our human world, we can extend this to our understandings, insights, discoveries and creations. 

Here is the wonder of redundancy!  

Sa Talamh – In the Earth

Finding our own place in the earth is a useful exercise, especially when we realise how short our own ancient connections are compared to the 40,000 plus years of connection for some other indigenous peoples.  We are all indigenous to some place, some old culture and tradition and belief system. Many of us from the West have had our culture and tradition and belief torn apart by waves of invasion from other indigenous peoples and in the last 1000 plus years by ruthless dominating religious backed hierarchies, be they feudal or commercial.

One way to find some grounding in what can be called our deep bone country, is to follow the ancestry trail as far as we can and to use the tools of DNA to help see where our body comes from.  For me, this is Britain and Ireland – the old country, the so-called Celtic country, which is at best a 5000-year-old culture.  Well short of Australian Indigenous connections.

Part of this has been for me to learn a bit of my old language, as I can no longer discover and learn the old language of the Brits, I have tried to learn some of the Irish, as it is close to the language of all my ancestors.  And so, to ‘Sa Talamh’ – that I translate as ‘In the Earth’.  I choose the term “in the…’ as this also reflects my connection to the Quaker community, where the wonderful term ‘Holding in the Light’ often comes at the end of a letter or communication, or as part of a sharing.  So ‘Holding in the Earth’ is for me an expression of my deep earth being and the human aspect of prayer, of holding the other.

It may be a small thing to do, but as Robin Wall Kimmerer notes; “The language reminds us, in every sentence, of our kinship with all of the animate world.” (Braiding Sweetgrass, p.56)

The Earth’s Prayer

(This is my way of bringing an important prayer from my old story into the new story in which I now dwell)

A thanksgiving before meals.
Speaking to the seven directions:
Before
behind
to left
to right
Sky
Earth
Within.
 
We give thanks to the sun, whose energy enables and sustains us and all our kin, all life of earth.
We see and are seen
We hear and are heard
We touch and are touched
We love and are loved
We eat and are eaten
We belong
We are earth

The 14 Billion Names for God!