A World Below
In the dark rich earth there is a world that often gets overlooked, trodden down, and covered up.
On an early Spring weekend in Portland, I had the good fortune of fine weather to begin excavating the backyard on a piece of dirt that will make a fine garden. Covered in leaves, weeds, and crab grass, what was once an ordered and tended plot of land had been turned by the hands of time into a neglected space. Nature was reclaiming that which no longer held human attention, and rightly so.
With trowel, spade, shovel, and rake the work of uncovering began. With machines powered by dinosaur remains, edges were drawn and a patch of earth was tilled. Across this not-so-vast territory it is easy to observe small animals - birds, squirrels, an occasional cat, and the lion/fox/bear/sometimes-dog Mack traverse and explore. But unless you dig down, and pay attention to what comes up, you would never see the entrance to the world below. Spiders, slugs, snails, worms, and ants infuse the soil. They create their own highways and byways, establishing an ancient symbiosis with the roots and the plants that grow out of the earth. Harder to see but just as important are the relationships of fungi with the rhizosphere root networks that inform the ecosystem from the ground up.
It is beautifully simple and wonderfully complex at the same time: everything is connected.
Taking account of how much life exists in some handfuls of dirt was a great reminder about how woven the wellbeing of the water, the soil, and the inhabitants of earth are. Spending time with the soil made it clear to me that it is not possible to spray chemicals of any kind, especially those that kill “weeds” without devastating consequences to the entire chain. One telling example worth mentioning is the decline of the western Monarch butterfly, whose population has been estimated to be 99% reduced since the 1980s.
BJ Palmer, the developer of chiropractic, made note of the potential for impact we can have with our thoughts, words, and actions. I intend to use mine well.
“We never know how far-reaching something we may think, say, or do today will effect the lives of millions tomorrow.”
Life as Continuity
What are the things that connect us?
I’m currently contributing to a project aimed to prepare students who are considering chiropractic college. Working on the Philosophy section has given me another opportunity to review the tools and terms, but more importantly, the Big Picture. What is the WHY that informs the practitioner? How does the body work? How does directing focus on promoting and advancing health (instead of prevention and treatment of disease) impact how someone experiences their body and the world?
As one of the things that connect us, language is so important. I used to think of myself as a student of the Anatomy of Wellbeing, until I made the connection that the word “anatomy” (to cut up) itself implies an orientation to separating things into pieces. This can be a useful process and often helps us understand things with more detail. However, without an appreciation for the context of the whole and the recognition that in life things are not separate, the process of reducing can lead to division in mind and heart.
Within the realm of the human body, everything is connected. Traditionally, we have been taught that muscles attach to bones via tendons. We can “dissect” these “pieces” out, see the nerves and blood vessels that feed them, and describe what actions they perform. This is what tradition has passed down - a tradition informed by reductionism. What if we approached the body from the perspective of continuity? There is a seamless continuity within and through the entire body. I mean this literally. There are no seams, stitches, or pins in healthy tissue. The connective tissue of fascia wraps, folds, and weaves together all tissue in the body. The nervous system coordinates and communicates directly or indirectly with all parts of the body. The second a knife - a surgical one or a mental one - is applied it introduces a break in this continuity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it acknowledges and honors the natural whole state of the body.
How can this sense of continuity inform other aspects of life? If we begin with the perspective that everything is connected - and in some way or another continuous - we realize the tremendous responsibility we have to ourselves, each other and the planet. Nothing and no one exists in isolation. Your wellbeing is my wellbeing. How we treat the environment reflects how we treat our own bodies. We’re in this together. This is the Big Picture.
From the Wisdom of Pine Cones
Along the southern reaches of the Jersey shore, maritime forests of pine and oak grow strong in the sandy soil. Owing to the influence of fire and humanity, the predominant species here is pitch pine (Pinus rigida). The cones of this tree have adapted so that they will open only in response to extreme heat. The natural, necessary, and repetitive process of wildfire both destroys and renews the resources of this land.
At the close of 2018, I returned once again to the forests and the land where I grew as a sapling. The opportunity to spend time with my family, to revisit the well-trod paths of my youth, to hold congress with my favorite groves, and to feel the the brisk south wind along the shore, as always, was beautiful and insightful. So much has changed, yet roots remember.
If left undisturbed, clearings made by fire or people in the forest will become wooded again. In ecology, the process of succession is a slow, orderly sequence of changes in which one community of plants and animals will replace each previous community until a climax community emerges. In the Pine Barrens it takes 100-200 years for an open field to become a mature forest.
And eventually it will burn.
The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus related the kosmos to “an everliving fire; kindling in measures and being quenched in measures”. The world, like the beings that inhabit it, is constantly in a state of flux. “Changing, they stay the same”.
In my own life, especially in 2018, the sequence of changes I experienced did not seem slow or orderly. It became apparent to me that sometimes we, too, are exposed to the rapid and wild fire of transformation. In time, the flora and fauna of our inner and outer Erlebnis will change, creating and being created by the emerging landscape of Life. In his meditation on trees, Herman Hesse channels:
”A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life...I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail”.
As with trees, we have an elemental contract with earth and water, to breathe the air and to be tempered by fire. Like the pitch pine, a new cycle begins with a kernel in ash and ember. May you kindle abundance in this new year.
