Day 96
family
Lately I have been reversing my idea of how I fit in the world. Instead of being the one call to Love the Enemy, I am the Enemy who needs to be Loved into a real and vital community. Instead of being the Mother, I am the one who needs mothering. Instead of being the one that needs to include all of nature—plants, animals, the elements—into my family, I am included by nature as one of hers. This last one is the most profound for me. It makes me feel most beloved, most validated and most integral to life.
A lot is said about the way we treat each other, and we often look to other humans we see as wiser, kinder, more loving, to teach us how to treat each other well. More and more though, I am looking outside my window. I am astounded by the generosity and kindness of this planet, that knows how to do its thing in such a way that countless members of a family are supported, loved, birthed, grown and buried. I could spend the rest of my life learning to love and nurture and support life, simply by watching things grow, die and grow again. Not only does this inspire me to care more deeply and meaningfully for the life that is not-human, but it elevates every breath I take because I understand that with that breath, I am being given life and have a place in a thriving family of living things.
A plot of land can certainly become part of a family, if that family works with it, performs sacred rituals such as marriage and burial on it, and if they love it. Amazingly, despite the fact that our very life is sustained by land that supports us by giving us dirt to grow food and raise animals on, we tend to think of the land as “ours.” Our little bit of work, our habitation, our money, makes us believe that the land can be rightfully and meaningfully owned. So much land has been appropriated through acts of terror and evil. Even today, in this country we completely lack any true understanding of the cost of the little plot our house sits on. Yet, we are permitted to keep breathing, and taking; because the Earth does her work regardless of the human cost, the way we treat her, whether or not we “get it.”
She is a true mother and has so many mouths to feed, that even though we are the spoiled difficult children who ought to be deprived in order that we might learn our lesson, she keeps giving to us, as if there is no end to her generosity and commitment to all life. And perhaps, perhaps she is so busy being a good Mother, that she just simply doesn’t have the energy to discipline us as well as give us every means of survival. Perhaps she is like the best mothers among us, who know that life and death itself will teach the hardest lessons. Perhaps she knows that she cannot force us to love her, only wait, her every exhale a prayer that ebbs from a deep awareness that we can never be separated from her, no matter how deluded we become.
It is our lack of imagination and our need to centralize ourselves that causes us to think that all living things but us are “just” existing, and that “just” existing does not include the most important aspects of existing, such as love. What is love if not the tree taking in my exhale and returning it to me in such a way that I might continue to breathe? What is love if not a desert flower? What is family, if not an incomprehensible, interconnected, glorious effort to sustain one another?
As I come to the end of this project, I feel this strengthening rhythm in my body. Writing has given me the opportunity, not to create new things, to say important things, or to cultivate a way of making money. No, it is just the opportunity to begin to understand my place in a family. This family includes all living things…everything. From the steps of my porch, I listen to the birds in my family sing, I smile. They are the true and best artists in our family. “Just” existing, that little red-breasted robin gives voice to our joy. She is my little sister, and I hear her song.
