A couple of weeks ago I attended Bioneers (14th Annual Front Range Eco-Social Solutions: A Bioneers Network Event), which I highly recommend to anyone if you ever have a chance to attend. I have been reading my notes and processing the experience since then and have concluded that my main takeaway this year is about coexistence: everything and everyone are connected. Nina Simmons, one of the founders of Bioneers opened one of her talks by saying: “It’s all connected, it’s all intelligent, it’s all relatives”. She welcomed us to the “inclusion revolution”. Presenter after presenter touched on this theme of interconnection in different ways. Jo Fleming, who gave a wonderful presentation on biomimicry, started with talking about the enormous amount of plastic in the ocean that is even being picked up by the plankton and making it’s way into the very basis of the food chain. She noted that all life is interdependent and interconnected and that humans are part of that system. As plastic works it’s way into the food chain from human made products that are discarded it works it’s way back around into our systems as we eat fish such as mahi-mahi and tuna. On a positive note, her study in biomimicry leads her to learn from the design of nature and apply that to improving life on the planet. In a workshop on Eco-Social Design the panel of leaders effectively drew on permaculture principles to talk about financial permaculture. Using the permaculture principles of “design from patterns to details”, “integration rather than segregation” and “use and value diversity”, they talked about a project in Haiti to develop food forests (starting with planting trees and companion plants) and thus moving toward reviving that economy. They are seeking to build financial systems that are harmonious with the environment. The takeaway here for me is that to repair the earth we need repair and regenerate human culture and connection and learn to live in harmony with the earth.
Vien Truong, an environmental activist who made a documentary about Flint, Michigan and the water crisis there, started her talk with considering bees and the crisis with pollinators. She noted that what affects bees, affects flowers, trees and ultimately people and all life on earth. In her study of what happened in Flint it became obvious to her that the water crisis was part of a much larger and more complex system where what happens in the inner cities affects what happens in the suburbs and what happens to rural people and vice versus. Anita Sanchez, a neuroscientist summed it up for me by saying that all things are connected. If we hurt a part of the world, we hurt all of it. We must choose with each breath we take whether we will be killing machines or life giving contributors.
In new member classes when I was a pastor, I had people tell the story of their faith journeys, and I always told mine, focusing on the Christian part of the journey, from my childhood in the Methodist church, leaving church as an agnostic and returning to a more liberal faith after a mystical experience in my early 20’s and exploration of Taoism and Buddhism. However, when I tell my spiritual journey now I tell it very differently. I start with my childhood running free in the fields behind our house, fishing in Plum Creek, chasing the farmer’s bulls (not smart), climbing trees and awakening to the beauty of nature. I worked in my mother’s and grandmother’s gardens and had my first garden in High School, growing corn, pumpkins and potatoes. I began raising Bonsai trees when my first daughter was born. In my faith journey now I am aware of the experiences I have had that have woken me to my connection to the earth and it’s creatures. I have begun to see God as present in all creation, in animals, plants, rocks, water, the cosmos. I now see my spiritual journey as becoming aware of my oneness with all.
I have learned from scientists who know much more than I do that I am sharing electrons with everything around me: this kitchen table where I sit, the sugar bowl, the houseplants. We are connected more deeply than we used to imagine. Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “There is a communion with God, and a communion with earth, and a communion with God through earth”. George Macleod, the founder of the Iona Community in the 20th century said: “Matter matters, because the heart of the material is the spiritual”. Macleod believed that the Presence (God) is deep within matter and that creation is the Body of God. I’ve experience that after I hear a new idea or song or something, I begin to see and hear it everywhere. That’s certainly the case with this idea of coexistence (or interconnection) for me. It seems that everything I pick up, from theology to gardening, is talking about this interconnection and interdependence. I love the book, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. In a passage I remember she has the character, Shug, talk about her gradual awakening to her connection to everything and to the fact that God is part of everything. She began to recognize God in everything until one day she realized that if she cut a tree, her arm would bleed. I know what she’s talking about.