The Embrace of Life

Symbiosis, from the Greek word “living together” is the fundamental relational unit of all life; organisms living in close association with one another and their environment.

It is one of the few certainties we have to hold in this great mystery of being alive; that in every moment, you are surrounded by (and comprised of) entire communities of living organisms in unfathomable myriads of form. Outnumbered are our human somatic cells 10:1 by fungal and bacterial cells. We are ecosystems, imbedded within ecosystems. Much like the soil, of which we commonly reference as a ‘thing’ is really is an amalgamation of billions of interdependent expressions of life co-creating and collaborating to create the fertile skin of the Earth. Analogous to what is unfolding on the surface of your skin, right now.

What then, really, is an individual? Are you really a ‘you’? Or are you a multitude and multiplicity of intimately interacting, inextricably interconnected life processes and microbial intelligences conversating and collaborating to form what the ego has come to know as ‘I’.

We are living symbioses, and beautifully so. To the early single-celled prokaryotes in our Precambrian oceans, eating photosynthesizing and aerobically respirating bacterium creating the first eukaryotic cells, we are indebted our deepest gratitudes, for without this early endosymbiosis, life as we know it would cease to exist.

This being said, through the deep relational intimacy of our ‘selves’ and the ecosystems we are active participating in, the health and well being of the space around us and all beings we share that space with are tethered to our actions, and even our ideas. But I wont get too deep into the metaphysics right now. We can no longer deny or escape the inevitable truth that we are a deeply interwoven part of a greater, living whole and a story much larger than our own. This is an ancient truth that was actively practiced and celebrated for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples of the world, a truth of which still lies, active and eager in the marrow of our bones. For we are all Indigenous from somewhere.

Living organisms interact with their surroundings, and thus form synergistic, self-regulating and increasingly complex systems that help maintain, support and perpetuate conditions for all life on the planet to survive. The co-evolution of species literally creates the necessary conditions they need to thrive and proliferate. The evolutionary history, and current evolutionary unfolding of Life on Earth effects the entire biosphere, and thus influences the stability of global climate, atmospheric oxygen levels, salinity of seawater, fluctuations in the hydrosphere, and other variables that determine the habitability of Earth. In short, Life creates more of itself.

Life creates the conditions conducive to Life

I believe this process is occurring in a cognitive and intelligent way. That our Living Earth is conscious, contextual, sensitive and highly responsive. To expand our world view, we must move dialogues and the definitions of these words away from an anthropomorphic lens; to encompass living systems, both biotic and abiotic. In these shared empathetic ways of thinking, it may allow for a deeper level of compassion and understanding in how we interact and relate with the natural world. For the natural world (despite certain deeply engrained ideologies) is not void of human. No, we are active participants in it, but in that we must remember that the world wasn’t made for human, were are merely a part of a much greater whole.

What if the small, wriggling soil beings are viscerally aware you’re sitting upon them? If the spruce feels you exhale as they deeply inhale your respiratory byproduct? If the pollinators can sense you seeding what will soon be nectar-rich flowers in your garden? If the jay hears and acknowledges you singing a resonant tune? I’m sure they would say thank you. I’m sure they are.

Through billions of years of this phenomena called evolution playing out to create the magnificent diversity we see today, there lies a great resilience based in the ever cycling processes of life and death, decay and renewal.

However, there is upon us a great imbalance. We have become distracted, falling under spells of the fluorescent lights of forgetfulness and have disembodied vital elements of the intimate relationship we have with all of life’s creation. We are putting up impermeable walls around us, extracting resources utterly unrestricted, perpetuating the practice of reckless colonization and conquest, sanatizing every surface of our spaces in the denial of death and disease, and removing ourselves mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually from the emergent properties of symbiosis that foster harmonious coexistance. This imbalance is the product of complex and systemic psycho-emotional phenomena that has been plaguing the human spirit for centuries, and we are ALL, wether large of small, feeling the effects of the symptoms of this dis-ease.

How are we showing up for the space around us? Or might I ask, how are we showing up in the space that IS us? For each other, both human and more than human, in this tedious tipping point of present day, we stand upon the precipice of either global ecological collapse and/or unforeseen, ubiquitous regeneration and re-harminization.

Underpinning all of this, is the process of remembering.

Creation is calling us to breathe deeper, to exist in devoted mutuality and reciprocity with one another, with all beings and all matter. To remember our humble place in the humus; within the cycles of decay and renewal, within stories of the processes and ecosystems that hold us and create the conditions we rely on to thrive. And in this remebering, to align our awareness with action and to show up for them, in respect and servitude, like you would for someone you dearly love. As a thread in the web of life, it is our responsibility to tend to the soil, the plants, the fungi, the animals, the sea and the stars as Beloved. It is the least we can do for this gift of life we have received.

One day, our bodies will return to the flesh of the Earth in which we came. It will decompose and deconstruct back into the elemental particles that will carry forth to nourish and feed the next generation, the successional re-emergence of life. We are not seperate. We are here, living not ON the Earth but IN and WITH the Earth.

What legacy will we leave?

Held in the Embrace of Life, may the Earth feel us holding them too, by the way we extend our loving awareness to all of life, and by the tending of our sacred hands.