It is true that we will never decide upon the 'reason' we turned away, why some folks decided that decimating those that live with the land, and in their bodies, was the right way to go. It is so hard to know why they would think that was a good idea?
So here we are.
There is a soft, slow groundswell of change coming. People nudging us to look inside, to widen our perspective, and, accept there may be a different way to do this. These people, like you Renee and so many others, give me hope.
The next stride comes from the inside and some people are scared of what lies in there, or perhaps more than fear they simply do not know, they have never been taught to look. We are on the precipice of getting 'sorted out' (OK, that's a bad term but it's what popped into my head). By sorted I mean moving into a better equilibrium both inside and out. But to reach the other side we all have work to do. That effort begins with noticing, softening, and allowing for a different path.
Thank you for the work that you do Sweetie, you are truly changing the world one article or presentation at a time and we appreciate it.
You write: “There is a soft, slow groundswell of change coming.” I love that you write “soft.” We are together here in this change, and we are cared for. We need not be afraid. If we look closely, the fear is of uncertainty and of each other, not the change itself. We belong to this change and to one another . . . and the care.
You write: “The next stride comes from the inside and some people are scared of what lies in there, or perhaps more than fear they simply do not know. . . .” As I recall, you spoke of the push in Western society toward happiness in your talk last week. This ‘pursuit of happiness’ is a cancer in the modern human psyche. This cancer keeps us from the fullness of feeling . . . and feeling unfelt by the psyche is feeling expressed through the body, as you and I have discussed. You are giving the gift of this invitation to feel and notice and allow in your work with others, giving them a hand to hold to do this inner work. It is the most important work of our time––inner work. Thank you for your devotion to it.
Hello my brilliant, soulful friend. Your reflection on belonging and becoming in word and image has stilled me into a deepening presence. Thoughts, sensations, emotions arise….then settle. What lingers is the experience of being bodied on body. All of us belonging to the earth, herself turning in a hermeneutic spiral of becoming. All of us participating knowingly or unknowingly in the breaking through(mining) of what Gebser refers to as integral consciousness.
Brilliant, soulful friend, 🙏 you write “the experience of being bodied on body.” I read this phrase several times, struck by the intimacy—only lovemaking and infant-caregiver bodies are this intimate. The immediacy. The aliveness. The nursing care. The fact of being ‘bodied’ not ‘body’—bodied as a coming into being, not body as a thingness. And yes, I’m so glad you add “the earth, herself turning a hermeneutic spiral of becoming.” A life. A knowing life but as a life, vulnerable and with need, for to be a life is to need. “All of us participating knowingly or unknowingly in breaking through. . . ." Your words need no more from me.
I could not be more enchanted that you circled back to share this. 🙏 Thank you. Chanting "we're at one with the earth, I (we) are made up of stars. . . . we are one'. I personally pick up not even a touch of silly in these words or the fact that you chanted them -- and they helped your headache! Which takes me back to your original comment (above) about nature as medicine. I'm sensing into the experience of chanting and imagining the balm the words became because in uttering them *and* in hearing them, 'we are one' was recalled in your own cells. Medicine for you. Medicine for the earth and stars and all that is. So beautiful. Thank you again.
Ah! Thank you for the selfie! For those of us out here in the urbanscape, you are part of the landscape, and a very important part. :-) I love your sense of "belonging" as a replacement for mining. This brings the old purgatory theme right back up - purging the various meanings of "mine" and leaving them back there in the inferno for a truer language. With your emphasis on physiology, mining (in all senses) is quite a horror.
Thank you also for the inviting LaSalle Lake paragraph. I stepped right up and enjoyed the lakeside very much. Beautiful post, as ever. Hope the presentation goes well Thursday. 👍
I had not seen taking the selfie this way: ‘you are a part of the landscape’––not that I have not been aware that I am a part of the landscape, but not in this imagistic way of turning the photograph around to the photographer. . . .
Now, purgatory again . . . and words! We come to words from contextually derived meaning (I’m not suggesting something you do not already know, just setting the stage here). So much can be revealed by exploring them and tracing back much further than I typically do in these posts—to their root sound even, understanding that before we read words, we heard words--evolutionarily and developmentally. ‘Mine’, we traced early in this month's series to a common mein, which goes back to the root sound, mu, meaning ‘to sound’. Here’s Gebser: “Another verb by the same root, myein––ambivalent because of the substitution of a short ‘u’––means ‘to close’, specifically, to close the eyes, the mouth, and wounds” (65)
Here, we see not opening (as with mining the earth) but closing, which takes an interesting turn in what comes next per Gebser: “From this root [myein] we have Sanskrit mūkas (with long vowel), meaning ‘mute, silent’, and Latin mutus, with the same meaning. It recurs in Greek in the words mystes, ‘the consecrated’ and mysterion, ‘mysterium’ and later in the Christian era, gave the characteristic stamp of the concept of mysticism, speechless contemplation with closed eyes, that is, eyes turned inward” (65).
How far a word does travel. . . .
Mine as possessive would appear to come from the root me. Me, not as self-reference so much as the formation of the concept ‘to have in mind’. How the two concepts for mine came together is mystery [to me], but this root mein seems the common thread. We see in mein the root me and the 'y' dropped from myein.
I will stop at this turn in the rabbit hole I'm digging, but to say, the exercise can spark wonder and expand horizons of meaning.
Renée; "What if how we got here is not so much about a fall but a step not yet fully taken? And suppose that we ourselves extend that longer stride . . . from the inside?" I truly appreciate that point of view, especially now with the world in so much distress. It's so easy to see the human experiment as having gone off the rails; took the wrong turn with the beginning of agriculture. It's so easy to be pessimistic in the face of all the destruction humans have wrought and continue to do to our planet and each other. But is it helpful to see it all through that lens? There really is no right or wrong way to view our evolution from then to now, so why not accept it as it is, and choose to imagine that we will continue to evolve toward harmony with each other and the planet, and that the work toward that end is ultimately internal. It's not about denying the very sad reality of our destructive ways, but choosing to see the long view, as MLK spoke about in terms of the arc of justice. As to the concept of belonging, I think that is where all the destruction ultimately emanates from; that so many feel displaced, isolated, alone and bereft; not a part of the whole, but separate. This leads to despair and too often is defended against by anger and blame, and striking out. Of course, the way most societies are set up creates a class system that leaves so many feeling this despair and loneliness. Again, how easy it is to feel this is all too big to change; that the "haves" will never share with the "have-nots"; that some kind of enormous cataclysmic event needs to happen before it all falls apart and rearranges itself in the "right" way. And perhaps that might be true. Regardless, the true evolutionary event that needs to continue to happen is all internal; how to know in one's bones that everyone belongs to something bigger; to the whole of humanity; to the natural world; to this precious Earth; to God. All that external stuff which can distract us from the truth of who we are must be seen as it is, and we must love and continue to love no matter what. "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other, doesn't make sense."
You write: “There really is no right or wrong way to view our evolution from then to now.” Amen, Brother. This perspective seems to be an important beginning of turning our ways—to cease judging––and “choose to imagine that we will continue to evolve toward harmony. . . and that the work toward that end is ultimately internal” . . . and, I would add, of a mysterious nature, participant in the grand Whole. Over the years, I have come to a growing sense that only a reestablished connection––communion––with Mystery will heal us the inner desecration of feeling “displaced, isolated, alone and bereft." (You and I have discussed this. Thomas Berry insisted "only the sacred will save us.") Communion cannot be thought but comes from presence to the inner impulse of feeling, recognized between self and Mystery, self and Other--even the mosquito who has the same inner impulse "to be" that you and I have. (There's the mosquito again!) Hence, “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing. . . .” Might we meet at the base promise, which is the inner recognition that "they have bodies like we do"? (Andreas Weber).
Your descriptions and pictures brought back some memories from my childhood. Thank you. And "Do we know our own inside? The real truth of it?" This is something I struggle with and also one of the reasons I try to break down cultural constructs in my writing. Sometimes, I think we lie to ourselves more than we do to others. The more I learn, the better I become at discovering what I truly think rather than what society taught me to think, but when it comes to romantic love, I rarely know the real truth of it. I'm constantly confused and possibly afraid to live the truth. I love David Gregory Roberts quote, "There’s truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world."
Your childhood memories of this place must be vivid, what with the magnitude and majesty. What you share about cultural constructs is immensely implicated in the veiled truth of who we are. We are conditioned from the first moments of life to live within the confines of what is ok and therefore expected, as you so well know and explore in Born without Borders. But something of our within is never lost to these constructions. Which echoes the beautiful and at the same time, harrowing passage from David Gregory Roberts. That little black hole of inner knowing, of inner yearning––“We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay.” And so, like love, we get close to this inner truth and we run like hell. We may think we know ourselves, but we don’t, until by some force we cannot will, we come alive, fully alive in a moment--whether with wonder or joy or heartache or. . . . Then we know but not how we think we would know. We may think we know love, but we don’t know love until it breaks us wide open. Then we know love. And here's is the hard ironic truth of it, once we breathe of the breath of this ‘order of truth’, there’s no turning back. Now this 'order', which can seem like every manner of disorder, takes the lead. Gone are we from the illusion of control. Where this something takes us is not always comfortable, “but it does prevent us from hating the world,” and it does add significance and meaning, and maybe, just maybe, we become who we are--which that endless little black hole of possibility endlessly endeavors to assure.
I've now read this piece three times and, each time, have wondered how to comment. In short, this one really does talk to me, that idea and reality of belonging. The way you weave the nature into your words is constantly inspiring and I am so grateful that we can all share in this. Thank you.
Thank you. 🙏 How I would love to receive your letter, look upon the squiggles of your lifeworld on the page, and we would meet there . . . and we would belong together, as we do here across these miles on this digital page. Such delight! I am enchanted to recognize that just recently we had not encountered one another, knew nothing of the other, and here, we share, you there on that hill, me out here beyond the comfort zone!
Do I get scared? Yes. I do. Most of the time, what I fear is in my head. I must work with it. It’s a big part of why I started this journey--to watch myself when fear arises and relate with it anew, recognizing when it is serving to keep me safe and when it is conditioned by something that may keep me from flourishing. It's an exercise in discernment. The body is a divining rod. The senses are attuned to so much more than we are aware running wild in the noise of our minds.
Grizzlies have been a real fear up here in the North Country. At times, I have felt like a caged animal, fearful of going on walks. Bears are very quiet. I alone am quiet. If I am walking, we might chance encounter. That potential is one I am not prepared for.
I’m always glad to receive word from you from Whidbey Island, still one of few places that I could easily never leave. I think of you often, love that you're chiming in here, and can imagine the Autumn rains nourishing the beautiful trees around you.
Thanks for this post which delighted my eyes and challenged my mind. I'd never heard of Gebser before, so thanks for introducing him to me.
I'm trying to grapple with this sense of belonging that you are living by your travels through the land. How tied must it be to nature? In other words can a city dweller like me experience it ? The closest I come is walking through Central Park and seeing how it truly belongs to everyone.
It is my absolute pleasure to introduce you to Gebser. I was introduced to him when I was working on my Ph.D. Many people misunderstand him, do not see "Ever-Present Origin" as insightful about where we are and where we might go but as a dense narrative of an historical unfolding of the human. The depth and expanse of the work is lost to this misperception. Jeremy Johnson’s "Seeing through the World" is a good primer to "Ever-Present Origin."
Now, your question about how tied must belonging be to nature is fabulous. It helps us sense into the “within” of nature when we are away from human-constructed environments, but it is not an absolute necessity. I would say that we have to endeavor to be more intimate when in human-constructed settings. Get closer to the living earth. Sit in the grass at Central Park, for instance, and feel the earth holding the weight of you. Get closer still and notice what’s moving around in one square foot. See each of those lives—the grass and the dandelion and the ant and earthworm, each living being—as a life that is a body, a life that has an inner impulse to continue, just like we do. Watch how a flower will turn to face the sun mid-day and by day's end will droop, as if to sleep. It is renewing for tomorrow, just as we do. Observe a spider or bee changing course if your nearing footstep threatens to squash them. Notice how a crow will fly near you to catch a curious glimpse of your face. They will then remember you!
If we can sense into lives this way, lives that come up out of the earth, as we do, then we can sense, too, into the earth itself as living––as a self-organizing system, all these lives like cells in the body of the organism called Earth––and start to experience that this earth belongs to its own life and everyone and we belong to our life and the earth and each other.
I’m so glad you wondered about this. Does my reflection help?
Thanks so much for this generous reply. I will order "Seeing Through the World" and I love your idea about being still in Central Park. Parts of it are secluded enough that you can imagine you're not in the city. I tend to walk through the park or walk my dog Sophie, but what you suggest is much more intentional and I look forward to trying it.
David, I would love to read/hear your thoughts on "Seeing Through the World" and being still in Central Park. It's a new inquiry! It occurs to me to wonder if one will feed the other. . . .
Accepting that your inner voice speaks reason was the hardest part for me to overcome. It took me a while to accept this. Listening to that 'whisper' after ignoring it for years was right.
Your first sentence reminds me of Pascal’s “The heart knows reason which reason knows little of.” (That’s my paraphrase.) You say it took you a while to accept this, and did it get any easier after knowing it was right? (That’s not a leading question.) Would you change having listened to that ‘whisper’? (Please feel no obligation to say more. It’s wonder on my part about your experience and all of us, myself included, of course.)
For me, I would say that listening is not always easier—my wily will likes what it likes—but it gets my attention more quickly, turns me in the direction I need to go, and has no problem any longer standing there with arms folded over chest, refusing to let me go back that other way. Would I change having listened? Not for a minute. Has it been easy? Not for a minute––most of the time.
"Listening to that 'whisper' after ignoring it for years was right. Of course it was." Thank you, Will.
It’s so nice to see your face! I vote for more selfies!
“...abiding together for a long duration, intimating care not exploitation, not annihilation. . .” How beautiful and profound.
Your reflections always make me think about what I believe to be true and whether my actions reflect that. Thank you for posing the important questions.
Thank you for cheering on more selfies--this of the crawling out of bed type!
Thank you for sharing this: "make me think about what I believe to be true and whether my actions reflect that." This is beautiful, profound. And simple, isn't it, though not easy, but we keep riding that edge between what's true on the inside and what we express of that moment-by-moment truth . . . and why.
Such exquisite reflections. I like to break apart the word “belong” into “be with longing.” You say, “Do we know our own inside? The real truth of it? Not what or how we’re told to be or what or how we think we want to be, but the inner belonging to life that yearns to be.” Or in other words, the longing to be true, whole, and connected to all of life, is that possibly what brings us into belonging? It’s part tragedy part exaltation. The longing—a pathos of living on this earth, born from duality where we are both one, and also separate. ❤️
You write: "I like to break apart the word 'belong' into 'be with longing'. This is beautiful in so many ways and with each word: Be. With. Longing. Each has its own potency.
Then you take us into the spiral that we're most afraid to enter and at the same time what tugs and pulls at every turn:
"Or in other words, the longing to be true, whole, and connected to all of life"
"is that possibly what brings us into belonging?" Be. With. Longing. >>> to then go the long duration with. . . .
to go the long duration of longing with? Longing is a force, an existential force, as you offer here:
"It’s part tragedy part exaltation. The longing—a pathos of living on this earth, born from duality where we are both one, and also separate." Words such as these offered by someone who understands. . . .
It would take me a decade to write all my thoughts on this wonderful letter, Renee, so I will try to condense. 💕 Firstly, I'll be sending you Divine Nectar vibes on Thursday that your presentation is exactly everything you want it to be. I would for sure love to hear more about it! And thank you for the selfie too. I love being able to hold the image of your face being on the other side of the camera. Which brings me to the second thing I want to mention...these pictures are truly amazing. In a twist of enchantment, they capture me. I am there in them, feeling the temperature, smelling the air, hearing the stillness and then the bird calls. Magnificent. The last comment I want to make (for now 😁) is in regard to your hermeneutic spiral question. I think this is, exactly, how we finish the stride. And I think we are, collectively, in the beginning of that unfolding. I feel that we are witnessing the move to relational being, to living between the poles, and that space is all about questions (not answers). There are few absolutes in the spaces between.
Divine Nectar vibes are greatly appreciated! I’ll connect with you by email about it after the weekend. (Making myself a reminder now!). I’m so glad the selfie gives you a fuller picture of the pictures you see. I love that insight. And it delights me to know that the images take you to the place and felt-sense experience. When an image appears, it asks me to become intimate with what has just arrested me, and then wait for it to reveal itself in this way in front of the camera. Sometimes, the two line up; often they do not. If it gives you a sense of aliveness, then maybe the two lined up.
The beginning of the unfolding: yes, you speak to this exquisitely, as one sensing into and participating from within . . . relationally. “There are few absolutes in the spaces between.” Gorgeous! Nothing I add would add. . . .
Oh yes to all of this, Safar! 🤗♥️ The moving to relational being is so much a reclaiming, a remembering. And lately I've been mulling over the notion of spiralling to gather the wisdom from the collective past and then bringing it into our present. I so agree about social media being short with each other. The idea of being long together settles gently in my bones like a hug from spirit. Connective without urgency. That's where deep intimacy comes from.
First, thank you for this next turn in the hermeneutic spiral! You couldn't possibly go "way beyond Renée's intended meaning"! I'm pure delight that we are together playing in this field!
You write: "I see it as also rooted in a collective knowing of relational being that we once had, lost and now long for, like the concept of 'saudade' I described.
With you and Jenna, some might say (and it is my sense) that this turn in human consciousness, which we are collectively experiencing, is calling up what has always been within, buried by other ways of knowing that came along with consciousness itself. With each what we are calling "turn" in the unfolding of human consciousness, something new arises, eclipsing what was before. What was before of consciousness is not lost; it is obscured. Hence, we know it; we long for it in that way of the nostalgia that you articulate, per 'saudade', a deep yearning for "return of truth." Substack, as you say, feels like 'home' each time we meet one another through the depths of this collective, relational way of being, a recognition to which the innermost says, "yes, this." . . . "Something more enduring . . . than the fake smiles of acquaintance." These times are urgent. Attuned, we have lessening capacity for the insignificant, artificial, and meaningless, which diminish any possibility of true connection.
Thank you for this, Safar! Feel free to take this further, if you are so inclined.
I look forward to your reflections on "eternal return" imagining you researching and pondering for a "Fiertzeside" post. What strikes me as compelling is the intersubjective understanding that encouraged this thread but is, at once, largely ineffable.
First of all it brings me great joy and pleasure to see you 'in person'.
Well Renee, my guides seem to paint a bleak picture today. Please bear with me, it does get better. We crossed a line when we chose to treat land as a commodity and by that the animals, the fish, the fruits and vegetables that were within and finally the people. They felt no longer free, because the price they paid was much higher than those that chose to turn the land into commerce. Now if you want to say you belong, you have to GIVE something of yourself before you can reclaim this. Please do not begrudge this. Mother Earth is asking for you to return something of what has been taken.
You may choose to hold ceremony, ritual, chanting, honouring, respecting your ancestors land. You many choose to gift it by taking away an industry, false habitat, remove foreign objects. Each and every act however small is given as a multitude in return. Places to play, places to grow, places to breath, places to bring up children, places to create, imagine, belief, have hope. Places to roam free. I'll stop there otherwise we could be here for some time............Love Louise
I'm so enchanted that you are enchanted to see me in person, walking out into a morning, as if to stroll over to your home and join you for a cup of tea.
What an honor to have your guides join us in this dialogue, issuing, I sense, an admonition and offering, a mothering redirecting, nudging us away from desecration to consecration, from pillaging to play, from despair to hope. . . . "Places to roam free."
Louise, feel no need to concern about the time we are here together in this discussion thread. As Báyò Akómoláfé writes: "Times are urgent. Let us slow down."
Thank you for sharing this today. I am hesitant to add more. . . .
Thank you so much Renee, my guides turn up here like an excited puppy that can’t wait to be let off the lead. Sometimes I have to politely rein them in 😂
Louise, I'm laughing . . . out loud! Perhaps it is that sometimes they come like puppies when they sense that their eagerness will be met with affections!
Your phrase “intravenous countryside”: wow! Words like perfused, suffused, lifeblood, resuscitated come to me. . . .
Of course, we need not go so far afield as I have gone, as you know so well. We can encounter the “intravenous countryside” in every dandelion or ‘weed’ that happens to insist between the cracks of urban concrete. Even the ‘lowly’ housefly tells us that we all belong . . . together, though we may be less charitable to the mosquito—but they, too, have their place within the whole and an inner impulse to carry on. That we can witness them through our own bodies seems to touch at the experience of "intravenous." We can't think our way into belonging. It's a feeling . . . and filling up--mutually. "Mutually enhancing" as Thomas Berry might say.
You mention medicinal benefit. I’m so glad you bring this to the fold, Pipp. There are some studies that show benefit to the stress response from forest walking. But that is a limited perspective, isn’t it? How does science come close to measuring what we of our own depths know from within? The question is of a different kind, a medicine without measure. I wonder, what is the question? It seems to me that if we found the question––the inner wonder––we might come to our way. . . .
It is true that we will never decide upon the 'reason' we turned away, why some folks decided that decimating those that live with the land, and in their bodies, was the right way to go. It is so hard to know why they would think that was a good idea?
So here we are.
There is a soft, slow groundswell of change coming. People nudging us to look inside, to widen our perspective, and, accept there may be a different way to do this. These people, like you Renee and so many others, give me hope.
The next stride comes from the inside and some people are scared of what lies in there, or perhaps more than fear they simply do not know, they have never been taught to look. We are on the precipice of getting 'sorted out' (OK, that's a bad term but it's what popped into my head). By sorted I mean moving into a better equilibrium both inside and out. But to reach the other side we all have work to do. That effort begins with noticing, softening, and allowing for a different path.
Thank you for the work that you do Sweetie, you are truly changing the world one article or presentation at a time and we appreciate it.
Donna,
You write: “There is a soft, slow groundswell of change coming.” I love that you write “soft.” We are together here in this change, and we are cared for. We need not be afraid. If we look closely, the fear is of uncertainty and of each other, not the change itself. We belong to this change and to one another . . . and the care.
You write: “The next stride comes from the inside and some people are scared of what lies in there, or perhaps more than fear they simply do not know. . . .” As I recall, you spoke of the push in Western society toward happiness in your talk last week. This ‘pursuit of happiness’ is a cancer in the modern human psyche. This cancer keeps us from the fullness of feeling . . . and feeling unfelt by the psyche is feeling expressed through the body, as you and I have discussed. You are giving the gift of this invitation to feel and notice and allow in your work with others, giving them a hand to hold to do this inner work. It is the most important work of our time––inner work. Thank you for your devotion to it.
With love,
Renée
Hello my brilliant, soulful friend. Your reflection on belonging and becoming in word and image has stilled me into a deepening presence. Thoughts, sensations, emotions arise….then settle. What lingers is the experience of being bodied on body. All of us belonging to the earth, herself turning in a hermeneutic spiral of becoming. All of us participating knowingly or unknowingly in the breaking through(mining) of what Gebser refers to as integral consciousness.
Megan,
Brilliant, soulful friend, 🙏 you write “the experience of being bodied on body.” I read this phrase several times, struck by the intimacy—only lovemaking and infant-caregiver bodies are this intimate. The immediacy. The aliveness. The nursing care. The fact of being ‘bodied’ not ‘body’—bodied as a coming into being, not body as a thingness. And yes, I’m so glad you add “the earth, herself turning a hermeneutic spiral of becoming.” A life. A knowing life but as a life, vulnerable and with need, for to be a life is to need. “All of us participating knowingly or unknowingly in breaking through. . . ." Your words need no more from me.
I’m so glad you're here. Thank you.
With love,
Renée
Pipp,
I could not be more enchanted that you circled back to share this. 🙏 Thank you. Chanting "we're at one with the earth, I (we) are made up of stars. . . . we are one'. I personally pick up not even a touch of silly in these words or the fact that you chanted them -- and they helped your headache! Which takes me back to your original comment (above) about nature as medicine. I'm sensing into the experience of chanting and imagining the balm the words became because in uttering them *and* in hearing them, 'we are one' was recalled in your own cells. Medicine for you. Medicine for the earth and stars and all that is. So beautiful. Thank you again.
With love,
Renée
Ah! Thank you for the selfie! For those of us out here in the urbanscape, you are part of the landscape, and a very important part. :-) I love your sense of "belonging" as a replacement for mining. This brings the old purgatory theme right back up - purging the various meanings of "mine" and leaving them back there in the inferno for a truer language. With your emphasis on physiology, mining (in all senses) is quite a horror.
Thank you also for the inviting LaSalle Lake paragraph. I stepped right up and enjoyed the lakeside very much. Beautiful post, as ever. Hope the presentation goes well Thursday. 👍
Tara,
I had not seen taking the selfie this way: ‘you are a part of the landscape’––not that I have not been aware that I am a part of the landscape, but not in this imagistic way of turning the photograph around to the photographer. . . .
Now, purgatory again . . . and words! We come to words from contextually derived meaning (I’m not suggesting something you do not already know, just setting the stage here). So much can be revealed by exploring them and tracing back much further than I typically do in these posts—to their root sound even, understanding that before we read words, we heard words--evolutionarily and developmentally. ‘Mine’, we traced early in this month's series to a common mein, which goes back to the root sound, mu, meaning ‘to sound’. Here’s Gebser: “Another verb by the same root, myein––ambivalent because of the substitution of a short ‘u’––means ‘to close’, specifically, to close the eyes, the mouth, and wounds” (65)
Here, we see not opening (as with mining the earth) but closing, which takes an interesting turn in what comes next per Gebser: “From this root [myein] we have Sanskrit mūkas (with long vowel), meaning ‘mute, silent’, and Latin mutus, with the same meaning. It recurs in Greek in the words mystes, ‘the consecrated’ and mysterion, ‘mysterium’ and later in the Christian era, gave the characteristic stamp of the concept of mysticism, speechless contemplation with closed eyes, that is, eyes turned inward” (65).
How far a word does travel. . . .
Mine as possessive would appear to come from the root me. Me, not as self-reference so much as the formation of the concept ‘to have in mind’. How the two concepts for mine came together is mystery [to me], but this root mein seems the common thread. We see in mein the root me and the 'y' dropped from myein.
I will stop at this turn in the rabbit hole I'm digging, but to say, the exercise can spark wonder and expand horizons of meaning.
I always appreciate what you add.
With love,
Renée
Wow! What a dazzling history of meanings. Thank you for sharing so much of Gebser, who I’m learning about from you.
Dazzling!
Now I am dazzled by a word, this word.
😂 ✨
Love it, Safar!
Renée; "What if how we got here is not so much about a fall but a step not yet fully taken? And suppose that we ourselves extend that longer stride . . . from the inside?" I truly appreciate that point of view, especially now with the world in so much distress. It's so easy to see the human experiment as having gone off the rails; took the wrong turn with the beginning of agriculture. It's so easy to be pessimistic in the face of all the destruction humans have wrought and continue to do to our planet and each other. But is it helpful to see it all through that lens? There really is no right or wrong way to view our evolution from then to now, so why not accept it as it is, and choose to imagine that we will continue to evolve toward harmony with each other and the planet, and that the work toward that end is ultimately internal. It's not about denying the very sad reality of our destructive ways, but choosing to see the long view, as MLK spoke about in terms of the arc of justice. As to the concept of belonging, I think that is where all the destruction ultimately emanates from; that so many feel displaced, isolated, alone and bereft; not a part of the whole, but separate. This leads to despair and too often is defended against by anger and blame, and striking out. Of course, the way most societies are set up creates a class system that leaves so many feeling this despair and loneliness. Again, how easy it is to feel this is all too big to change; that the "haves" will never share with the "have-nots"; that some kind of enormous cataclysmic event needs to happen before it all falls apart and rearranges itself in the "right" way. And perhaps that might be true. Regardless, the true evolutionary event that needs to continue to happen is all internal; how to know in one's bones that everyone belongs to something bigger; to the whole of humanity; to the natural world; to this precious Earth; to God. All that external stuff which can distract us from the truth of who we are must be seen as it is, and we must love and continue to love no matter what. "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other, doesn't make sense."
--Rumi.
Ed,
You write: “There really is no right or wrong way to view our evolution from then to now.” Amen, Brother. This perspective seems to be an important beginning of turning our ways—to cease judging––and “choose to imagine that we will continue to evolve toward harmony. . . and that the work toward that end is ultimately internal” . . . and, I would add, of a mysterious nature, participant in the grand Whole. Over the years, I have come to a growing sense that only a reestablished connection––communion––with Mystery will heal us the inner desecration of feeling “displaced, isolated, alone and bereft." (You and I have discussed this. Thomas Berry insisted "only the sacred will save us.") Communion cannot be thought but comes from presence to the inner impulse of feeling, recognized between self and Mystery, self and Other--even the mosquito who has the same inner impulse "to be" that you and I have. (There's the mosquito again!) Hence, “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing. . . .” Might we meet at the base promise, which is the inner recognition that "they have bodies like we do"? (Andreas Weber).
Thank you, Ed, as always,
With love,
Renée
Your descriptions and pictures brought back some memories from my childhood. Thank you. And "Do we know our own inside? The real truth of it?" This is something I struggle with and also one of the reasons I try to break down cultural constructs in my writing. Sometimes, I think we lie to ourselves more than we do to others. The more I learn, the better I become at discovering what I truly think rather than what society taught me to think, but when it comes to romantic love, I rarely know the real truth of it. I'm constantly confused and possibly afraid to live the truth. I love David Gregory Roberts quote, "There’s truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world."
Nolan,
Your childhood memories of this place must be vivid, what with the magnitude and majesty. What you share about cultural constructs is immensely implicated in the veiled truth of who we are. We are conditioned from the first moments of life to live within the confines of what is ok and therefore expected, as you so well know and explore in Born without Borders. But something of our within is never lost to these constructions. Which echoes the beautiful and at the same time, harrowing passage from David Gregory Roberts. That little black hole of inner knowing, of inner yearning––“We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay.” And so, like love, we get close to this inner truth and we run like hell. We may think we know ourselves, but we don’t, until by some force we cannot will, we come alive, fully alive in a moment--whether with wonder or joy or heartache or. . . . Then we know but not how we think we would know. We may think we know love, but we don’t know love until it breaks us wide open. Then we know love. And here's is the hard ironic truth of it, once we breathe of the breath of this ‘order of truth’, there’s no turning back. Now this 'order', which can seem like every manner of disorder, takes the lead. Gone are we from the illusion of control. Where this something takes us is not always comfortable, “but it does prevent us from hating the world,” and it does add significance and meaning, and maybe, just maybe, we become who we are--which that endless little black hole of possibility endlessly endeavors to assure.
Thank you for this, Nolan.
With love,
Renée
Your comment is now saved in my library so I can return to it whenever I need. Thank you, Renée.
I've now read this piece three times and, each time, have wondered how to comment. In short, this one really does talk to me, that idea and reality of belonging. The way you weave the nature into your words is constantly inspiring and I am so grateful that we can all share in this. Thank you.
Alexander,
Thank you for this, which strikes a profound chord, given what I know of your presence to living Earth, which similarly inspires me. . . .
Warmest,
Renée
Exquisitely profound writing Renée - if I could write you a letter and post it to you too from my tiny place of belonging I would, with pleasure x
Susie,
Thank you. 🙏 How I would love to receive your letter, look upon the squiggles of your lifeworld on the page, and we would meet there . . . and we would belong together, as we do here across these miles on this digital page. Such delight! I am enchanted to recognize that just recently we had not encountered one another, knew nothing of the other, and here, we share, you there on that hill, me out here beyond the comfort zone!
With love,
Renée
In all that isolation, as beautiful as it is, do you ever get scared?
Greetings from Whidbey Island, where after a prolonged summer draught, Autumn's rains have begun.
Sharon,
Do I get scared? Yes. I do. Most of the time, what I fear is in my head. I must work with it. It’s a big part of why I started this journey--to watch myself when fear arises and relate with it anew, recognizing when it is serving to keep me safe and when it is conditioned by something that may keep me from flourishing. It's an exercise in discernment. The body is a divining rod. The senses are attuned to so much more than we are aware running wild in the noise of our minds.
Grizzlies have been a real fear up here in the North Country. At times, I have felt like a caged animal, fearful of going on walks. Bears are very quiet. I alone am quiet. If I am walking, we might chance encounter. That potential is one I am not prepared for.
I’m always glad to receive word from you from Whidbey Island, still one of few places that I could easily never leave. I think of you often, love that you're chiming in here, and can imagine the Autumn rains nourishing the beautiful trees around you.
With love,
Renée
Thanks for this post which delighted my eyes and challenged my mind. I'd never heard of Gebser before, so thanks for introducing him to me.
I'm trying to grapple with this sense of belonging that you are living by your travels through the land. How tied must it be to nature? In other words can a city dweller like me experience it ? The closest I come is walking through Central Park and seeing how it truly belongs to everyone.
David,
It is my absolute pleasure to introduce you to Gebser. I was introduced to him when I was working on my Ph.D. Many people misunderstand him, do not see "Ever-Present Origin" as insightful about where we are and where we might go but as a dense narrative of an historical unfolding of the human. The depth and expanse of the work is lost to this misperception. Jeremy Johnson’s "Seeing through the World" is a good primer to "Ever-Present Origin."
Now, your question about how tied must belonging be to nature is fabulous. It helps us sense into the “within” of nature when we are away from human-constructed environments, but it is not an absolute necessity. I would say that we have to endeavor to be more intimate when in human-constructed settings. Get closer to the living earth. Sit in the grass at Central Park, for instance, and feel the earth holding the weight of you. Get closer still and notice what’s moving around in one square foot. See each of those lives—the grass and the dandelion and the ant and earthworm, each living being—as a life that is a body, a life that has an inner impulse to continue, just like we do. Watch how a flower will turn to face the sun mid-day and by day's end will droop, as if to sleep. It is renewing for tomorrow, just as we do. Observe a spider or bee changing course if your nearing footstep threatens to squash them. Notice how a crow will fly near you to catch a curious glimpse of your face. They will then remember you!
If we can sense into lives this way, lives that come up out of the earth, as we do, then we can sense, too, into the earth itself as living––as a self-organizing system, all these lives like cells in the body of the organism called Earth––and start to experience that this earth belongs to its own life and everyone and we belong to our life and the earth and each other.
I’m so glad you wondered about this. Does my reflection help?
With love,
Renée
Renee,
Thanks so much for this generous reply. I will order "Seeing Through the World" and I love your idea about being still in Central Park. Parts of it are secluded enough that you can imagine you're not in the city. I tend to walk through the park or walk my dog Sophie, but what you suggest is much more intentional and I look forward to trying it.
All my best,
David
David, I would love to read/hear your thoughts on "Seeing Through the World" and being still in Central Park. It's a new inquiry! It occurs to me to wonder if one will feed the other. . . .
Accepting that your inner voice speaks reason was the hardest part for me to overcome. It took me a while to accept this. Listening to that 'whisper' after ignoring it for years was right.
Of course it was.
Will,
Your first sentence reminds me of Pascal’s “The heart knows reason which reason knows little of.” (That’s my paraphrase.) You say it took you a while to accept this, and did it get any easier after knowing it was right? (That’s not a leading question.) Would you change having listened to that ‘whisper’? (Please feel no obligation to say more. It’s wonder on my part about your experience and all of us, myself included, of course.)
For me, I would say that listening is not always easier—my wily will likes what it likes—but it gets my attention more quickly, turns me in the direction I need to go, and has no problem any longer standing there with arms folded over chest, refusing to let me go back that other way. Would I change having listened? Not for a minute. Has it been easy? Not for a minute––most of the time.
"Listening to that 'whisper' after ignoring it for years was right. Of course it was." Thank you, Will.
With love,
Renée
It’s so nice to see your face! I vote for more selfies!
“...abiding together for a long duration, intimating care not exploitation, not annihilation. . .” How beautiful and profound.
Your reflections always make me think about what I believe to be true and whether my actions reflect that. Thank you for posing the important questions.
Christy,
Thank you for cheering on more selfies--this of the crawling out of bed type!
Thank you for sharing this: "make me think about what I believe to be true and whether my actions reflect that." This is beautiful, profound. And simple, isn't it, though not easy, but we keep riding that edge between what's true on the inside and what we express of that moment-by-moment truth . . . and why.
I so appreciate what you offer--always.
With love,
Renée
Such exquisite reflections. I like to break apart the word “belong” into “be with longing.” You say, “Do we know our own inside? The real truth of it? Not what or how we’re told to be or what or how we think we want to be, but the inner belonging to life that yearns to be.” Or in other words, the longing to be true, whole, and connected to all of life, is that possibly what brings us into belonging? It’s part tragedy part exaltation. The longing—a pathos of living on this earth, born from duality where we are both one, and also separate. ❤️
Kimberly,
You write: "I like to break apart the word 'belong' into 'be with longing'. This is beautiful in so many ways and with each word: Be. With. Longing. Each has its own potency.
Then you take us into the spiral that we're most afraid to enter and at the same time what tugs and pulls at every turn:
"Or in other words, the longing to be true, whole, and connected to all of life"
"is that possibly what brings us into belonging?" Be. With. Longing. >>> to then go the long duration with. . . .
to go the long duration of longing with? Longing is a force, an existential force, as you offer here:
"It’s part tragedy part exaltation. The longing—a pathos of living on this earth, born from duality where we are both one, and also separate." Words such as these offered by someone who understands. . . .
Thank you for this.
With love,
Renée
Safar,
Thank you for sharing about 'saudade'. I can almost hear the yearning in the music/poetry.
It would take me a decade to write all my thoughts on this wonderful letter, Renee, so I will try to condense. 💕 Firstly, I'll be sending you Divine Nectar vibes on Thursday that your presentation is exactly everything you want it to be. I would for sure love to hear more about it! And thank you for the selfie too. I love being able to hold the image of your face being on the other side of the camera. Which brings me to the second thing I want to mention...these pictures are truly amazing. In a twist of enchantment, they capture me. I am there in them, feeling the temperature, smelling the air, hearing the stillness and then the bird calls. Magnificent. The last comment I want to make (for now 😁) is in regard to your hermeneutic spiral question. I think this is, exactly, how we finish the stride. And I think we are, collectively, in the beginning of that unfolding. I feel that we are witnessing the move to relational being, to living between the poles, and that space is all about questions (not answers). There are few absolutes in the spaces between.
Jenna,
Divine Nectar vibes are greatly appreciated! I’ll connect with you by email about it after the weekend. (Making myself a reminder now!). I’m so glad the selfie gives you a fuller picture of the pictures you see. I love that insight. And it delights me to know that the images take you to the place and felt-sense experience. When an image appears, it asks me to become intimate with what has just arrested me, and then wait for it to reveal itself in this way in front of the camera. Sometimes, the two line up; often they do not. If it gives you a sense of aliveness, then maybe the two lined up.
The beginning of the unfolding: yes, you speak to this exquisitely, as one sensing into and participating from within . . . relationally. “There are few absolutes in the spaces between.” Gorgeous! Nothing I add would add. . . .
With love,
Renée
Oh yes to all of this, Safar! 🤗♥️ The moving to relational being is so much a reclaiming, a remembering. And lately I've been mulling over the notion of spiralling to gather the wisdom from the collective past and then bringing it into our present. I so agree about social media being short with each other. The idea of being long together settles gently in my bones like a hug from spirit. Connective without urgency. That's where deep intimacy comes from.
Jenna and Safar,
Something stirs in this recognition of being long together. . . . "That's where deep intimacy comes from." Exquisite.
Safar,
Just replied to Jenna's comment with this:
Jenna and Safar,
Something stirs in this recognition of being long together. . . . "That's where deep intimacy comes from." Exquisite.
Safar,
First, thank you for this next turn in the hermeneutic spiral! You couldn't possibly go "way beyond Renée's intended meaning"! I'm pure delight that we are together playing in this field!
You write: "I see it as also rooted in a collective knowing of relational being that we once had, lost and now long for, like the concept of 'saudade' I described.
With you and Jenna, some might say (and it is my sense) that this turn in human consciousness, which we are collectively experiencing, is calling up what has always been within, buried by other ways of knowing that came along with consciousness itself. With each what we are calling "turn" in the unfolding of human consciousness, something new arises, eclipsing what was before. What was before of consciousness is not lost; it is obscured. Hence, we know it; we long for it in that way of the nostalgia that you articulate, per 'saudade', a deep yearning for "return of truth." Substack, as you say, feels like 'home' each time we meet one another through the depths of this collective, relational way of being, a recognition to which the innermost says, "yes, this." . . . "Something more enduring . . . than the fake smiles of acquaintance." These times are urgent. Attuned, we have lessening capacity for the insignificant, artificial, and meaningless, which diminish any possibility of true connection.
Thank you for this, Safar! Feel free to take this further, if you are so inclined.
Renée
Safar,
I look forward to your reflections on "eternal return" imagining you researching and pondering for a "Fiertzeside" post. What strikes me as compelling is the intersubjective understanding that encouraged this thread but is, at once, largely ineffable.
I hope your presentation is well received and opens up new dialogues!
Caitlin,
Thank you for this. That would be my hope, too, that it is evocative enough to open new dialogues. I suspect this group will be quite open.
So glad to see you here. Thank you for chiming in.
With love,
Renée
First of all it brings me great joy and pleasure to see you 'in person'.
Well Renee, my guides seem to paint a bleak picture today. Please bear with me, it does get better. We crossed a line when we chose to treat land as a commodity and by that the animals, the fish, the fruits and vegetables that were within and finally the people. They felt no longer free, because the price they paid was much higher than those that chose to turn the land into commerce. Now if you want to say you belong, you have to GIVE something of yourself before you can reclaim this. Please do not begrudge this. Mother Earth is asking for you to return something of what has been taken.
You may choose to hold ceremony, ritual, chanting, honouring, respecting your ancestors land. You many choose to gift it by taking away an industry, false habitat, remove foreign objects. Each and every act however small is given as a multitude in return. Places to play, places to grow, places to breath, places to bring up children, places to create, imagine, belief, have hope. Places to roam free. I'll stop there otherwise we could be here for some time............Love Louise
Louise,
I'm so enchanted that you are enchanted to see me in person, walking out into a morning, as if to stroll over to your home and join you for a cup of tea.
What an honor to have your guides join us in this dialogue, issuing, I sense, an admonition and offering, a mothering redirecting, nudging us away from desecration to consecration, from pillaging to play, from despair to hope. . . . "Places to roam free."
Louise, feel no need to concern about the time we are here together in this discussion thread. As Báyò Akómoláfé writes: "Times are urgent. Let us slow down."
Thank you for sharing this today. I am hesitant to add more. . . .
With love,
Renée
Thank you so much Renee, my guides turn up here like an excited puppy that can’t wait to be let off the lead. Sometimes I have to politely rein them in 😂
Louise, I'm laughing . . . out loud! Perhaps it is that sometimes they come like puppies when they sense that their eagerness will be met with affections!
Entirely true Renee x
Pipp,
Your phrase “intravenous countryside”: wow! Words like perfused, suffused, lifeblood, resuscitated come to me. . . .
Of course, we need not go so far afield as I have gone, as you know so well. We can encounter the “intravenous countryside” in every dandelion or ‘weed’ that happens to insist between the cracks of urban concrete. Even the ‘lowly’ housefly tells us that we all belong . . . together, though we may be less charitable to the mosquito—but they, too, have their place within the whole and an inner impulse to carry on. That we can witness them through our own bodies seems to touch at the experience of "intravenous." We can't think our way into belonging. It's a feeling . . . and filling up--mutually. "Mutually enhancing" as Thomas Berry might say.
You mention medicinal benefit. I’m so glad you bring this to the fold, Pipp. There are some studies that show benefit to the stress response from forest walking. But that is a limited perspective, isn’t it? How does science come close to measuring what we of our own depths know from within? The question is of a different kind, a medicine without measure. I wonder, what is the question? It seems to me that if we found the question––the inner wonder––we might come to our way. . . .
With love,
Renée