Sensing the Web

Earth day was created in 1970 to encourage all of us to protect the earth. Yet since that time our sense of hopelessness and grief about the challenges and changes to our earth have led not to the kinds of collective action needed to change course, but to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness.

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:

“One otherwise unremarkable morning I gave the students in my General Ecology class a survey. Among other things, they were asked to rate their understanding of the negative interactions between humans and the environment. Nearly every one of the two hundred students said confidently that humans and nature are a bad mix. These were third-year students who had selected a career in environmental protection, so the response was, in a way, not very surprising. They were well schooled in the mechanics of climate change, toxins in the land and water, and the crisis of habitat loss. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was “none.”

I was stunned. How is it possible that in twenty years of education they cannot think of any beneficial relationships between people and the environment? Perhaps the negative examples they see every day— brownfields, factory farms, suburban sprawl—truncated their ability to see some good between humans and the earth. …. When we talked about this after class, I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like.

How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like?” [Braiding Sweetgrass p. 6]

This Earth Day I want to disrupt the idea that nature is better left alone. The web of life holds all living beings, including us. We have always been connected to that web, we still are, and we always will be.

This Earth Day I want to encourage us to pay attention the delightful, interesting and curious parts of the web of life, because it is a rewarding and important practice for noticing and healing our relationships to our neighbors, and because it is just fun. When I hear Mary Oliver’s poem about the toad, Look Again, I imagine her raptured gazing at her neighboring critters, noticing those little delightful things she had never noticed before.

Where we place our attention has power. Power to shape our own thoughts feelings and actions, power to nurture relationships, power to act effectively in the world.

My husband is always giving me updates about the construction projects he sees in downtown Ithaca on his walk to work. How did I not notice? I wondered as I made my own walk downtown to the library- and found my attention gravitating to the birds calling in the trees, and the new flowers planted by the city garden volunteers. Eric knows which cars our neighbors drive, I notice which trees the squirrels live in. Both of us discover good information about what’s happening in different aspects of our community. As a people who include among our UU Principles “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” It’s good to pay attention to what’s happening in the non-human parts of the web as well as the human.

Julie Good, wrote after participating in a program called “Sense of Place “All my life I’ve been an urban person. I learn where I am on the grid of sidewalks and freeways, and feel a bit lost if I am away from the grid. Through [Sense of Place] I’ve come to see how we inhabit and share a watershed. To think of my place, and to see the grid fading and the watershed standing out, has been an amazing shift in perspective for me.” [Exploring a Sense of Place p. 48]

When we shift our attention, it can shift our perspective. Over the years I have been amazed that when I pay attention to just about any living thing it reveals itself, and its relationship to others, in surprising ways. So, I invite you to consider a practice of paying attention, noticing, wondering as a way to connect to the web of life, to spirit of life, and to yourself.

One tried and true practice is to find a “sit spot” – a place where you can just sit quietly for whatever time feels right to you- maybe just a few minutes, or maybe you could really settle in for 20 minutes or half an hour to let the birds and other critters relax and go back to their normal behavior. Some folks will do this out in nature, but I’ve found even on my front porch in downtown Ithaca I can learn a lot about trees and squirrels and birds and what it’s like for them to live in our little city.

My friend Aileen had a similar practice- she took the same walk every day for years, and noticed the cycles of the seasons and the cycles of the years as she walked- how trees grew, how the peepers peeped.

Whether we chose a sit spot, or a regular walking route, we just open our awareness to the living things we see, and get to know them in their particularity.

Earlier this year I told you about the trees on my block, and how I’ve grown to know them, to admire them and see the gift they are to the neighborhood, to humans, squirrels, birds and lichen of my little ecosystem.

When I hear, then, about clear cutting of old growth forest, I sometimes feel sad and powerless. I can send a check or write a letter, now that my heart has been touched by my neighbor trees, but the problem feels too big for little me to fix.

But when I turn my attention to the honey locust, the stately maple, the flowering plum who are my neighbors, I feel more empowered. When I pass a young tree that has outgrown the protective cage the city puts around a new planting, it’s easy and natural to snap a photo on my phone and send it to the City Forrester. How lovely to come back around later in the week to see the constrictive cage gone. Like how if you know which car your neighbor drives, you can text them if they accidentally leave their headlights on.

Not everyone loves to geek out on trees- what interests you?

Some of you garden, some of you fish. It’s hard not to love gazing at a lake or wading in a creek if you are lucky enough to have one handy.
Is it toads? Birds? Fireflies?
Clouds? Wind? Don’t get me started!
What interests you? What do you want to pay attention to this season?

Starhawk encourages us, while we are practicing paying attention to the web, “with your attention on what is around you, say to yourself, “I wonder…”

I wonder what attracts that bug to that flower?”
I wonder why there are 2 different colors of rock in that streambank?

Starkhawk says “This is a great exercise to use with kids. You might ask then, “How many I wonders can you find in five minutes”’ [ The Earth Path p. 67]

It can be nice to learn the names of things, or researching the answers to your wonders but it’s not required if that bogs you down. I often just use descriptive names for things- puffy clouds – the little purple flowers, little brown birds. And of course there are books and Facebook groups and YouTube videos on just about anything you could love, but the practice is always go back to the thing itself. As John James Audubon wrote “When the bird and the book disagree, believe the bird.” Remember, the goal here is not to become an expert, just to be a friendly neighbor. Ordinary people like us are forever learning new things about their niche in the web of life. For example in 1973, a fencing contractor in Australia spotted the bridled nail tail wallaby, which everyone had thought was extinct, and alerted authorities. “The Queensland Government bought the property to protect the few hundred wallabies that remained, and it became part of Taunton National Park.” [i] Your neighborhood, your ecosystem is amazing and precious. The same way we keep an eye out for our human neighbors, it becomes natural to keep an eye out for all our neighbors in the web of life.

Mary Oliver writes in her beloved poem “The Summer Day” shares an encounter with a grasshopper:

“This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,…”

This year as spring unfolds and turns into summer, I encourage you to pay attention to the web around you. To notice your non-human neighbors, and let them reveal themselves to you in all their unique beauty.

---

[i] https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2018/04/meet-the-wallaby-that-was-saved-by-womans-day-magazine/