Swirling white fans of water spilled forth above my head like a palm opening, offering. Each rhythmic extension was syncopated with a backwards sucking rattle, building into a crescendo as the millions of tiny twinkling sand flecks were drawn back under the skirts of another thunderous breaker. I felt the depth of the Pacific: miles upon miles of heavy, swift, roiling currents and storms, rich with teeming life and frightening, mythical beasts.
The power of this depth and weight now met land with all the fury and desire native to opposites. No wonder shorelines have been a lasting metaphor for human love relationships.
I let my mind unravel over these impressions, periodically shaken awake by a swift rush of saltwater beneath me. The turning planet, the miracle of oceans, the power of depth in water and in space; these forces of creation are far vaster than imagination can contain.
Physicists now understand the physical universe to be constructed, not from building blocks of minuscule matter, but from pure energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed. I thought of Prince William Sound. Apparently the destruction of this vital ecosystem caused an economic boom somewhere - for the manufacturers of oil spill cleanup technology, certainly not for the subsistence fisherpeople of the region.
We are living outside our means, transforming the energies of the planet in irresponsible fashion, to a degree and in a direction which leads to ecosystem collapse. But we call it progress.
How rarely we actually experience the planet! How rare is the physical sensation of gravity, magnetism, the understanding of the vastness and causality of our lives! Our personal life dramas carry us exponentially into gigantic social dramas. Meanwhile, the ecological context for these human epics fades further and further from us.
It is phenomenal the levels of psychological denial that humans will strive for to avoid becoming engulfed in planetary consciousness. Understandably, too, the overwhelming creative and destructive power of the universe is just too much for many.
Human dominion is the cornerstone of modern global corporate capitalism. The thrill, the need to control nature underlies all mass agricultural, technological and economic endeavors; from biotechnology to S and L bailouts, from habitat conservation plans to international sanctions. Would we be so foolish if we understood our causal and interdependent relationship with the universe?
In the final days of the millennium all becomes symbolic. When they've cut down all the trees around the Earth First! tree sit, most activists would consider the battle lost and leave. Julia Butterfly is teaching us all a little bit more about "no compromise" as she weathers the world in lone Luna. We are speaking for life, for humility in the face of life, for the power of the Creator. We are talking about our place in the universe.
The rhythms of the sea continue. As the spray settled into my hair, the beat and shirr of water on sand wore into my mind, eroding those places wherein I had been harboring resistance to deep awareness. This cycling planet is more than our home; it is us, in all our horror and glory, our insignificance, our divine connectedness. The spark of light on each grain of sand is testimony to the wondrous reality of aliveness. May it always remain so.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1998
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited