Earthlings Phone Home
This is my gratitude blog for all things rooted (both emotionally and literally) in love and in life. Going alphabetically, we’re on “E” for Earthlings.
Have you gone a while between phone calls to a loved one? Maybe a few weeks, a few months, even a year or more—whether because of busy-ness or hurt, complacency or discomfort. Suddenly, their voice is in your ear. Whether you share a laugh, a story, sad or glad news, love for them pumps through your heart, through every cell, and spins out to the farthest reaches of your soul.
If that call was to Home, to Mom, she may have irritated you with reminders to act responsibly, threw out old adages and unsolicited advice, or shared bad news. I hope the love between you swamps all but the message you most need to hear.
With this essay, I’m phoning our Home, our Mom, this precious little blue bubble, Earth. Our planet is called Mother across many cultures for good reason. Umbilical cords of air, gravity, food, water and all that supports life never separate. All our lives we and our loved ones are bound to her and her miraculous processes. Astronauts stretch the cord but must carry Earth basics with them to support their lives. We are Earthlings first, humans second. My hope is to bring some solace, some compassion to this moment.
As I write this, we’re in the new reality of ‘sheltering in place’ due to COVID 19. Here in northeastern Minnesota it’s still winter. Earth’s skin is beneath several feet of ice-crusted snow. During scary times, no matter how old we are, most of us want our mommies. I yearned for summer. I wanted to find a dry place beneath a big white pine, her larger roots forming a basket of smaller roots with duff like the down mattress in a cradle. My thought was to meditate on Momma Earth for a while and then share the experience. Took some time before I realized my blood pressure was dropping and I was breathing more deeply just by imagining lying down under the trees. Even though I can’t experience the perfume of the fallen needles directly, just imagining disturbing the needle layers with my fingers brings the scent to me. I lie down in this remembered cradle and white pine works her magic. Have you noticed this? Certain trees shed peace like oxygen. Now I know, peace is woven into the memory as much as the pine scent. I’m patting the ground beside me. You are welcome to lie down here too. Take a deep breath.
In my mind, I hear a red squirrel’s nails scrabbling up the grooved bark. His chirr of irritation at my presence falls down through the spiraling branches far above me. I can’t see him, but his outsized indignation and tail shaking make me smile. My thoughts follow the gentle lift of the branches. The light falls gently green through the canopy. White pine’s needles are soft and flexible. They grow in bundles of five, which in this moment seems a lovely number. May you find five lovely thoughts and five lovely people to hold in your heart today.
We Earthlings are so tiny and so short-lived. We’re like poets. We find particular bits, the details in front of us, and through those details we find the universe. Lying under my imagined tree I feel some little creepy crawly working its way from my collar down into my shirt and I wonder at its view of this ‘world.’ Am I the Rocky Mountains? A gust of wind tosses the branches above me. Does the wind carry dust particles from the Sahara Desert? Microbes are schooling us in our illusion of firm boundaries. COVID 19 has permeated country, state, county, and city borders. We are finding that even our bodies do not have firm boundaries. There is access and egress--sharing whether we want to share or not. Now we know, ignoring our web of interdependence does not make our connections any less real.
I am in support of isolating as a means to flatten the curve of contagion. AND I hope that our best instincts, to act as a community, are not also flattened. White pines grow where soil is so thin that ledge rock dictates the shape of their roots. These gatherers of nutrients and rain embrace the rock. They grow outward in great circles, intertwining with roots of other trees, anchored to Earth by weaving handholds. If the pine is toppled by an especially fierce wind, other trees topple too. Their root ball raises a circle of soil and boulders and roots. The granite beneath is white and pink until sunlight and lichens darken it to gold and black. Gradually dirt washes out of the roots and the lesson of handholding is left. The trick is not to see the lesson as an admonition to avoid handholding. The lesson is to see that all around this particular topple are trees still well-anchored by growing together.
Right now, we Earthling humans increase our own and loved ones’ safety by avoiding physical hand-holding. We’re getting creative about greeting each other without handshakes. Personally, I like a hand over the heart gesture—if only I could remember to use it across the awkward distances we are keeping. My hope is we carry away the lesson that our roots are deeply interwoven. We don’t need handshakes to feel our connectedness now. I want us to remember that everyone having access to paid sick days and healthcare increases the health of all of us. Some communities are improving shelters and increasing access to housing for the homeless. Leaders noticed the potential for sickness to run rampant through these folks. Necessary as large shelter bunkrooms have been, people sleeping in them with little or no separation are now recognized as unhealthy for all of us.
We are acknowledging schools as sources of food, safety, and care for many children. We are seeing teachers striving to find new ways to offer education to their students. Teachers are finally revealed as the dedicated heroes they have always been. The courage and value of grocery store clerks, mental health therapists, healthcare providers, child and elder care providers, truckers, and emergency services are glowing in the spotlight right now. Thank you, Dear Heroes.
Oxytocin, known as the ‘love hormone’ is on my mind. It’s released when we shake hands and hug other people. Providing daycare for my toddler granddaughter, I’m probably getting good doses of oxytocin, but what about other Earthlings? They might be getting a little low in our isolation huddles. I suspect oxytocin is also released in our bodies when we consciously touch a tree or the Earth. Does it pump if we are just imagining holding hands with someone or lying under a tree? Whatever is happening on a cellular level, I feel greater trust when I imagine being cradled by roots. When I rest my attention on both the ant in my collar and the wind bearing dust from the other side of the world, I feel love. When I put my hand over my heart, I wish you joy. Breathing in the smell of pine needles, I am grateful beyond words for our little blue bubble, Earth.
Thank you, Dear Momma Earth, for all that you give us, supporting our lives with the crazy countless miracles you offer with every breath of every Earthling. May we remember to phone Home once in a while, stretching out on the ground (for real or in our minds) for a humble and larger perspective. May we take to heart the lessons you want us to remember.
My “Love With Roots” E list today: Earth, Earthlings, earth (as in dirt)
Images are by CelinRebecca at Patina Photography on FB.
I enjoyed so many wonderful ‘resources’ while I was mulling over this topic. I’m sharing just a few links here:
“Questions for a Resilient Future” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4nUobJEEWQ
Music by Nahko and Medicine for the People: “Black as Night” (I believe in the good things coming): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkGBLLjAXEA
Earthlings: Astronomer Jill Tarter from On Being interview, calls all of us earthlings. https://onbeing.org/programs/jill-tarter-it-takes-a-cosmos-to-make-a-human/
Carl Sagan’s “Blue Dot:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5FwsblpT8
