Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit

It is a law of physics that all matter is conserved—our bodies return, return, return. This is the message of ecologists, and of mystics—that each life is radically connected to all of life, always, with nothing so small that it can be lost.

Dying-as-spiral, with no set moment of absolute death, is in some way true for all organisms—cellular death is a long process, with unknown holistic value to body and spirit.

Whitman answered his own question: That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

It is certain to be countercultural and counterproductive according to all usual measures—those we have been taught, those that can be labeled with a sum or a number.

We hold the ten thousand things of the troubled earth in mind and in spirit while offering the few beautiful things that we, and we alone, are able to offer with our ten little fingers.

Our individual charism cannot be prescribed, proscribed, or even thought up in our head. It can, however, be listened for—a rooted, ongoing, reciprocal conversation with the wild earth—a spiral of inward, receptive stillness, and outward, creative action.

It is useful to think of it this way: as the particular grace that is ours to give freely, with devotion, with service, with joy, though not without hardship.

We each have our own calling, our own charism—the unique gift of our own life and creativity.

The heart and life of individual agency has everything to do with broader systemic and ecological change.