The Childhood Illusion
When we're children, we naturally believe we're the center of the universe. A parent's anger, a family's disruption, a divorce—the child assumes they caused it. I must have done something wrong. If only I'd been better, they wouldn't have fought. This isn't narcissism; it's a developmental stage, a necessary phase of early consciousness where we can't yet distinguish between correlation and causation, between our actions and the independent lives of those around us.

Then comes the awakening—sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden—when we realize our parents are people. They have interior lives we'll never fully know. They had conflicts and passions and disappointments before we existed. Their relationship with each other operates on frequencies we cannot control. Mother has her own story. Father has his. Their shifting dynamics, their growing apart or growing together, unfolds according to forces far larger than a child's behavior.

This realization is painful. It means accepting our smallness. But it's also liberating. The child who believed they broke their parents' marriage can finally set down that crushing, impossible burden. They become, instead, a participant in a family system—connected, influential, loved, but not responsible for controlling everything around them.

Our Species in Adolescence
Humanity is living through this same developmental passage right now, and we're not handling it well.

For centuries, we've operated from the assumption that we are the center of all that matters. The Earth exists for us. Other species are resources, obstacles, or backdrop. The soil, the forests, the intricate web of microbial life beneath our feet—all of it exists to serve human flourishing. We've acted as if the planet revolves around us, as if our needs justify any sacrifice we demand of other life.
And like a child who believes their tantrum controls their parents, we've told ourselves we have dominion, control, power. We've confused impact with mastery.

Now reality is teaching us otherwise, and some of us are responding with tantrums.

The Concrete Consequences
Consider what we've done from that center-of-the-universe mindset:
We've poured concrete and asphalt across billions of acres, smothering the living soil beneath. That soil once teemed with microorganisms, fungi, insects, and plant roots—a breathing, carbon-sequestering, water-filtering community of life. We covered it over, creating heat islands, disrupting water cycles, killing the very systems that regulate temperature and weather.

Yes, carbon emissions matter. But we've also physically replaced green, living, cooling surfaces with heat-absorbing stone and tar. We've clear-cut forests that took centuries to develop their intricate relationships. We've planted monocultures of trees we find useful, with no consideration for the birds, insects, fungi, and mammals that need diversity to survive.

We've designed transportation systems that require roads—millions of miles of them—fragmenting habitats, creating barriers, compacting soil. We've never seriously asked: Does it have to be this way? Could we float on air currents instead of crushing earth beneath rubber and steel? Could we work with the landscape instead of paving over it?

We haven't asked these questions because we haven't seen ourselves as part of a system. We've seen ourselves as the system's purpose.

The Tantrum Phase
The resistance we're seeing now—the denial, the anger, the desperate clinging to old ways—this is the tantrum of a species being forced to grow up.
We're not the problem. Climate change is a hoax. We can't change how we live. We need what we need.

Underneath that resistance is terror. If we're not the center, if we're not in control, if the planet doesn't exist to serve us—then who are we? What's our role? How do we matter?

Children throwing tantrums aren't evil. They're scared. They're confronting the loss of a comforting illusion. They're grieving their imagined power.
But maturity requires we move through that grief.

Real Power, Real Agency
Here's what the child doesn't understand until they grow up: Letting go of the illusion of control doesn't mean losing power. It means discovering real agency.
When we understand our role within a system—when we see how we actually fit, how our actions ripple outward, how we can support rather than obstruct—we tap into genuine power. Not the power of domination, but the power of contribution. Not the power to control outcomes, but the power to participate meaningfully in what emerges.

The teenager who stops trying to control their parents and instead builds authentic relationships with them discovers they have more influence, more connection, more satisfaction than when they were demanding and manipulating.

The same is true for our species.

When we reseat ourselves in the web of life—when we see ourselves as part of rather than apart from—everything changes. We can ask: How does this forest want to grow? What does this watershed need? How can we move through this landscape without destroying it?

We can design with the land instead of against it. We can support the relationships between species instead of severing them. We can help systems thrive, knowing that when they thrive, we thrive within them.

The Gift of Connection
The shift from center to participant isn't a loss—it's an expansion.
Children believe control brings safety. Adults learn that connection brings meaning.

When we contribute thoughtfully, when our presence supports rather than depletes, when we help others flourish—that's when we feel the deepest satisfaction. That's when we experience our value not as conquerors, but as careful, creative members of a community much larger and older than ourselves.
This is the maturation our species is being called to. Not to become less important, but to become differently important. Not to lose our agency, but to discover what agency actually means.

We are not the center of the web of life. We are one thread among millions, each of us essential, each of us connected, each of us capable of either strengthening or weakening the whole.

The Invitation
Growing up is hard. Letting go of comforting illusions hurts. Accepting that we've caused harm through our childhood ignorance brings grief and shame.
But on the other side of that passage lies something better than control: belonging.

We belong here. Not as rulers, but as relatives. Not as the point of it all, but as participants in something vast and beautiful and beyond our full comprehension.
The question isn't whether we'll make this shift. Reality is already making it for us. The question is whether we'll make it consciously, with grace and wisdom, or whether we'll kick and scream the whole way.

I'm choosing consciousness. I'm choosing to learn what it means to be part of life rather than the center of life.

Join me.

Written by Kathryn Alexander, and Claude

Most of us are concerned with flooding, and fire, so we forget the need for rain. Rain is a hidden need that is directly connected to flooding, but that connection is not obvious. There are two statistics I’d like to share that, for me, are quite frightening: the first is we have lost 2, 620 Gigatons of fresh water from the land, world-wind, in the past 17 years. A gigaton is a billion tons of water. Why is that important?

Water is in basically three places, the ocean, air (clouds, mist), and the soil. Of those three, only water in the soil is useful to humans, and to most of the life we see and value. It is life on land that made humanity possible, and to live on land we need water in the soil. Water in the soil makes plants possible and plants make rain possible, as well as provide food for us, AND the movement of water from the soil, through plants in one big way the temperature of the Earth is managed.
Anastassia Makarieva makes this point in her Substack: “The buffering effect of ecosystems on temperature is tied to how they handle water — both locally through transpiration and at larger scales through the regulation of atmospheric moisture transport (the biotic pump). Yet, water seems to be a prohibited word when discussing the reciprocal links between climate and biodiversity.”
The second is our use of aquifers. A recent article in Popular Mechanics stated, “The study included data from 1993 through 2010, and showed that the pumping of as much as 2,150 gigatons of groundwater has caused a change in the Earth’s tilt of roughly 31.5 inches. The pumping is largely for irrigation and human use, with the groundwater eventually relocating to the oceans.”
Aquifers have taken millions of years to form and in just a very few years, 17 to be exact, we’ve begun to deplete them, and there’s no quick way to restore them. They are restored by water in the soil. Water that needs time to percolate down, being filtered and cleaned as it goes. If we continue as we are, soon all the water will be in the ocean, and life on land will be non-existent, or certainly not as we now know it.
Our casual disregard for water will be our undoing. The good news is that we can shift our impact by ensuring that water stays in the soil. This is something that anyone can do and that all of us need to do. At Soil Smart – Soil Wise, we work with residents to make the soil they have responsibility for water rich. Given the number of people in a city, that can have a significant impact. But this is a huge issue, so making changes at scale is necessary. It is for this reason that we work with cities to rethink what they can do to keep the water they get as rain. Through wise policies and clever incentives, cities can have a quick and deep impact on their local climate, creating cooler environments, throughout the city, because the soil holds water. Cities have another part to play, as well.
Who knew that developers could become climate heroes? In our work, here at Soil Smart-Soil Wise, we have created a team that knows how to heal the Earth by keeping the water we get as rain and working with the sun and wind using solar design, from initial design to finished build, cooling the community it creates. By building Resilient Housing, developers can become a big part of the army fighting climate change while shifting our cities from the hot deathtraps they now are, to vibrant, lush communities able to withstand and even help manage the heating temperatures with which we are now dealing.

Nature works with non-linear change, so what happens in cities will impact their region and the rainfall they support will happen up wind. By keeping rain in their soil ,cities will create a cooler environment, calling the rain. This is how forest do it, so by replacing forests, using the Miyawaki mini-forest method, they can also replace the missing plant part of this system (the biotic pump) in ways that will benefit the entire region. This is something developers can do, as well, with good resilient design.

Keeping the rain we get though healthy soils ability to hold water, planting, so roots help manage the soil and leaves put water back into the air, designing the land to help water slow, spread and sink, thus replenishing the aquifers, and building to ensure a reduced need for energy we have a recipe for resilience. Heat evaporates water! We need a strategy to keep water in the soil, where it is available for all life on land, where it cools the climate and manages our temperature, and where it has an opportunity to settle down into the aquifers, once again.
These problems seem intractable: drought, fires, flooding, but they are so tightly tied to how water moves on our planet, that WE have an opportunity to make a real difference in practical, measurable terms by simply following nature. If we act as she does and allow her millions of years old design of the biotic pump to rebuild, then we will flourish.

I had this thought this morning, that worship is the key to life. Now, I know when I think about worship, and maybe others join me in this, I think of churches, I think of sitting in pews. It's sort of a ritualistic thing that I’ve done, and that's one approach to worship, I think. The other that comes to mind is supplication, where we're bowing down, we're becoming less than the object of our devotion, minimizing our importance, and making the object of our devotion more important. And that's an approach I’ve done, as well.
 
But there's a third, which sort of gets intermingled with the others, but I don't think it's really thought of in the right way, or it's not understood completely, is maybe a better way of saying this. But the other part of worship is praise. And praise, in my opinion, is really the heart of worship. Really appreciating deeply, with great gratitude, the other.
 
I think that's really important because everything is other. When we think of worship, we tend to exclude everything else except one, especially in the Western world where we have a single deity.
 
I believe that the living world worships constantly. It functions in a state of great appreciation for the other, with immense gratitude, and curiosity, and awe at what the other can manage that it itself cannot. And that is true for every single living thing on the planet. We all, every living thing on the planet, has this superpower, something only it can do. And so worship is the process of noticing that in the other and being deeply, euphorically, joyously happy that that exists, and then expressing that feeling. That's what praise is about. It's not hollow. It's not sanctimonious. It's the actual recognition of the gift the other offers and being aware of how astounding that is and how precious.
 
So think a moment about how that would change your life. If you notice the water coming out of your tap and how amazing it is. Water is just astonishingly awesome. Or you notice the cricket on the front step and begin to really appreciate how amazing a creature it is. How perfectly oriented to its place on the planet it is. How much it contributes to life on the planet. And if you don't understand that, then maybe a little research is in order. Every living critter contributes to life on the planet. That in itself is awesome and worthy of a song of praise.
 
To begin to live our days with a deep appreciation of the tree in front, of the rose bush at the side of the house, of the way we're able to communicate using technology. Ah, yes. I could say more about technology, but I still appreciate it when it truly serves, and I would be very sad to lose the internet. We are gifted all the time with amazing things. When we take the life in our world for granted or dismiss them as unimportant or beneath us in some way, we not only diminish our relationships with them, we diminish ourselves. We only become part of the cycle of life when we're in gratitude, when we appreciate the other, when we're open and responsive to the needs of the other, which only comes through gratitude and appreciation.
 
By being blind to the magnificence of life, we create our own sense of ennui, our own sense of loss, and being more or less a boat adrift in the sea because we're not connected. Connection only comes through appreciation, through gratitude, through wonder.
 
Those avenues of expression allow for reciprocity. We are not, as a species, very involved in reciprocity amongst ourselves, let alone the rest of the planet. I do find that other cultures other than the Western culture, however, tend to be more in tune with reciprocity, at least in terms of their own family or their tribal or community situation. But it sort of gets tattered at the edges when it expands beyond immediate experience. Not always. We're very generous to other people and cultures under strife and stress. That opens up a little piece of reciprocity. But that pore opens and closes. It's not a constant stream.
 
I think we feel that a constant stream of giving would be depleting in some way. And I think that's true if we think of it as a constant stream of giving. But reciprocity is a circle. It's a cycle. It's a give and a take. It is NOT a give and take, it’s a give and receive – receiving is very different from taking. We tend to think of it in a linear process. I give, you receive, but it's a nonlinear process. You give and I give to somebody else and receive from a third party.
 
It's that open exchange, open responsiveness that keeps those juices going. And that, for me, is an act of worship. Reciprocity is definitely an act of worship. It is really recognizing both the gift and the need in the other and stepping in to fill that gap, however that looks.
 
I do believe that being in a space of worship is a key to life. It is what stimulates our sense of meaningfulness, of purpose. We begin to feel a part of the whole, so our sense of belonging is stimulated. We feel so empty, us in the Western world, especially the white us in the Western world. So much at sea, so much at a loss for knowing why we're here. And that's only because we don't understand our place, our ability to be in relationship, to be singing the praises of the rest of the world around us.
 
If we all sung each others praises, then I believe the song of the planet that C.S. Lewis once called the song of the spheres would be something that our planet would resonate with, and we would become a voice in the universe that truly champions life and resonates the glory that life offers us in terms of our own experience.
 
To think about it, how would being in a state of worship change your life?

In this liminal time, what do we let go and what do we keep?
 
What needs to go?
Where does this grief come from?
Should I let grief go?
No
Grief is a measure of how much you care.
Carry grief, not to wallow in
But for memory.
 
Should I let my dreams go?
Ah, letting go of dreams and expectations is a wise path.
Keep your vision.
Keep your ear to the ground and your eyes on nature.
Follow her lead.
Notice what she is doing.
We are followers in this time.
Trust nature – she is only interested in expanding life.
She has 65 million years (or more) in making life happen.
She knows.
 
Should I let my fear go? How?
Yes, oh yes, there is no room for fear.
Fear prevents new options.
Fear makes us small.
Fear closes us down into tiny visions of the past.
The means a mix of claiming our agency in service to life.
We are learning the strength of service.
Service means to listen, to explore, to inquire into how LIFE happens.
Notice when your actions create the conditions that support life.
This is deep work.
Requiring authenticity and therefore courage.
Curiosity is the path forward.
Be so curious that there is no room for any other emotion except AWE.
 
Anger, should I let my anger go?
Anger, why are you angry?
Anger is a defense, a pretended strength against change.
Resistance is futile and even self-destructive.
Anger makes enemies, when we need to make friends.
So, letting go of resistance to these many shifts and changes, losses, will release the anger.
Loss is huge, and very difficult.
Treasuring memories, savoring the love the gifts you recognize as precious have stirred in you.
Every loss opens a space for something new.
Be curious to see what is also appearing in the new space that is available.
Be in gratitude for the experience that is bringing you such pain.
Appreciate your ability to recognize the beauty that serves life.
Trust LIFE to reemerge.
Have patience.
 
Love, I want to let go of love. It is SO painful!
Ah, yes, and no.
It is attachment that is painful.
Attachment carries expectations.
Expectations are painful and they make us believe in betrayal.
So let go of attached love, that comes with expectations about how it ‘should’ be, about how it ‘ought’ to be.
Keep that love that is full of gratitude and appreciation.
Keep the love that recognizes the divinity in the other.
Keep the love that opens you up to the delicious expression of LIFE
In all the magnificent forms it chooses to take.
Stay curious to discover the new forms that love will take.
Love is life in motion – enjoy.

Design is a very human thing to do. It's one-way we humans express ourselves and make our mark in the world. Because of this, design is often not only human centric, it’s egocentric. The hubris and ego that is often involved in design of any kind, particularly architecture, makes it very hard to even understand what it means to design with nature.
 
Biomimicry has been a fabulous invention. The very act of getting businesses to think about nature as a resource has moved our relationship with nature light years into the future. We have become very clever now by watching and seeing what nature does we then try to do it in our own way, bending nature's wisdom to our needs and desires. One of the real benefits of this approach has been the ability to at least think about minimizing our resource use, nature is very thrifty. However, designing with nature is a whole different approach.
 
In designing with nature, it becomes apparent that nature needs space, so we need to allow nature to exist, to coexist, to be in proximity, to interpenetrate the spaces we use. In actual practice, this means making sure the green expands instead of our habit of reducing or controlling anything green. We must begin paying attention to nature's health, as well as our own health.
 
Nature needs time, it's not rushed. It's sometimes slow, it may even meander. It needs to be supported in this by having the space, the opportunity, to take the time that it needs to flower, to come into fruition, to blossom. We need to be conscious of the cycles it needs to function in and allow for the changes, over time, that nature brings forth. Our addiction to standards, stagnant appearances, simplified expressions, and easily repeated designs don't fit in with natures exuberance.
 
There's an exuberance about nature, a joyous expression of creativity that doesn't tolerate standards or constraints or stability or repetition. The recognition, expectation, openness to spontaneity, to emergence requires trusting the process, and loosening our attachment to outcomes. We need to design with emergence in mind and allow for the evolution of the design as real life contributes.
 
Working with nature is not an event, it's a journey. It's an exploration. It's a collaboration. It may be a cycle, but it's rarely an event. We get caught in events, but with nature, it's always part of a process.
 
Understanding the processes and patterns of nature and recognizing the need for that kind of expression is a way of being in tune and creating harmony with what's existing and with what wants to appear. In any dance, there's a leader and a follower. Allowing nature to lead can give us the confidence, the trust, and the feeling of safety that we crave, if we understand nature and how she works. Trust is not about blind faith, but in being confident enough to ask questions, and seek examples to put our concerns to rest. It’s about learning to see situations through Earth’s eyes.
 
Listening to nature requires the patience and depth to be in silence, enough grounding in science to understand the processes and cycles, and a depth in working with systems to see the patterns nature enjoys. The biggest shift, however, is putting nature first. By keeping the serpentine bend in rivers, water can serve the entire ecosystem. By allowing for flood plains, water can nurture vast areas on a continual basis. Our ability to ‘straighten’ rivers, put them in concrete beds, bury them underground and divert them hundreds of miles, subverts their nature and purpose. When we claim land to serve our own desires, we put ourselves in a situation of continually fighting with nature, which becomes costly, both financially and emotionally.
 
Nature LOVES life! By trusting that we can develop a harmony with nature, one that is especially needed as the Earth rebalances to adjust to the changes we have mindlessly made, we create resilience and robust health. Working together, we can co-create a new normal, one that serves us both.
 

The song of bacteria.
So just imagine,
The very first life on the planet, a very tiny, a single cell of bacteria.
And over time those bacteria begin to dance with each other.
And so, as I'm thinking, not only did they dance with each other,
They changed.
They shifted.
They weren't all the same.
Even a single-celled critters.
There were many different kinds of single-celled critters.
And it was that difference that really allowed them to dance with each other
Because they each brought a benefit that the other didn't have.
So in that dancing, they combined.
They became two-celled organisms.
And three-celled and multi-celled.
And then they became us.


We are… 30,000 different kinds of bacteria,
Bacteria,
And viruses.
With billions and trillions of each one,
Billions of different kinds.
And it's those critters that make it possible for us as an entity,
As a being to live.
The mitochondria in our cells that give us energy have no DNA relationship with us at all. They are totally separate critters.
Doing their own thing.
And by doing their own thing, they bring us to life.
That's awesome.


So, the song of the bacteria.
The oldest living things on the planet.
The living things with the most experience at life.
The living things who have experienced the most on this planet.
The most life.


What would they have to tell us?
One of the things we know about bacteria is that they are constantly exchanging DNA with each other.
You get any two together and they go swap.
Let's shift.
Let's change.
Let's see what happens.
That's where their resilience comes from.
Because they're so open to new,
So open to experimenting,
So open to sharing and exchanging what they know with each other,
In embracing that newness, they are able to adjust and adapt
Instantly, almost.
To any change that comes their way.
And that has become one of their secrets for longevity.


I am wondering, as a human being,
If our very sense of identity gets in the way of our evolution.
Certainly,
Bacteria are free to evolve and have been free to evolve and have become amazing things. They've become mastodons.
And Tyrannosaurus Rex.
And skinks and ants.
And all sorts of creatures.
Even plants.
So, they are garnering an incredible array of understanding of life.
And against that, I wonder if our understanding pales.


When we think of ourselves.
Consciousness is one of our defining traits.
And consciousness is what we think about in terms of God and deities.
And consciousness is what we think about as the foundation
Of the universe.
We are learning that everything is conscious.
To some extent.
Everything has the ability to make choices.
And is constantly choosing,
in fact.
Everything is sentient.


Water on this planet is a magical substance.
That many equate with consciousness.
For water is truly what makes life possible.
Even for bacteria.
And water is everywhere.
We find it everywhere in the universe.
So, could water be one of the carriers of consciousness
Or the carrier of consciousness?


And how does the consciousness of this thing we call bacteria that
Has such a variety,
Is so voracious in its love for life,
Is so exquisite in its ability to mutate and change,
And adapt and adapt and adapt due to difference.
How is that consciousness different
From our consciousness?
From our consciousness which struggles to understand our role in our planet,
Let alone our universe?
Our consciousness, which fears beings from outer space
Which fears others who know more than we do, and certainly
I would think bacteria know more than we do.


What an interesting thing to think about!
The song of the bacteria,
And how that song sweeps through our world.
Is it on other worlds?
We have no way of knowing.
Are bacteria unique to our world, or are they everywhere?
If they're everywhere, how do they go from place to place?
How does that happen?
Is the memory of that carried in water?
Is it water that makes that happen?
Because the water knows.
That is a song for another time.




~ Kathryn Alexander MA – April 2025

According to Webster’s dictionary, abundance means – ample, plentifulness, profusion, wealth. I’ve put these words in a sequence that seems to go from sufficient to more than enough. But I suspect that the expansion we attribute to these words is a fantasy, and I will  explore that notion with you for the next several posts.
 
I want to go back to an old story, one told for centuries ad so deeply imbedded into our western culture that we believe it, even though we don’t talk about it, and maybe even haven’t heard the story directly. It’s a story told in Genesis of the Christian bible[i]. It’s about the Garden of Eden. The Garden is seen a perfect place, where everything available and there is only happiness. It is often characterized and being in harmony with God. When we look back into history and learn about the kinds of animals that roamed the Earth, we see periods where the animals were both huge and plentiful. In order for that to occur, there has to be lots of available food, and comfortable temperatures. How does that happen? Where is God? I think it is important that we understand this because that idea of plenty is not a myth, it is a part of the truth in that story, one that gives it the substance and credibility to last thousands of years.

Titanosaur sauropod during the Jurassic period. (Credit: Catmando/Shutterstock)

I’m going to focus on the age of the dinosaurs, the Mesozoic period, which covered millions of years. What science proves, is that there were a huge number of VERY large animals that all lived at the same time, and for a very LONG time. That means that there was abundant food for abundant animals and for a long time – millions of years, when no one was in charge.[i]
 
How was the world so abundant? To better understand how this happened we need new science. We need to see how a world composed of millions of life forms, a world that had evolved from single celled life forms to multicelled life forms – all by itself, could be so abundant. The Gaia hypothesis, posited by James E. Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in their 1974 paper[ii] suggests that “… Earth and its biological systems function as a single entity with self-regulatory feedback loops to maintain conditions favorable for life.”[iii] Who is in control? There is no one else, so the idea that all the life forms that exist on Gaia, must interact in a way that provides benefit for all may not be so farfetched. In fact, Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book, The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance, suggests that abundance is a result of reciprocity, one of Earth’s Values, that I talk about in my values work. Here we have three very different people, two scientists (in very different areas, Lovelock in chemistry and medicine, and Margulies in evolutionary biology), and Kimmerer an indigenous biologist, all saying the same thing, in their own way. The Earth exists in her richness because all the members of the community, all the parts of the whole, contribute in service to the whole, to use systems language.
 
This understanding is being borne out by current science in many, many ways. Let me share just a few examples. Soil. Soil is a living thing composted of billions of live entities that fall into four general categories: protozoa, bacteria, nematodes and fungi.[iv] Some decompose, some share nutrients, some create a mucus like substance that allows for aggregation in a way that leaves air holes for both oxygen and water, and others move the soil, keeping it open and spongy. Each form of life contributes. Each is needed. It is the togetherness that creates abundance. It is the harmony that is achieved though interdependence that makes soil healthy. Too much of any one life form (bacteria?) create dissonance, something we often call dis-ease. It is the harmonic balance that characterizes a healthy ecosystem.
 
So, abundance is an emerging property (systems speak) that happens when all parts of the system contribute through reciprocity, thus strengthening interdependence. Now, I want you to check your life. How interdependent are you? Where and how do you experience reciprocity? Is your life abundant? You don’t have to share these answers, but as we progress, I want you to keep coming back to them. According to the story, we were kicked out of the garden, but is that true, I wonder? More on that later.
 
[i] The King James Bible, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version

 
[i] The Discovery Magazine, A Complete Dinosaur Timeline to Extinction: How Long Did They Roam Earth?, Sean Mowbray, Jun 21, 2023

[ii] Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: the Gaia hypothesis, James E. Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, 1974, https://www.jameslovelock.org/atmospheric-homeostasis-by-and-for-the-biosphere-the-gaia-hypothesis/

 
[iii] The Gaia Hypothesis, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/gaia-hypothesis
 

[iv] Understanding Soil Health and Biota for Farms and Gardens, Shikha Singh, Linda Brewer and Scott Lukas, 2023, https://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/pub/em-9409-understanding-soil-health-biota-farms-gardens

 We all love trees. Forests are wonderful in the abstract, but messy and difficult to engage with or walk in. What, you say, that’s not true, I enjoy walking in the forests around me. I’ll bet you do, but here’s the kicker, those are not forests. What most of us know as forests are really mono cropped tree farms. They were planted to replace the real forest that was there and cut down to build the house you live in. Most of us have never seen an old growth forest. That said some of those semi-forests have been around for 50-100 years. They are not something we really want to lose. No, they don’t make porous soil as well as old growth, and no they don’t make rain as well as old growth, but still they do something and that something is needed. They just need to be managed into diversity.
 
In the paper today was a long article about the devastating cuts to the Forest Service. Any fool can cut, but few can prune for growth. It’s the same with budget cuts. Easy to eliminate, but to eliminate for growth take time and deep knowledge of what’s needed and what’s currently present. The skill and decades of learned information are going out the window, and these will take decades to bring back. The article even mentioned pack animals that need years of training to be really skillful in bearing heavy packs over rough and unknown territory. Helpers who removed 850 trees last year worked with rangers who knew the forest and who could tell them what to do and which trees to take out. All that is gone.
 
The Forest Service does yeoman’s work. But there are few who would not say it could be improved. For decades the Forest Service has been underfunded. In our Western world work happens if you pay for it. As more and more of us are born and live in cities, the hard work of forest management is not understood or attractive, so people can be hard to find. That and relatively poor pay make the job unattractive to many.
 
There’s been a resurgence, lately, of interest in indigenous ways of living and being on the land. Indigenous people are raised to know they are part of the whole system of life and to recognize the reverence and gratitude that comes with that understanding. They are taught to live their lives in ways that are interconnected and interdependent with the rest of the life around them. They understand to leave things and not take it all. They understand how to take in such a way that nature is stronger for the loss. How can you pay to make this happen?
 
Since it takes money to manage the forests, even with the imperfect knowledge we have, we aren’t willing to do even that. “Since 1854, Menominee Tribal Enterprises has harvested more than 2.5 billion board feet of lumber from our sacred land. We have completely cut standing timber over the entire reservation twice. Yet, today we have more than a half billion board feet additional standing timber than when we started. A drive through or fly over our forest would show the results of a forest that looked like it had never been cut.” Adrian Miller, Menominee Tribal member.
 
The truth is that people learn and work harder for love than they do for money. We all know this from our own life experience, yet we designed our society around money and not around love. Love makes the world go round, yet we go around being alive every chance we get. The Earth is calling us, she wants us here, but if we are not doing what brings life and increases love, maybe not.

Please share your thoughts about a forest near you.
 

I’m holding Los Angeles in my heart. May people hold the terror of their experience in the context of change. This destruction offers up opportunities to rebuild anew. To rebuild in harmony with the nature of the place, with the LIFE that wants to live there. May the people’s curiosity and their commitment to LIFE enable them to detect the quiet joy in their heart to finally make it right!
 
May the pain not blind them to the glory of restitution, to the opportunity to bring back the LIFE that is lurking just under the burnt soil. The echoes of the past are calling out in their desire for new life, for new expression, for new validation of their value and a recognition of their gifts. May the people who have lost everything find themselves in the rebuilding of a new world.
 
The Earth is calling, the Earth wants to see her people happy and in harmony with all of her other children. The Earth can no longer bear the heavy burden of disrespect and distain, she needs love, as all of us do. These fires, as terrible as they were, are an opening into a new relationship with the life that loves us, with the life that cares for us, with the life that must be respected, valued, praised, and revered.
 
May a new Los Angeles be born of love and gratitude, not anger and resistance, not will and determination. May the green be reborn through a new appreciation of water.  May patience be reignited from the curiosity and reverence that springs from the new shoots of life that surface when the conditions hold the love that LIFE needs.
 
When things are a mess, then clearing and cleaning are in order. When each space works to hold water Mother Earth will bow her head in gratitude and replenish the abundance that is Los Angeles’ birthright. There was a time when water was abundant, it shall be so again, if the people, now so in hurt, can come to recognize, with gratitude, the opening of a new space, a new world, a new chance to reestablish the relationship with LIFE and joy that was instrumental in the birth of Los Angeles, at the beginning.
 
Life loves LIFE! Be alive, be loved, share love, bring love, be love. Water is the staff of life, so create living soil to hold the water that IS life. Recreate the love, and love will love you back. How would a new Los Angeles look if each home was green with the water it held? How this resurrected city look if LIFE was the measure of success and the abundance of water was the proof that love existed?