Today a friend asked me about happiness. How can we help people be happy? I've been around a bit, eight decades or so, and here's where I've come to when I think about happiness. It seems to me happiness is composed of two things, meaning and agency. Finding meaning and discovering the agency you have within that meaning is, I think, one of the ways we find happiness.

Happiness is an inside job. Nobody can do it but the person seeking to find their meaning and discovering their agency. You can point it out to them, it doesn't matter until they own it themselves, discover it for themselves, on their own. The blocks to happiness are judgment and the desire to control. You give up both and happiness is really close. It's right there at the touch of your fingertips. Those two things can gum up the works faster than anything else that I've ever seen.

We don't make the world, but we make our experience of it and only we do that. It's where we reign supreme. It is the control we have. It is the only control we can exert over the experiences that we have. Our control is our response, reaction, and the story we tell about our experience. The story makes the world we create around the things that happen to us. All of that drops away when you're clear about what you're doing and when you know what your place and role is in making that happen.


Happiness reveals itself, I believe, when we discover something that's meaningful. When we release judgment of others and ourselves. When we discover the agency we have to make that meaning rich and fully alive in our lives. We realize that the only control we have is over what we do and how we think and how we understand all of the experiences that add up to our one wild and precious life.

Happiness is an inside job. It comes when you're honest with yourself. When you understand the responsibility involved in agency. When you open your heart to what touches it and makes it vibrate with joy. Happiness can't be given. It can't be created for others. It's a discovery each of us makes by ourselves for ourself. We can share our discovery with others, and we can delight in others discovery of theirs. But we can't do it to anybody or for anybody. We can only do it to and for ourselves.

So if happiness is an inside job and you can't really do anything about it for other people, what about relationship? Where does that come in? My stance on that, in my own life, has been to spend time where I can experience awe, where I can experience being amazed by what exists. The unending source for that, for me, has been nature.

I've kind of come around to the fact that involving ourselves with nature, on a personal and deep level is incredibly healing, is incredibly awe-inspiring. It opens up deep wells of meaning and shows us our agency all in one beautiful basket. I've come around to the feeling that our sense of ennui, our hopelessness, our feeling lost, our feelings of being overpowered, of being inadequit, can all be addressed when we start to take care of the earth. When we learn to reconnect, to see the majesty of our planet and all the incredible life within it. When we understand the depth of commitment to life that everything on this planet expresses.

To appreciate the delicate balance that life expresses to life and the joy and exuberance that it shares just by existing. Sense of humor in an octopus. Oh, my heavens. What an amazing, amazing thing to watch. I find meaning in helping to keep that life alive and in appreciating it. There's meaning in appreciating the gifts that are so astoundingly plentiful, so abundantly, exuberantly all around us. I have discovered an incredible amount of agency in being able to help life become more abundant.

To help life thrive I do what I can to meet the various needs that come across my path. It can be as simple as the need of bacteria for the food from compost or the need for another soul to express and find itself. They're all the same thing. The ability to see another and to understand how you can help it achieve whatever it wants to achieve is an incredible gift. It's a real thrill. Seeing the light bulbs come on in the heads of students in class is very similar. There's agency in that. There's meaning in that.

I's so diverse. It's so unique. There's curiosity and adventure, intrigue, gratification, and awe. What more do you need? What more do you need? We are so lost, so lonesome. We feel so inadequate. And there's so much that could be done right here under our fingertips. The grand plan is filled with trillions and billions of little actions that make it possible. When you find the little actions that you can do, that you like doing, that give you joy, poof, life becomes meaningful. Appreciation and gratitude go both ways. It's delicious to discover what you can contribute.

It's very humbling to discover that what you contribute is you. It's really nothing else. We're all so unique. We all have the ability to see and do something no one else can. We're all these minor miracles walking around. It's fun to see the miracles that other people are and to occasionally appreciate your own as well. It's satisfying without being stultifying, it's engaging. It's joyful even when it's sad. Even when it's not understood, even when it isn't going the way you would like to see, or other people might like to see. When people get in their own way and you watch new possibilities deteriorate, it's still interesting, it's still amazing. Life always gives you another chance to be able to express the uniqueness that you are in whatever ways you can. Whatever works in the moment.

There's something about dancing with the moment that is very, very special, and it's very special when you get to do that with others. Holding life lightly, but exuberantly, respectfully, with great admiration, and allowing it to do its thing, whatever that is. being curious about the outcome, appreciating the opportunity, and being awed by the possibility. Not being attached to the outcome is another way to release the need to control. That's the opportunity that I like to offer to other people. Working with nature, helping to cool the planet, certainly keeps my heart alive, and I have to think it might do that for others as well, but everyone finds their own path to happiness.

We all know the planet's heating. For decades our approach to this crisis has been to think about making others stop doing the things that make it warmer. Now that makes perfect sense. If you're hot, you can stop being hot by not doing the things that make you hot. However, that's only half the story. It's the other half of the story that I want to talk about.
 
You can stop getting hotter. Yay. But you can also work to become cooler. They're very different things. The stopping hot is really an action we humans can do, but only the planet has become a master in cooling over millennia. She has worked, James Lovelock was awed by this fact, to  keep the temperature on this planet in a rather narrow range for 65 million years. I mean, she has developed a certain amount of skill and savvy around that. All the plants, all the life forms have kind of figured out a rhythm that made it work, that rhythm kept things going within some ups and downs, but within a fairly narrow range of temperature, consistently over the eons. We stepped in and started heating things up. That's what's tipped the bucket over.
 
Until we get smart and stop heating things up, those of us who care and have the eyes to see and ears to hear can begin to work on the other end of the equation, cooling the earth. Now, we can't actually cool the earth. That's not something humans can do, not in the same way we can heat it. However, we can work with nature to help her do the job she already knows how to do. She knows how to keep the earth cool.
 
The Earth has a wonderful, beautiful, brilliant system of how that happens. Anasstasia Makarieva has been the stellar proponent of helping us understand how water moves around the planet in a way that manages temperature. It's called the biotic pump. It is a beautiful and brilliant mechanism. It is life chasing life.
 
Since we're so worried about heat, we need to pay attention so that we're creating the conditions that support life. That's the Prime Directive. We do that by helping water stay in the soil. It's simple and prosaic but so critical, at this point in time. If every one of us, in our own little way, started to ensure that whatever rain did fall, soaked into the ground and didn't run off into the sewer, or even to a nearby river, but stayed in the soil, stayed in the ground, our Earth would be a much cooler place. We can do that as individuals, get your neighbor to do it and we begin to scale, that's what we can do to help cool the planet.
 
There are lots of techniques for gardens, swales, dry creek beds, and wetlands. Think about your house, your house collects a lot of water when it rains. Where does it go? A 2,000 square foot roof will collect 22,000 gallons of water at a rather dry 17” of rain a year. Your job now is to think about where it should go and direct it to those places. Direct it to the trees around you, direct it to swales, to depressions, to places where it can sit and stay long enough to soak into the ground.
 
In order to make the ground receptive, it must be alive. Zach Bush MD said that there is, in a tablespoon of earth, more life than all the people on the planet. Now think about that. All that life needs water. All life on the planet needs water. All life on the planet needs water. All those billions and trillions of microbes and ants and paramecium and nematodes and moles and everything that's in the dirt needs water. Water is what their bodies are made of. That's where all that water goes. It goes to give life to all those things in the earth. When that happens... we have a cooler planet.
 
Where there's life, it's cooler than where there's not life. Dead earth, dry earth, stone, concrete, asphalt, all give heat back. When they absorb the heat from the sun, they reflect back eight times the heat they received. That's one of the sources the increased heat is coming from. When there's life in the soil, it's cool. The water can flow, the water can stay and the rain will fall gently and often only in cool green places.
 
It falls occasionally and hard, ferociously actually, in hot places or when it just can't stay in the air anymore. At a certain weight that water just must come down. When it’s in that state it's ferocious and horrible. Then we have flooding, we get more water than the hard, dry, ground can hold and there’s no place for it to go. That rush to the sea is wasted water.
 
Right now we're in that delicate balance, that state where this is fluctuating cycle is becoming normal. As things get hotter, it will be harder and harder to keep the soil green and alive. That means we need to actively practice soil health – at scale, now. We need to create places that the water can stay when it falls, long enough for it to soak into the ground. This approach has two prongs, creating space for the water to stay after it slows so it can sink. Things like dry creek beds and other forms of water containment along with directive processes so that when it falls, it discovers a good place to be. The second prong is that you also need to have live soil for it to fall on. If you collect water in cement or even barrels, it's not going to help the soil. Water needs to be held in vital living soil.
 
Plants with long roots, trees and perennials help open the soil to hold more air and water. They push the water down so it doesn’t evaporate but creates underground streams and refills the aquifer. So no pesticides. Stop killing things. We really, really, really need life. We don't need death. We need life. Stop killing things. Get rid of all the pesticides and chemicals that trick plants into forgetting how to help each other.
 
Begin to understand that everything is an ecosystem. That grass that you love is kind of like a desert. It doesn't give back much to the ecosystem. There are no bees that like grass. There's no flowers to feed pollinators on grass. Grass has very, very short roots, so it can't penetrate the soil and help the water go down. Plant perennials, even the things we call weeds, some of which are absolutely beautiful, they have the flowers that feed bees, insects and birds, and they have the colors we like. Make your lawn a meadow.
 
Become aware of how you are part of the ecosystem. You become part of the ecosystem if you're feeding things and making water available. Everything needs food. Everything needs water. Your job is to think about how to create an environment around yourself that is feeding other things. The pollinators, the bees, yeah, all those bugs we hate are a vital part of the whole ecosystem. We kind of know this. Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring made so clear the interconnection of all of poison and bird loss. We have forgotten that over time. We're losing birds, we're losing insects, because we are taking away their habitat. The heat simply increases that loss as it becomes too hot for some creatures to live.
 
We have a lot of work to do to begin to do our part in helping to cool the earth. Check out our website, LivingGroundCollaborative.org for techniques and resources to help you move back into relationship with the Earth.
 

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