Worlds Within Worlds.

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By Claire Edwards DSNU

 

 

I am very lucky to live in the Kent countryside.  We have a garden full of trees, shrubs, bushes and flowers.  We have apples, blackberries, rosehips and elderberries nearly ready to be picked, eaten and cooked before being put into pies, jams, chutneys and syrups, which will fill our stomachs and give us their goodness to help stave off any runny noses during the Winter months.  And as I watch all of the leaves beginning to turn, the conkers and acorns steadily, but seemingly all too quickly, growing bigger, foretelling the long dark nights and cold months, I watch in wonder at the way everything changes at the right moment.  How in sympathy and harmony all the animals, trees and plants prepare for the frosts to come and the chill of the cold North Easterly winds that will soon be upon us all.

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The swallows have begun gathering on the telephone wires outside.  Coming together before they begin their migration to warmer climates after spending the Summer months here swooping and diving at speed, chasing flying ants as they leave their nests to begin new colonies.

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We have many spiders in our garden and the light of the sunshine on individual threads gives only a hint of where their webs are.  But as Autumn sets in, the morning dew will not just reveal where they are, but also how beautifully and how intricately each spider’s web has been spun.

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And it is while I watch and listen and ponder, I am reminded of the worlds that surround us.  The worlds of those living things all about us, and yet apparently unaware of our existence, or the power we have over their environment and their survival. 

 

And then I wonder if they are as oblivious of us as they seem.  Or if they are so disheartened with the way in which we view and treat those that share our world, that they have simply decided it is best not to try to communicate with us, as we are so out of touch with nature, the physical manifestation of the intelligence, creativity, power and love of the Divine Spirit that creates and sustains all.

 

All of nature lives in a perfect balance with those things around it.  Except humans.  Many have adopted an ideology of superiority over the things within our world, believing our experience and existence to be worth more than those entities that also inhabit the world.    The idea purported is that all things within our world are here simply to fulfil human needs alone.

 

Years ago it was decided that humans are the apex of evolution, and as such have a right to do what we want with the living things around us.  Land is divided by the few, stripped of its natural resources to fill the pockets of some and meet the material desires of others.  Animals are ripped from their homes to make way for the arrogant, selfish ignorant needs of humans.  The justification being that animals are not intelligent or sentient and as such are disposable unless we can find a use for them as either raw material or pets.

 

The seas and oceans are the dumping grounds for the waste we create and the items we no longer seem to want.  No thought is given to the families swimming and living within these waters; social, intelligent, gentle creatures who form intricate and individual relationships with others and who talk, or communicate, albeit in a different language or vibration to our own.  Whale song is but one example.

 

Trees are hacked down to make way for a supposed global need of palm oil or grazing land, without any consideration for the actual and real effect upon the lives of all those thousands of beings living within one tree’s bark!  Whole ecological systems ,that is worlds, are torn asunder with a chainsaw in minutes.  Species yet to be discovered are decimated and destroyed. 

 

Trees too have deeply personal relationships with other trees.  They form communities that not only warn other trees of illnesses and threats, but that also sustain and nurture other species of trees, saplings and ancients, when there is little water. 

 

Scientists and biologist are only just discovering, let alone understanding, that the root systems of woods and forests carry so much more that water to trees.  The roots enable them to communicate with each other.  Again albeit in a language alien to our own, but nevertheless it shows that there is a consciousness there.  A willingness, a wanting, a desire and an ability to communicate with others.  Lives entwined with each other but with experiences differing to our own.

 

Who within our world has the right to decide, and to act in accordance with the belief that the experience of a human life is worth more than the experience a tree has of life? 

 

How and why are global actions taken to the detriment of so many different entities, all sharing the earth to experience life as it presents itself to them, simply because humans are the “dominant” species? 

 

The fact that we do not understand the language or means by which another species communicates does not mean that we can assume a position of greater intellect, sentience or value. My life is no more important or of a greater meaning than a blackthorn tree, a daffodil, a goldfish or a spider simply because I am human, and neither is anyone else’s.

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We should be treating all things with respect, with care and with love.  We should be looking to all worlds within ours to see the means by which they fulfil the needs of  life and embrace its holistic nature.  We need to learn to live in harmony and sympathy following the seasons of the world as Mother Nature provides for us all the things we need.  There can be plenty for all, if we live humbly and in harmony, with a reverence for all living things within our world and the earth itself.

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We should embrace the teachings and practices of our elders and ancestors who knew how to live attuned to the natural rhythms of nature long before the advent of the industrial age and the need for clocks, and factories and the creation of materialistic wants and needs.  These are the current measure of societies success. 

 

True success would be a return to living peacefully with all things, so that although still obviously different, we respect the world we all share.  Understanding that each has their place in life and the right to their life.

 

Then perhaps all those wondrous beings can continue to simply be in their worlds, which happens to be within ours.