NATURE CALLINGS

Each week a group of women come to a piece of land we know is loved by a friend. We sit in a circle and stare into the fire, walk her woods, and watch the flow of the Stillwater river.

Each week we are fortunate to hear the melodic song of the Indigo Bunting. It sings in the canopy of the same stand of trees as the week before. It has found the place for its calling and returns daily. It is why I go there...to listen and discern the place of mine.

Spending any amount of time outside, paying attention, it becomes apparent; there is no need to worry about nature. Each plant, each insect or bird, every moss-adorned rock is where it is supposed to be, doing what it is supposed to do. Only we bring destruction and introduce imbalance to the system.

And these systems work; transpiration, photosynthesis, metamorphosis, and cycles of water, seasons, life, and decay. They are good. They support us and the whole of the planet. That is their calling; to be oxygen-givers, builders of food webs, suppliers of the soil that sustains a multitude of organisms, and our food. As a popular meme says: 

Is my human calling, therefore, any different? To be of service, a supplier, a sustainer, both to my fellow human beings and the piece of the planet I find myself in? Isn't every true call on one's life to offer that which my species needs the most, which is love and time, acceptance and nourishment, hope and maybe most importantly, beauty?

Would it not also make sense then to offer the non-human species what they need most, which is our deep respect and acknowledgment that we are utterly dependent on them to flourish and to continue to keep all things in balance? As the animals and eco-systems support us, so we live the Golden Rule towards them. We are all connected. As Wendell Berry says:

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you."

Staring into that crackling fire, meandering through my friend's woods, and just being next to the shimmering Stillwater river, the answer became clearer to me. And simpler. Perhaps my calling is to pair whatever talents and passions I have to whichever human and non-human needs whisper back to me. That small, quiet voice then becomes an invitation from Spirit, and the huge sycamore leaning miraculously over the river, to do what I have always been called and free to do.