Kia ora my friends. It’s a grey day here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). As Jamie Woon says in his beautiful song Waterfront, ‘There were 10,000 greys in the sky.’ Beads of mist cling to the rhododendrons popping up in front of my window and the hills are muted browns and greens and wrapped in clouds. The smell of woodsmoke hangs in the crisp air. It’s all very Twilight and feels like a vampire is going to swoop down out of the fog any moment. It feels like a day for puzzles. What’s going on outide your window?
I’m reading this beautiful book at the moment by David Suzuki, geneticist and environmentalist, and I’ve taken the title for post from the title. Two gorgeous words; sacred balance. It refers to this balance we are within; that we are of. So simple but so profound, and it means everything to the future of our planet. To the future of our species. The delicate balance of ecosystems, of weather, of all beings living together on one planet.
There’s this curious challenge with being a human – although our lives feel long, they are so very brief in the history of the planet and the Universe. Yet because we have changed so much about our surroundings in such a short space of time and gained control over many natural processes and places, we feel as if we rule the Earth. We feel we are at the very centre of it. We talk about connecting with nature as being important, but I think it’s really a case of remembering our connection to nature – we are as intricately connected as a rainforest or bee or rain cloud. As David Suzuki says:
No species exists in isolation from all others. In fact, today’s estimated 30 million species are all connected through the intersection of their life cycles… all species make up one immense web of interconnections that binds all beings to each other and to the physical components of the planet.
Early modern humans have been around for roughly 300,000 years. Dinosaurs existed for around 165 million. 550 times longer than we’ve been hanging out doing our thing. Humans stopped moving around and started farming 12,000 years ago. The industrial revolution was only 250-200 years ago. If the whole of the planet’s history was condensed into a single year, human beings appeared at about 11.35pm on the evening of the last day of the year. These types of timescales, billions of ungraspable years, are referred to as ‘deep time’, and they can be powerful in shifting how we think about our place.
When you grasp what this means, that we are so young on this planet, yet our footprint is so large, it’s unbelievable, mind-boggling. I was recently at a workshop and the facilitator was talking about ways in which we can create change in the world – one was called ‘Shifts in consciousness’, meaning that when we shift how we see the world and our place in it, we shift how we treat it. I believe it’s often an overlooked part of the puzzle as we rush to shift to electric and stop harmful government policies. We don’t have time for sitting around thinking or wandering through the forest. Yes, we do. We must. Remembering our place in nature isn’t just about saving the planet; when we realise that we are the planet, we realise it’s also about restoring this innate connection in our own minds and bodies.
Our connection to Earth and nature is literally in our DNA. Our warning signals, the signs we followed for the majority of human existence for our survival, our knowledge of life, would have been the river’s flow, the migrations of the birds, and ‘the shape of the sky, the cry of the animals, the changing of the seasons’, as Vine Deloria, author, theologian, historian, and activist for Native American rights, wrote in his book You Talk, We Listen. It’s quite beautiful but a bit heart-breaking at times how we’ve forgotten that as a species. Still, it doesn’t take much to remember 😌
One other thing David Suzuki said in the book, and I think it’s a really key part of how we remember our connection.
Watch children respond to a wasp or butterfly. Infants seem drawn to an insect’s movement and colour, often reaching out to touch it. They exhibit neither fear nor disgust, only fascination. Yet by the time they enter kindergarten, enchantment with nature has often been replaced with revulsion as many children recoil in fear or loathing at the sight of a beetle or fly. By teaching children to fear nature, we increase our estrangement and fail to satisfy our inborn biophilic needs. We sever the connections, the love that infuses our actions with compassion for our fellow beings.
I love this because it reminds us that, with a child’s curiosity and compassion for nature and all the beings, we can restore our connection as a species. There are so many fun ways to do this! Going out and just mindfully walking, noticing the flowers and insects and clouds floating through the sky. Attempting to capture that beauty with words or paint or photos. Sharing it with someone else. Reading a book about nature that creates such a sense of awe, like The Lost Rainforests of Britain or The Sacred Balance. Collecting sea glass or shells or pebbles. You will have your own ways; I’d love to hear about them.
To end, here is a photo of a small number of treasures collected from the garden during May 2024. It’s a nice way to track the changes through the year and it’s so much fun just arranging them on the page! Have a go!
With love ❤️