God is an Ecosystem

Yesterday morning there was a knock at the door. A benign looking man and woman stood outside clutching discreet binders and asked if I had a moment to talk. Instead of shooing them away, I popped out the front door, still in my robe, and gave them a moment of my time. They launched our conversation with a question “Do you believe it’s possible to end war?” “No”, I said. “I think it’s hardwired into humanity unfortunately.” One only has to look back through the annals of history to see that this is probably true… We nodded our heads in agreement that we are living through trying times now. I got to the point and asked them directly, “Is this a religious visit?” they replied "Yes, we are Jehovah’s Witnesses”.

Little did they know they had come to the door of someone who had been raised by a parent brought up in that church, or cult, it could easily be argued. My dad joined the army and left the JW church when he was a young man, and in that leaving, lost his mom and everyone dear to him. They all turned their backs on him. Stationed in Germany, there were no packages filled with cookies, no letters from home, no contact at all.

I’m not sure how, but my grandma made her way back into my dad’s life years later and she was a presence in my childhood. Until the day she wasn’t.

I was a pretty young kid when my grandma started filling my head with horrifying, violent stories of the coming armageddon and warned there were demons all around that wanted my soul. She scared the shit out of me! I really thought I had to fend off demons everywhere and they could easily be hiding in my bedroom. She would often tell stories of satanic toys with glowing red eyes that resisted destruction. I think she honed in on me because I was a sensitive kid, prone toward the spiritual side of life. Sometimes she would bring me along to the local Kingdom Hall where I would hear similar stories recounted, reinforcing the fears she’d planted.

One summer morning I heard a heated conversation going on behind closed doors. It was my dad telling my grandma in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t back off (of me) she wouldn’t be welcome in our home any longer. At that point, and for all of my formative years, my dad was pretty opposed to organized religion in general. Years later, in his increasing eccentricity, he embraced Catholicism, along with candy making, opera and the study of Egyptology, among other things. My mom while identifying somewhat with the strict Christianity she was brought up with, didn’t align herself with any religion and we never attended church. To my parents credit, they freely let us explore the spiritual world and I would attend churches across the spectrum with different friend’s families just to see what they were all about. I’m a perpetually curious person so I had to find out what was going on behind those closed doors.

That day of the heated conversation was the last day I saw my grandma. She left in tears and we never heard from her again. Many years later when my dad died, my sister and I tried to reach her to relay the news and she wouldn’t take our calls. We had to call the Kingdom Hall where she lived and give a stranger the message her son had died in hopes that they would let her know.

I think it was not long after my grandma departed that day that our parents gave my sister and me a big pictorial book by Joseph Campbell called “The Mythic Image”. I loved that book. It exposed me to religious beliefs, mythologies, and the relationship between dreams and myth from cultures all around the world. I must have spent countless hours with it over the years and have no doubt about it’s influence on me.

But outside of the influence of anybody else’s words or anybody else’s ideas was my own relationship with the natural world. Growing up in rural Northern California in the 70s and 80s I had a lot of freedom and alone time. I would head out on Sunshine, my pony, through the sweet smelling apple orchards and towering silent redwoods and get to know the place. I had friends I still think of to this day that others would consider to be inanimate. But I felt their spirit and I sometimes even saw it shining around them. Some of you might read this and think I’m crazy and that’s ok with me. I’m not trying to convince you but this is my experience of the world.

In school I was a terrible student ( I have a really hard time concentrating on things that don’t interest me ) and I only excelled at English literature, art and biological sciences. Through science I started to understand that the energetic connectivity I had felt in the world from a very young age was also “real” in the eyes of academia. While they offered no spiritual lens on the subject, for me the two concepts seamlessly intertwined.

How could these complex relationships of nature, with each element reliant on the next in massive, intricate, mutually beneficial networks not be enough? It seemed so obvious to me and it still does. God is an ecosystem.

Why would we force God into a singular entity who parcels out judgements and punishments when we can gaze at the sea and let her waters absorb our grief? When we can watch for the patterns that tell our human stories? When we have nature to reflect back to us that which is most sacred inside of ourselves? How can we feel that oneness and not know that as God?

The sun rises in the east every morning and sets in the west. At night, ancient light shines down on us all, a blanket of stars.

Nature shows me how to be patient. Nature shows me how to shed my skin and renew myself. Nature teaches me how to nurture and tend. Nature teaches me how to love. Nature is God.

I told all this to the visitors at my door, in so many words, that I respect their right to believe how they want, and sent them on their way.

I’m thankful I was given the chance to explore and feel out the world. To be a wild kid. At home amongst the water and trees. Who now thrills at the sound of the wolves howling in the woods and lets wild chipmunks sit at my feet. Who hear’s God’s voice in the creaking Birch trees. That’s enough for me.