Page 129 - ECOlogic Book

living beings. I’ve made rocks, so I know this now. I know that we are kin.
We come from the same home town. Rocks are the bones of the earth. And
my bones are the rocks of my body. Stones and bones.”

John Seed reminds us that “Human Elders, rock elders, soil elders, woven
from the bodies of our kin, these and the myriad species carry our entire
history as planet, universe, and humanity.” 154 Scar people, yes, but we are
star people also, kneaded from the dust of stars. We’ve all been here from
the beginning. We’ve traveled the same journey from particles to atoms to
galaxies, to stars to planets, to biological life. “You were there; I was there,
for each cell of our bodies is descended in an unbroken chain from that
event (the Great Flaring Forth); through the desire of the atom for molecule,
of molecule for cell, of cell for organism . . . in our sexuality we can feel
ancient stirrings that connect us with plant as well as animal life. We come
from them in an unbroken chain – through fish learning to walk the land,
feeling scales turning to wings, through the migrations in the ages of ice.”
155

And underneath it all, we begin to make out the dim outlines of some kind of
stuff that connects us all together some kind of law we all obey “ . . . new
forms of subtle order are discovered that link the most interior depths with
the larger cosmic processes.” 156 We are governed by the same universal
laws of self-organization and complexity; the blueprint, the deep structure of
all mater. All obey the same laws governing their (our) emergence and co-
evolution. This Underlying Order at the edge of chaos whose laws we cannot
disobey is the same Order that governs the farthest galaxies.

The Call
Whether we are aware of it or not, we participate profoundly in this 4 billion
year biological unfolding. How, then can we account for our petty quarrels
and resentments? Well, we might consider that these very discomforts are
the source of our yearning for community. Thich Nhat Hanh believes that
“precisely because of the limitations of the human mind – with its
fragmented constructions, partial perspectives, and circular reasoning – we
may require the synergistic power of collective human yearning and

154 Op. Cit., Seed & Rosenhek.

155 Seed, John, and Macy, Joanna, Thinking Like a Mountain, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, PA &
Santa Cruz, CA, 1988, P. 42).

156 Keeping, Will, “the Transformation of Science and Sangha,” Winter, 1996 Noetic Sciences Review.

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