Life Force

As I watch the birds gathering at my bird feeders this sub-zero morning I am filled with wonder and admiration of their survival in these frigid temperatures. The

Life Force

is truly amazing. We humans imagine that we are the most intelligent life form and that we stand at the top of a long line of evolution, when in reality, we are enmeshed in and intertwined with all life forms. The deeper we search and the more we learn the more connected everything is to everything else.

…and we all go tumbling down the genetic line together. It’s a delicious image: an endlessly blossoming, weirding, straining desire for life and interconnection. The lichens farm algae and we farm bacteria and each feeds the other, the trees are talking and everyone’s singing. We’re descended from Typhus on our mother’s side, and methane-burping Archaea on the other. Every time we train our most sophisticated tools upon the central questions of our existence — Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? — the answer comes back clearer: Everyone and Everywhere.

   — James Bridle, Ways of Being, Animals, Plants, Machines: the Search for A Planetary Intelligence

I am reading James Bridle’s recent book, Ways of Being, Animals, Plants, Machines: the Search for A Planetary Intelligence, and finding it fascinating. He weaves together strands of various scientific discoveries about evolution, artificial intelligence, and the different kinds of intelligences of trees and animals that are quite different from the intelligence of humans. It is a narrative filled with beauty, grace, discovery, and poetic phrases that speak deeply to our intertwined roots and connectedness.

Symbiosis is not a vision of perfect harmony — far from it. The world is not comprised of harmonious or even equitable relationships, but it is composed of relationships, and more of those are mutually beneficial than they are antagonistic. ‘Life’, writes Lynn Margulis, ‘did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.’ — James Bridle, Ways of Being, Animals, Plants, Machines: the Search for A Planetary Intelligence

Many spiritual traditions teach that love is all there is, that everything that comes into being and then disappears is part of a stream of boundless love. I like to think that way about life, but I would add curiosity to the love — I think everything that was, is, and will be is simply part of a stream of love and curiosity. We are one tiny speck in an endless cosmos of love and curiosity.

May your holidays be filled with love, laughter, and whatever it is that lights you up inside.

May you walk in beauty.