The Sign
Stretching out over more than two decades, I was sporadically moving closer to a Master of Arts in Religious Studies. Life kept taking surprising turns that interfered with the usual timeline. At age 49, not having thought about it in years, I realized it would be worth finally completing the journey. All that lay between me and the finish line was a thesis.
I re-enrolled in college. Having heard Nature’s songs through the prior year, the topic was inevitable: What metaphysical framework leads to an environmentalist spirituality? I chose three cultures that live or lived in harmony with Nature, and explored their beliefs, values, and social organization. These were Taoism, the Lenape of Pennsylvania, and the A:shiwi of New Mexico. Comparing them, I identified commonalities and from them synthesized a spiritual worldview. I employed the comprehensive and systematic theology of the Christian, Enlightenment-era mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, to offer rational explanations within ancient beliefs which otherwise are typically seen as ignorant and naïve by the Western mind.
The conclusion of the thesis, in briefest form is this:
Reality exists simultaneously across two poles
One pole is Essence, Being, Divine Love,
unmanifested, infinite, eternal, uncreate, unknowable, nameless, undifferentiated.
Alone, this pole is formlessness and without relationship,
Being without relationship it is meaningless and non-existent,
for without relationship even Divine Love is not real.
The other pole of the same reality is the universe—
The place of differentiation, form, identity, manifestation, limitation, named, knowable, created, finite, temporal, dying.
Alone, this pole cannot exist any more than touching can occur without a hand,
Or art can arise without an artist.
They are necessarily, symbiotically, One,
Counterparts in an eternal dance from which all life, all meaning, comes into being.
Their relationship one to the other is mutually interdependent,
but not in the same way.
To be meaningful, meaning requires words,
To come into being, words require meaning.
There are strata of reality, like rungs on a ladder,
That span between these two poles;
The higher the level, the less independent and defined the beings, but the more potent;
The lower the level, the more independent and defined are each being,
They are less animated automatically by Divine Love, less potent.
The human spirit and mind has corresponding levels;
Fulfilling our full spiritual potential includes
becoming an open conduit so that the Divine is seen in the physical world,
and the physical world is known as the partner of the Divine.
Though yin and yang forces exist in equal measure in both poles,
Singular essence and manifold manifestation,
In relationship to one another, essence takes on the role of yang, active, Father,
And manifestation takes on the role of yin, passive, Mother.
Father is like DNA, Mother is like body.
Father is like white light, Mother is like colors.
Like Father, Mother has sentience, intelligence, wisdom, love, spirit, and is interactive.
The imbalance of the current dominant global culture arising from western views and values is a faulty understanding of this relationship.
Western monotheistic adoration of Father
while blind to the sacredness of Mother
leads to destruction.
Exclusive adoration of Father lifts up male virtues of force, power, combat, competition, victory, personal achievement, individualism, and so on.
The pursuit of power as primary leads to physicalism because physicalism is a paradigm that offers great predictability and power.
Physicalism leads to materialism.
Materialism knows no Father and no Mother,
and the human will becomes God.
Utter destruction follows.
To restore sanity and balance, we must understand that Mother,
though finite, is no less than Father.
She is sacred and worthy of honor and adoration.
To love Father truly is to love Mother,
and to Love Mother truly is to love Father.
The attitude with which we approach and view life determines how life will interact with us and so what we will see.
Humility and gratitude are the doors which open the mind and heart
to see and hear the truth,
and open the hands to serve, to heal and bless.
When we hear with a humble, grateful heart,
Father and Mother will speak to us,
They will sing to us,
and the physical world will no longer be perceived as mechanical and unyielding, something to exploit and manipulate,
but communicative, interactive,
full of spirit, wisdom, love.
I report this here because these ideas are entwined in the meaning and timing of a physical sign that came into being within my hands.
As I began gathering materials for research, I went on one of my walks with Nature. Having entered into a receptive state of mind, I felt a subtle nudge to pick up a stick that was lying close to my feet. Listening to the prompt, though uncertain of the reason, I picked up the deep, dark, elegantly curved stick from the millions more strewn across the forest floor. As was my custom, I meditated on the stick, blanking my mind of thoughts and opinions, and just sitting with it, being to being, listening, appreciating.
The meaning I heard, the spirit I sensed, was unlike everything else of Nature that had ever spoken of sung to me. This stick did not offer a psychological or social insight, did not reveal a deep spiritual truth, or answer to any personal issue I was facing. The message I heard from the stick is that it was a symbol for the natural universe, Mother Nature.
I found this peculiar. I took the stick home and place it on a shelf above a chair in our bedroom. Other than a few feathers, this was the only object from the woods which I had brought home, the only object I felt told to pick up and take home. A couple more times, I took the stick down and meditated on it again, and both time, again, the message I heard was that this stick was a symbol of the natural universe. Curious.
Six months later, with the research done and the rough draft of the thesis complete, I was again in the woods, near the same spot, walking along a deer trail with Jada. I was surprised to see a stiff but malleable wire across the way. It hadn’t been there less than 24 hours prior when I walked this same deer path, so puzzled how it could have arrived there. I was about to step over the wire, but realizing a deer might get tripped up, I stopped and coiled the wire into my backpack.
A step later, I saw a three-pronged antler amongst the forest detritus. Being late May, this was late for finding deer antlers. I thanked the forest and the unknown deer, and took the antler. Finishing the walk to my favorite spot where I sat and meditated the antler. I was not getting a clear sense of the meaning when something made a noise nearby, so I opened my eyes. There was a deer, not 15 yards away. I watched it, it watched me. It snorted several times. This lasted what felt to be about four or five minutes. I tried to stand up to see if it would allow me to draw closer, but it scared off into the woods.
Taking the antler, it found home next to the stick on the shelf above the chair. Now I had two gifts from the forest. It was not long later that I took the two down and held them in my two hands. They were exactly the same height and general size. The graceful curves of the stick seemed to compliment the curves of the antler and I brought the two together. To my amazement, they clicked together like puzzle pieces so that if I held the stick, the antler remained in place, and if I held the antler, the stick did not fall away. The tips met, and the bases met to a point.
Later that evening, I gathered my family to see this amazing coincidence that the stick and the antler—the only two things the forest had given me—happened to fit together and hold in place. As I demonstrated, I was again amazed to find that the new created object stood on end, without support on the ground.
The import suddenly struck me. This object, black and white, Mother and Father, yin and yang, entwined, was the perfect symbol of the worldview presented in the thesis. It came clear why the stick did not have a spiritual meaning, but symbolized the natural world. I was told that truth before I could understand why. Apart, the pieces fall to the ground. Together, they stand in beauty. I took the object as a sign, a divine nod that the ideas I had discovered were true. The object was also manifest evidence of the suggestion within the thesis, that if we approach Nature as a wise Mother rather than as a machine, she will communicate and interact with us as an intelligent and loving being. Finally, the object was a marriage of the spiritual and the natural in that it was a physical object that represented a spiritual metaphysics. The object is symbol, sign, embodiment, and physical evidence of the spiritual worldview that arose in the time period bookended by the appearance of first the stick, and then the antler.
The worldview and the sign, the gift, have satisfied the theological hunger of my heart. I am seen. The thoughts of my mind are seen. The desire of my heart is heard. My physical whereabouts is witnessed. My hand is guided. What is needed will be manifested. Spirit walks with me, for where does Spirit not walk? What have I to fear? I am no longer an orphan. I have a Mother and a Father who know, love, and guide, not just me, but all life.
This is my big catch. It is my duty and pleasure to break all the ideas down into a palatable, digestible communication, and feed any mouth hungry for this food.
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