The Rub Of Change
As I sat at the edge of Spirit Lake at Mt. St. Helen’s last month, I had a deep visceral wondering arise. I was sitting at the edge of the lake, right in the center of the blast zone from nearly 40 years ago, gazing out upon the still thousands of sun-bleached white tree snags floating near the shore of the lake in front of me. They were floating in such a way they made a pattern just inviting one to walk across them out toward the center of the lake. They looked like a beautiful large net with the sun glinting off the tiny spaces where the water of the lake could be seen between their mesmerizing pattern.
We had just come out from a five day backpack in the Mount Margaret backcountry nearby St. Helen’s. For most of the backpack we were able to commune with Mt. St. Helen’s and Spirit Lake from numerous angles and vantage points high above the lake. We were gifted with experiencing the pattern of logs floating across the lake in a myriad of changing ways due to the variable winds. They were a breathing shapeshifting being continuing to show up to us throughout the days with a new face for us to recognize. They became a collective being individually together.
Sitting now at the edge of Spirit Lake and seeing each log individually, the importance and necessity of each individual log’s unique attributes was so obvious. The collective ‘log mass being’ was dependent on the constantly changing angles and shapes of each individual log relative to the wind’s invitation to shapeshift. The individual co-creates the whole and the whole compels the individual to morph and change.
At the level of each individual log there was a transformation happening. Each log co-created an initial rub with the log next to it, and then each log settled into a new place with in the pattern of the whole. I began to feel that moment of change viscerally within me.
I believe our world sits at a very similar place. The moment where there is an active rub between members–the rub of potential change. More than potential change–inevitable and necessary change for life to continue to evolve. The collective human being mass, however has one special advantage to the log mass being. That is the ability to be conscious of it’s own consciousness. To truly co-create with the winds of change.
I can only imagine the unbridled power of Mt. St. Helen’s blast on the surrounding land, human, plant, and animal beings, In that devastation lives the seeds and the conditions for new life to be sown in the aftermath. Experiencing new life in the blast zone 39 years later provides my witness to the awe, wonder, and deep resilience of all of Life.
We are at the deep moment of rub. We require each individual human to fully occupy their present shape and grow into a novel angle or shape as we co-create a new world. Our current world is based on principles of disconnection, separation, and devastating the very lands and beings we need to co-create a new, more resilient shape. The seed of the new world lives in each of us and in our collective.
The winds of evolution are calling and demanding we step up to our highest evolved form. May we sense that call viscerally within each of our deepest levels of our heart-minds and souls.
As Arundhati Roy says, ““Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” The time is now.
