Sacred Turbulence

I have a predilection for watching trees sway in wind.

Understanding that under the hypnotic dance, swaying resiliently against the buffets of air, there is extraordinary chaos mathematics: that the raised arms of the trees as if to pray to the Sun–for, after all, isn’t that what they are doing?– are both enduring and celebrating. Knowing that this chaos is everywhere in our world, and yet these creatures, like all of us, are built for surviving and know how to bend rather than break.

I can watch for a long time. Poetry of the world in long upraised fingers, in light and shadow, dancing.

It’s good for me. Helps, in times like these.

Turbulent chaos is Sacred. Without it, we couldn’t exist.

Indeed, the turbulent cosmic regions where gas and dust collide and pull together through gravity are where stars are formed, leading, through many phases of change, to us.

And so it is that I look at these times–times when true malevolence appears to be in ascendance–and I say: “Yep. Turbulence.”

Now, I do not believe that there is any cosmic plan beyond the unfolding of the laws of physics. I do not believe that justice and kindness will necessarily prevail in human history. We Atheopagans credit no such predestination, nor to the idea of invisible and super-powered Beings who could shepherd such an outcome.

But it is true that in the thousands of years since we began recording history (only about 3% of human history, let’s remember), things have gotten better, in fits and starts. Not for everyone, and for some a lot more than for others. But still, we have ideas about human and individual rights we didn’t have a thousand years ago. We are aware of our environment in a manner that dominant cultures have often missed, in terms of understanding the systems therein as our life support at the least, our parentage and family at most.

The turbulence, the chaos that comes now is frightening. As with the trees, it shakes us, forces us to bend so that we will not break.

And so we strategize all the ways we can bend, yet resist. That we can be, as Bruce Lee had it, like water: flowing, passing easily, and yet hard as iron when dropped into from a height.

If we dance, we cannot be broken.

Another wave of bad news came this weekend: threats to our forests, this time. These lost, pathetic men filled with greed and malice are nothing if not thorough.

Tomorrow I will go back to work, to finding that way to bend and yet resist, to create out of the turbulence.

Hopefully, it will feel like dancing.