WESTMINSTER WEST — Take a deep breath.
Most of the oxygen filling your lungs and energizing your body is produced by microorganisms - cyanobacteria - in Earth's oceans. The same nourishing air forms a protective membrane around the planet, shielding Earth from the cold vacuum of space.
Have some food.
Broken down into fats and sugars, these nutrients are not used by our distinctly human cells. They are ingested by non-human units within our cells called mitochondria. Ancestors of these mitochondria, formerly free-living bacteria, became partners to provide energy to the cell.
Look around.
The retinal molecule in our eyes enabling us to see is formed with beta-carotene, a molecule that also aids plants to conduct photosynthesis. Earth “sees” through animals and plants: plants look only at the sun, we look at everything but the sun.
Our lives are intertwined with Earth's being. We belong to the warp and weft of a wondrous planet, yet seldom experience ourselves as expressions of our planetary home. We are estranged from the beauty and mystery of the very Earth that shapes and sustains us.
We are orphans in a modern culture that is an orphan culture. How has this happened?
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Once upon a time, not very long ago, all of our ancestors were indigenous. They were interwoven with every facet of their region and environment, whether it be cloud, river, mountain, grassland, tundra, valley, desert, forest, coast, animal, or plant.
We belonged to these environs and were enhanced by reciprocal relations to Earth's movements and energies. The human languages and cultures arising from a shared world bespoke and revealed a rich intimacy.
There was acknowledgement and respecting of the gifts of nature that provided our ancestors with material and spiritual succor.
The whisper of wind, track of an animal, quaking of a mountain, current of a river - all had significance and sparkled with life.
As diverse as a field of wildflowers, the character of each society of First Peoples was distinctive. Some cultures were hostile, others peaceful; some were welcoming, others insular. All were molded by an interweaving of place and human sensitivity.
Each culture developed an origin story that was an umbilical to a shimmering world that offered sustenance, and within which our indigenous ancestors lived in gratitude for the marvel of their lives and community.
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And then, history happened.
Control of animals through herding and of plants through agriculture gave rise to expansive and engulfing societies that begat city-states that begat empires that begat nations that begat transnational corporations.
From that sequence emerged a dominant culture, global in scope, propelled by extractive and exploitative economic systems, wreaking havoc on the planet's ecosystems and climate. The glory of the human became the devastation of the Earth.
Welcome to the modern world.
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It is tempting, of course, to regard ourselves as a destructive, polluting menace and conclude that the planet would be better off without us. Or that we are merely a blip in time and space, a minuscule life form that could soon make itself extinct.
This is a shortsighted view of what humans are on Earth.
Humans are not just another species on Earth, in the way that Earth is not just another planet in the solar system. There is something unique and profound occurring here.
Humans have emerged as a global species. A global species, it may be said, is one that can foment a global crisis. In all of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, she has produced just one other planetary species: Earth's firstborn, bacteria.
Bacteria are a threshold species. They are the foundational lifeforms on Earth, a pervasive and resilient skin of the planet. Bacteria fashioned photosynthesis and in so doing created the most dire self-made crisis Earth has ever experienced. Profligate photosynthesizing bacteria polluted the planet with oxygen, a toxic and corrosive gas lethal to all single-celled life.
Ever responsive, bacteria innovated and adapted. They transformed Earth's mineral composition, ocean environment, and atmosphere, and they formed multi-celled life.
We complex animals, plants, and fungi rely upon beneficial and benign microbial communities within and outside our bodies. We cannot survive independent of bacterial support, and the mutually enhancing relation that bacteria have developed with Earth.
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Humans are the only multi-celled organisms to grow into a planetary species. Like bacteria, our flagrant misuse of resources impinges upon ecosystems and life, resulting in a deranged climate threatening many forms of life, including humankind.
We, too, are a threshold species. With our gift of an imaginative and empathic awareness, we are Earth's consciousness of its own wholeness.
We can now identify ourselves with a particular region or environment in the context of the entire planet. We are experiencing a rite of passage, an initiation into an inborn destiny. We are self-challenged to mature into wonder and awe of ourselves as expressions of a living Earth.
We possess the capacity and ability to re-enchant our world. Our purpose is to become indigenous to Earth as a single region, a single ecosystem, a womb of creativity and nourishment, and our primary sacred reality.
Our task is to connect our everyday life to the grace, power, and majesty of a transforming Earth.