we literally are one
Photograph of Yellow Eyed Tree Frog Eggs by Tim Flach
Fun fact: YOU share genes with ALL living organisms, and all but .01% amongst your fellow humans. Yes, amongst ourselves, we, human-beings are radically genetically identical.
A less anthropocentric way of saying that: ALL species on earth - living and extinct - are intimately and intricately related. (And insofar as there may be other-than-earthbeings out there, do you think we share genes with them too? If we come from the same womb, so to speak, I’d posit yes.)
Dearly kin to one another, all are expressing mere variations of genetic code in a plurality of forms. And doing so in a congruous way that is nothing short of a miracle. Where the needs of one species or animal (or ecosystem even) are filled by another, whose needs are filled by yet another, and so on… perfecting the ever turning wheel of interdependent life spanning time and space.
(And what a gift to be here we behold by our very existence! Among the wild and perfect commotion! Ah, I felt some eyes roll there… may I suggest a closer look at the profound ordinary?)
Yes, just as your leg and your lungs and your pinky nail are somehow connected yet diverse bodily expressions of your one self, so too all are earthbeings such bodily expressions of the earth-self. (Which, if we really want to go there, is a mere microcosm of an even greater cosmic scale Self, is it not?)
And thus… @devoterre - earth devotion. An expression of a higher-order Self-Love, earth-centric, if you will (and I hope you will). A living out of the sentiment shared by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: “All thriving is mutual.” Because we are as one. Not just metaphorically or in a la-la woo-woo way, but because it is our origin story. And may it be our epilogue too.
