The Earth as solid substance may be no more than a spun dream, a metaphor for a metaphor, and matter altogether may be empty space. That’s how quantum physics has it. Shakespeare said, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Rilke wanted the earth to rise in us invisibly.
But what about the Earth’s obstinate visibility?
A speck of gold the size of a pinhead can be spun out, I read somewhere, to a thread 500 feet long, yet we can still see it shine when it’s beaten to 1/250,000th of an inch. We are glad to come into shore from a swim or a sail, or to crash back onto terra firma from outer space, as in the film Gravity; glad to strain our bodies upright against the solid-seeming pull of the globe. It’s no illusion.
Let’s dare, at times, to be children of earth with no special need of heavenly validation.
As long as we’re running around — we momentary uprisings of the loam in human form — we may as well admit our love of what’s tactile and feel our bodies and minds to be earthenware. “I am a child of earth and the starry heavens,” says the Orphic Tablet at Pedelia. Let’s dare, at times, to be children of earth with no special need of heavenly validation.
Oh, we can be water in water, too, blessing the watery part of the atmosphere, the rivers, lakes, oceans, the unbelievable pervasiveness of water on the planet and therefore in us. We can be air, the very air we take in constantly or life ceases. These are all threads in the warp or weft of the collective garment of incarnation. We’re a braid of light, air, water, earth, plant, animal, and human too.
For the earth is a subtle phenomenon as well: a communion of subjects, in Thomas Berry’s phrase, rather than a collection of objects.
Let’s go ahead and notice unseen or subtle dimensions that accompany all this rock and plant and animal nature within us and around us. For the earth is a subtle phenomenon as well: a communion of subjects, in Thomas Berry’s phrase, rather than a collection of objects. Dimensions of hope, thanks, love, meaning, currents of will and relationship, swirl among us and are us. And well that it is so, for though his body seemed too solid to Hamlet, yet all bodies do melt with time, leaving the stuff of dreams, our insubstantial, real substance, in their wake.
Michael Lipson, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist living with his family in Berkshire County, MA. He is the author of Stairway of Surprise (2002) and Group Meditation (2010) both from SteinerBooks. He teaches workshops in Incarnational Spirituality both locally and globally. You can join his free weekly email by signing up at michaellipson.org.