Walt Whitman said that “all truths wait in all things.” I am often intrigued by patterns that reappear across a spectrum of physical and metaphysical experience. One Lakota proverb landed fairly close to Whitman: “The spiritual landscape is revealed in the physical landscape.”
In my experience, the resonance between the physical and the metaphysical is everywhere. Some of my closest friends are afflicted by a seasonal depression around the holidays. In the Western landscape, wildfires consume woody overgrowth, returning nutrients to soil and allowing growth of the understory. In a very similar way, I have seen cyclical depressive episodes serve a purpose of eliminating redundant attitudes and ideas, returning more basic energy to a blank mental palate and allowing the next step in a person’s life.
I myself have a depressive cycle that seems to come and go over greater periods of time. I no longer look at these episodes as unhealthy. For many it happens this time of year. It is a process of returning the decadent contents of the mind into the abyss of the soul to allow regrowth. Our Yuletide fires are a synthesis of the physical and spiritual, at once consuming the old and lighting a path toward the new. The key is to play the long game. The ripple between ecosystem dynamics and spiritual dynamics is palpable.
One of my favorite insights from the great ecologist Aldo Leopold is that the stability of ecosystems is proportionate to their diversity. Each of the species, even those in apparent competition with the other, enhances the resilience of the system. Here too there is great resonance with the human experience. Those dependent on a more limited basis of meaning will invariably be shaken harder when a component is lost or questioned. A diversity of friendships and viewpoints will create more stability in times of crisis.
In this light, our present politics of intolerance are disturbing. It would not surprise many that, as an organization, the Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association (CVEPA) tilts blue. And yet we decided at our annual meeting to give the podium to Perry Will, a Republican Garfield County commissioner (with no relation to the author). Some members of the CVEPA board, citing various disagreements with Mr. Will’s positions on some social issues, were uneasy about this choice.
As our event unfolded, the warmth of our common interests was inspiring. Perry has been a staunch champion of public lands, vocally resisting disposal proposals from within his own party. By the end of that evening, new bonds were formed across aisles. Though we may never agree on all issues, the resilience of our defense of our common interests, such as public land, is dramatically enhanced by a welcoming attitude toward a diversity of viewpoints across the spectrum.
It seems a fitting point for our approach to this Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas and whatever other traditions you may observe. Diversity begets stability. Peace and good will toward all things.
CVEPA is dedicated to promoting careful stewardship of the Crystal Watershed. To learn more, visit www.cvepa.org or find us on Facebook.