Meditation on the Soul of the Planet
The radical theologian Matthew Fox says, "As the ocean is in the fish and the fish are in the ocean, so God is in everything and everything is in God." For those of you that are theology geeks, this is called panentheism, the idea that God is in everything, immanent within all of creation.
I heard an amazing story on the radio a couple of weeks ago, about salmon in the Northwest. Like most people, I know the standard salmon story. They are born in small streams, then they swim down into the ocean, spend some years in the ocean growing, then, finally when they are ready to breed, they head back up to the same stream they were born in, to spawn, then die. What I didn’t know, is that the ecosystem of the forests of the Northwest depend upon the salmon. Of course, the bears and the eagles, and other predators depend on the salmon. But there is more. If you were to measure the carbon and nitrogen in trees in Northwest forests, a large percentage is from the ocean. It comes from the predators of the salmon disposing of the carcasses in the forest, which then decompose, and get incorporated into the soil, and that nourishes the trees.
Native Americans of the region understood their dependency on salmon quite deeply. Here is a short poem said by women of the tribe Kwakiutl. It is called...
Prayer to the Sockeye Salmon
Welcome, o Supernatural One, o Swimmer
who returns every year in this world
that we may live rightly, that we may be well.
I offer you, Swimmer, my hearts deep gratitude.
I ask that you will come again
that next year we will meet in this life,
that you will see that nothing evil should befall me.
O Supernatural one, o Swimmer,
now I will do to you what you came here for me to do.
We sing here “I see the love of God in you, the light of God is shining through ...” Seeing God in everything calls us to see the love of God in each and every dog, cat, leaf, stone, shell, flower, grain of sand, snake, mosquito, fish, maple tree, and kudzu root. Wouldn’t we think differently, and act differently if we thought that God was not only in each of us, but in each thing we came across and ate, too? And that, in having God, they have souls?
As we know, we live in a precarious moment. Every step we take, and every decision we make, can have implications for the future health of our planet, and every being on it. This is a moment to pay attention. To see every flower, every leaf, every stone, every lady bug, the seagulls at the beach, the spider crawling up your living room wall, the fish in your tank, the trees in your backyard, the cat crossing your lawn, the grass in your lawn, the ant in your kitchen, the dog who sleeps at the end of your bed, the chicken in your pot, the leaves of spinach in your salad, the worms in your compost, and give thanks to the God that is in them, and the God, that by the miraculous process of evolution, put us all in this place, and in this time, so that we may depend upon one other.