BECOMING NATIVE TO THIS PLACE
I have a morning prayer practice that has a combination of some standard things or themes and some more free flowing. I tweak it when I feel moved to, and there’s nothing systematic about that.
About a year ago as I prepared to move to someplace rural, I added two things: I prayed to steward a piece of land and to build a beloved community. This never quite felt right, but I just kept praying it and sitting with it. Then I rented instead of bought (as if we could ever buy land, but ownership is a fiction that drives our world) and the idea of stewarding this particular piece of land felt really weird because I’m likely to move next year again—while I love living in the country, the soil seems great, not hearing lawn mowers or leaf blowers is a true blessing, the house works and the location is really convenient, I’m just not a fan of hearing Rt. 5 when I sit outside and there are things I can’t do (plant fruit trees for instance or do something more constructive with the pasture land other than having it bushhogged twice a year) because I have a landlady who has say on these things.
So in the back of my heart, I’ve been feeling my words weren’t quite right.
Today out of my mouth came the prayer to become native to this place. Oh, that feels right.
Now I have always craved to be native to a place. When I was an adolescent there was this famous book by Ram Dass called “Be Here Now.” Of course, I was someone who constantly worried about the future and I made the joke that my slogan in life was “Be here tomorrow.” But really, my slogan should have been more like “Be there tomorrow” since I was a physically restless person whose frequency of moving was in inverse proportion to how much I craved to belong to a place.
What does it mean to belong to a place? I’m just going to be like the finger pointing at the moon, not describing the moon in great detail.
One element is an intimacy with the more than human world. To be native we need some kind of relationship with the keystone species of the area. That includes trees, four leggeds, birds, grasses, herbaceous plants. Here in Southern Vermont for instance, I for sure need to develop a relationship with Hemlocks and Maples that I didn’t have when I lived in the Mid-Atlantic where I needed a relationship with Beeches and Hickories more.
A second element is a non exploitive economic relationship with the more than human world. This is a key teaching of Wes Jackson from whom I first read the phrase “become native to this place.” Wes argued that all beings have an economy, ways that they make their livings and provide the necessities for their young. If they can’t make a living, then they can’t survive—and humans are no different. Where we are different is in the whole idea of a money economy where we do things to get money to buy the necessities of life that someone else produces. Ultimately we are just as dependent upon the more than human world as any deer or clump of orchard grass, but because it is distant for most of us, we don’t realize it; we think milk comes from the grocery store.
This relationship can be and has to be non exploitive. I’ve touched on this in writing about stewardship elsewhere. I absolutely believe we can work with the land and with the more than human world in ways exactly parallel but obviously not identical, to how a hemlock tree works the world around them.
A third element is an intimacy with the human community. Humans are social animals, in the same way that cows, deer, grey squirrels, black walnut trees etc are. We need to be in a deep relationship with other beings of our species. I can’t speak for how it is for beech trees in a beech grove, but I can absolutely say this has always, always, been a challenge for me. That’s what is in front of me now, and why I pray to build a beloved community every day.
A fourth element is longevity. This is one that I can’t access because of how I have lived my life. There’s a different kind of energy if your ancestors connected with the more than human world in some way and worshipped in the same watershed where you find yourself. There’s a different kind of energy if you have a multigenerational beloved community. There’s a different energy if some of your age cohort who are part of your beloved community have parents who are part of your parents’ beloved community.
I’m not alone in being with the impossibility of longevity. So what can I do to address that impossibility? I believe that I need to grieve that this is how my life has worked. Then I need to grieve some more because this is a really big deal for me. And I need to work so that maybe others might have the possibility of multi generational place based beloved communities.
What might that work look like? One of the reasons that I moved to Southern Vermont was that I could buy a lot more local food thus helping others create an economic base. I buy my vegetables (though I have some planted in my little garden) from multi generational organic farms within 10 miles of me. I buy meat and cheese from a second generation farm. Right now the farmers involved are, at best, casual acquaintances; I just got here and started buying from them. But a big part of the task in front of me is to connect deeply with people who work the land in ways that manifest that for them the land is part of their beloved community.
I don’t know if I am going to be able to become native to this place. I am here because I believe that it offers me the best possibility. Becoming native to this place is a huge spiritual challenge and opportunity for me.
