Like Roots Out of Soil

This morning, like most mornings the last few months, I wake up and give thanks that I have awoken, again, in this place, that this is my life.

That this is my life.

That this is my life.

That this is my life.

That for better and for worse, as far as I know, I will not have another.

That I will not have another.

The thanksgiving and the grief, that this is my life and I will not have another, they come in the same first blink of the day. In the morning’s first light, these twin bittersweet truths stretch themselves across the grassy slope that is my chest, give their weight to my keeping. I ask: help me to remember and keep these indivisible blessings close this whole day long.

This morning, my dear, dear friend Jenny lies sleeping in the back bedroom.

This morning, my friend Jared’s voice is lighter than it has been. Light like the airstrikes in Kyiv the last few nights. Light like a voice that has slept in a bed instead of in a hallway because the airstrikes have been light.

This morning, I am reading about research done on human embryos, the scientific and ethical limitations and possibilities thereof.

This morning, my friend Marc reports back from his trip to Japan, that the whole society seems to default to kindness, to the collective recognition that you are not an obstacle to be overcome, but a human being just like me.

It sounds so spacious it makes me want to weep.

---

I bet my one life on this venture because I believe, bone deep, in the power of human beings gathered together in a room to give and receive stories, of human bodies sharing space and time and the mystery that binds us together. I believe, as only a pathological individualist can, in the power of community, of collective. I believe—and the most transcendent moments of this, my life, have happened just like this—that when we come together humbly and with curiosity to give our bodies, imaginations, and souls to tune into the truth at the heart of a story, we not only transcend the sum of our individual parts, but we channel the very song that keeps the universe spinning. And I believe those who witness such moments are giving their bodies, imaginations, and souls to that same project, are essential to the channeling.

In plain English, I believe that theatre—
especially physical theatre—
especially musical physical theatre—
especially musical physical devised theatre—
is prophetic

is prophetic

and with whatever one small life I have,
with whatever one small me this life animates,
I am called to join the prophesying,
and I cannot and am not called to do it alone.

So it is with real grief that I have come to understand that some of my classmates do not agree, and believe that the needs of the individual may be opposition to, or at least in tension with, the needs of the collective, and that their obligation is to their individual needs over the needs of the collective.

It’s a feeling I know extremely well, as a pathological individualist.

I hasten to say that none of these people are bad people. They are kind people. I like them and care for them. They may not agree with my characterization of their priorities, but I can read actions as well as words.

And I believe I might be wrong, or projecting my own needs onto classmates who do not consent to my theology. This is a school. People are here for individual reasons, to get their own, and not someone else’s, education. I can see those arguments.

I also understand the argument that to care for oneself is a necessary prerequisite to caring for the collective, and I know that I regularly fail the collective in that way.

But it is true, too, that I am not alone in my sadness and bewilderment about the ways our group has not collectivized, nor in my grief over the work that we cannot do because we are not all giving what we must in order to open the channel to mystery.

It’s a microcosm of the global human problem, isn’t it?

If we cannot even agree that we are a community, we are not one.

And yet . . .

---

What are those trees that grow from other trees? Parasites or symbionts, I’m not sure, those plants that sprout high off the ground, in the branches of some other tree, and dangle their hopeful roots down toward the soil they need to survive.

What faith that takes, to launch yourself out into empty space, day by day growing down, trusting that one day, before it is too late, your toes will find the rich deep soil that anchors you to life.

---

I cannot offer details here, for many reasons, but my education is in jeopardy. The second year of my two year degree program is no longer the path I started on. Instead we’re facing some black pond, shapes moving dimly beneath the surface. Answers will come, but time is short, and it is hard not to panic. I have not yet arrived where I came here to be.

---

Like an embryo in utero or in petri dish follows its own ancient script of multiplying, with and without hope of growing until it finds a warm wall in the dark, rich with what it needs to ripen, I am trying to stay present to what I have been called to do.

I am trying to stay present to the sun on my leaves.

With and without hope, I keep growing, stretching my dangling naked roots toward a rich dark collective maybe.