Let’s reimagine the land in a way that reveals it as fertile soil not only for growing food but also for nourishing our social and soul lives.
What if we were to understand land as a membrane between heaven and earth? Such an organic membrane defines and integrates what lies on either side. Without this boundary, there is no horizon; without a horizon, there is no meeting place of sky and earth, and therefore no spatial orientation for us. Nor could we orient in time: think of the rhythmic passing of sunrise and sunset. Without land, we would lack a place to stand and a way to know the matter of which we are made. Lacking that orientation, our vitality would be compromised. Human consciousness is as inseparable from heaven and earth as human beings are from the land, giving dimension and gravity to the idea of land as the threshold between them.
We know gravity as a force that holds us on the land. But gravity and its counterforce, levity, flow reciprocally along a path connecting earth matter and cosmic movement. Every human life moves along this path as its unique spiritual substance, its individuality, and descends into the forming mineral material of a body—a being in becoming. Consider the consequences of disrupting this reciprocity with a more mundane example: How does it affect your soul when a beautiful garden is paved over? The paving becomes a disruptive barrier, a blockage, a disconnector. Alternatively, what happens in you when you witness a blade of grass bursting through the sidewalk—a kind of eruptive reconnector?
Land is the skin of the Earth—the beautiful protective covering over what is essentially an organic system of rock, open spaces and passageways, air, and ever-present humidity. For those who have traveled within its caverns, it is inspiringly obvious why Earth is Mother. For those who have never been underground, do not assume that terra firma means something solid. We tread on a surface that continuously mediates cosmic and earth wisdom. We are intermediaries, should we choose such a consciousness. We can be catalytic in freeing Earth to fulfill its destiny or cataclysmic in dismantling its rightful evolution. Two paths, two different outcomes for the earth and the land that encompasses it. And two different consequences for the state of humanity. Land defines the horizontal, the common ground, providing an equal footing and landing pad for all sentient beings, and, at the same time, land makes it possible to partake in the flow between spirit and matter.
The land feeds us, comforts us, makes its beauty available to us, and teaches us about the genius of interdependency, reciprocity, and chaos. It records our deeds, suffers our arrogance, and is challenged by natural and human-caused disasters. Land also makes a wonderful foil for human intelligence. It is malleable, subject to the creative and destructive systems our intelligence has intended for it. Land ownership is an invention and reflects one of those systems. Ownership that focuses on appraised values, depreciation, and extractive production for private profit beyond a livelihood subjugates the land to self-interest and shapes it into a commodity. On the other hand, ownership in the sense of acting on behalf of future generations demonstrates a sense of responsibility; such ownership acts out of accountability to the wider community. How we own is about us, not about the land. The reality is that land is our commonwealth. Despite the way we treat land—as a commodity or as a resource from which to extract or store capital—the natural world pre-existed us. In a moral universe, we should count ourselves blessed to be received by the land, and with humility, connect with it in the spirit of gift.
Land makes possible the social world, the ground upon which our lives play out in dynamic relationships. Our day-to-day interactions with others, our labor and professions, are founded in and on the earth and shared land. In modern times, the human story has focused on the evolution of individual identity—a self-centric path which often casts self-interest as its shadow. One result is the blockage of the reciprocal flows with the natural world, even though the natural world is operating within each of us. Such blockage bears a dissonance that creates the conditions for illness. A further consequence is disconnection from world phenomena, including heaven and earth, in which we become unconscious and unwitting participants for better or worse. Our task is to live into just how deeply connected to land and nature we truly are, and in doing so, recognize our connection to and interdependence with others. This imagination of the commonwealth carries ancestral wisdom that needs a renewed and conscious awakening.
A good farmer knows the nature of stewardship. A good farmer knows that the fertility of the land and soil is the generative center of all agriculture. That is a livelihood working on, for, and through the land. Could we reimagine a fertility of social and soul life that mirrors what the farmer already knows through their vocation? A social life that cherishes the land as a kind of medicine for what it makes possible? Such an imagination might bring the real state of land and the real condition of human longing together into an imagination of commonwealth grounded in sufficiency rather than power-over, love rather than cruelty or indifference. Without such an ideal, we have no guiding idea from which to draw inspiration, no land upon which to tread in freedom, and no horizon to mark the sunrise and inspire hope for the coming day.
Photo Viateur Hwang
