A Radical Pause for the Natural World

Recently, I read Flower Evolution by Katie Hess about flower essence healing powers. Its been a long road for me to feel this connected to nature. I read Jeremy Narby’s The Cosmic Serpent in my twenties just to be a rebel thinker when I was living in New York City. I don’t know that I ever felt the call of the plants to alter consciousness. It just sounded different. I liked the way he transformed from a anthropologist to a spiritual adventurist. I thought the language shifted around like a cool dance move. I could follow Narby into the Amazon without leaving my desk. Now two decades later living in Oregon, I am holding this beautiful coffee table book about flowers and it speaks to my deep concern for the word natural.

I think Natural is its own fight song. I learned this the hard way, that it matters to temper our ability to grow strong with what we understand about the natural world. This is not an easy lesson and the culture at large is not interested in the word natural for the same reasons I am referring to here. The commodification of purity has a wholly manipulative attempt of disguising the underbelly of a people who cannot feel true worth. To experience real worth, one must come into a loving relationship to the earth, to animals, and to the great mystery.

It matters to understand and respect cultures that are more knowledgeable about how to…