My daughter, Iris, enjoys throwing her toys off the kitchen table. I line them up, and she — seated in her highchair — proceeds to pick each one up, inspect it, look at me, then throw it on the floor. Sometimes she adds a little flourish — she might scoot a toy around the table a bit, pass it between her hands, use it to bang the table. And for a moment, I think that she might not throw it over the edge, that this time she’s realised there might not be another toy to play with. But sooner or later, it will end up on the floor, and she will look down at it, then up at me. I will pick the toys up as they accumulate, and she will carry on, never thinking of the limit to the number of toys available, never thinking of the limit to the energy I have for stooping and retrieving and replenishing.
She will grow out of this phase though — it is apparently a stage of development in which babies learn about cause and effect. It is a milestone in her growth.
I have been watching her, wondering whether parts of humanity are not much further ahead in development. We know there is no never-ending supply of resources lined up in front of us, but it seems as if the things of this earth are still being pushed over the edge, and there is no one to sort out the mess we make but us.
This analogy creaks and protests when stretched too far, but I am digging rather than declaring, and the idea has lingered.
I’ve worked in international development, in charity, and in local politics, and I have come to doubt that the tools and skills I witnessed and helped to create in order to ‘fix’ the climate, or social wellbeing, will be enough to get us to the next stage of development. We devise net zero policies, develop new technologies, create supposedly efficient and sustainable everything. These things necessarily attempt to heal the brokenness of right now, and might keep our way of life in front of us for a bit longer. But many of the tools we’ve developed — or assume are being developed — are an illusion of control, not a changing of our ways.
I seem to be quoting Wendell Berry a lot lately. I did in my last post. Here he is again:
“I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.”
I believe this too. I believe love — a diamond-edged bringer of creation, a soil that tends new life, the name of God that I most understand, most want to draw near to — can call Iris into herself, and call humanity into itself. Love, when allowed to lead, might give us technology or policy or other tools, and might help us use resources well. But before that, it might also ask questions: Does this expand or diminish our humanity? Are we just outsourcing problems? Is the thing we’re working to sustain something we really want — or need — to sustain? What is this doing to the inner depths of our being? What’s further upstream, and are we willing to look there? What might a life, a community, a society, look like at its best?
Love will ask questions even if the answers are inconvenient, because it cares that we become who we might be, and it cares that we stop pushing things over the edge, expecting them to be retrieved or replenished. Love will turn priorities upside down: so that caregiving, rather than never-ending economic growth, becomes a goal; so that enoughness and good communal life are things to be proud of, rather than trying to have it all, be it all, and do it all alone. Love will offer truth alongside encouragement and patience and kindness. It will tell my daughter “no” sometimes, it will teach there is no never-ending supply of anything except itself, it will teach limits. But love will help Iris to know her and others’ uniqueness, and will, to paraphrase Mary Oliver, ‘announce her place in the family of things’.
Right now Iris is asleep on me. I know that she cannot stay this way — this small, this dependent — that she will and must grow. I will love her into her evolving self. I am trying to love humanity, us, me, into being too — into awareness, into aliveness, into, as Berry says, redemption.
A good book
I recently read the excellent book ‘The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth’ by Elizabeth Rush. Questions of mothering in a time of planetary breakdown resonate deeply at the moment, and I wrote a review of it for Plough Magazine.
Are you a writer wanting to share your work?
Here’s a couple of upcoming submission callouts:
Mutterzine - an independent writing magazine based in Bristol, UK, on care, mothering, matrescence and mother nature. Call for submissions on the theme of ‘Roots’, deadline 29th February. More here.
Alpine Fellowship - 2024 writing prize open for submissions on the theme of ‘Language’, deadline 1st March. More here.
(Is this helpful? Are there writers reading this who’d like more of these? Let me know)
Call for input
I’m curious — what comes to mind when you hear the idea that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’? What does the ‘village’ mean to you, and who or what is your village made up of? How do you live it out in the modern world? What challenges or joys do you experience in doing so? I’m writing about this, and I’d love your input — you can leave a comment below or send me an email. I’ll reference any ideas or quotes that I draw on. Thank you!
Thank you for being here, reading my words. I want RedLands to nurture writing, connections, ideas and hope — and your reading and engagement make it possible.
Love,
Elizabeth
Absolutely lovely, my friend!