A grove of aspen trees is a unique thing. Seemingly a collection of individual trees with dancing leaves and brilliant golden fall color, an aspen grove is actually one organism connected by its root system. Trees grow the grove by sending off sprouting roots, often triggered by a forest fire or sunlight pouring into the gap in the canopy created by a fallen tree. This interconnectedness gives the aspen grove incredible resiliency and long life. Although one tree may not live for more than 150-200 years, a grove can exist for upwards of 10,000 years, with one grove in Utah celebrating approximately 80,000 years of life. This grove has a name: “Pando.”

Pando measures more than 100 acres in size and weighs more than 14 million pounds.

I hope that helps you on your next trivia night.

In contrast to my last blog post (The distance between), which was about the value of being a separate individual, learning to love the space between yourself and another, there have been events in the past two weeks that have me thinking about our collective oneness… like the aspen grove; one organism comprised of many seemingly individual parts.

Recently a scandal unfolded in my pridefully eccentric southeastern mountain town in which two business owners were outed for their misogynistic sexual exploits and “anonymous” social media bragging of the graphic details. An outraged community gathered together and effectively said: “No… this cannot happen. We will not stand for this glorification of rape-culture.” Within days the business was closed, picket signs gave voice to intolerance for such behavior, and local businesses began taking donations for OurVOICE, an amazing program that goes beyond counseling the victims of sexual assault, but also works to build awareness, provide education, and includes all genders in the creation of change in the community as a form of prevention.

I have been proud of the quick response to these actions… as I mentioned, there is a lot of pride in this hip town. In all of the online postings on this event, however, I read one that spoke to me of a deeper problem. It went beyond anger and finger pointing and reminded me to ask questions about healing…. About what to do next. It challenged the readers to remember compassion, to look for ways to heal WITH these two men, and not kick them to the curb as a way to move on.

The response to this article was mixed.

In addition to this call to live with love for everyone there have been postings and articles that encourage us to examine the culture that raises men with such attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. It reminded me of the responses after the shooting in Charleston earlier this year: questions that went deeper than gun control issues and looked at the “–isms” behind the action.

Because when it comes to “–isms”… we all have to take responsibility, we all have work to do. We cannot scapegoat the children, or young men, that are a product of our cultural “–isms” as a way to avoid facing the truth. I do not mean that the individuals should not be held responsible, but in order to grow beyond the “-isms”, I believe we have to bring everyone along with us; we have to listen, and learn, from everyone.

It is so easy to name ourselves as different from another. Back when we were infants this is how we developed a sense of self, by defining our boundaries, our selves as separate from our primary caregivers. But somewhere along the way we took something that was healthy, and we distorted it. Somewhere along the way we took it to mean that different was bad. Other was to be feared or fought. And so when we see one of our community that is acting differently from us, especially if they are hurting a part of our community, we have a tendency to do the same… to call it “other”… to push it out, to want to remove it from the body. We identify something wrong with that person or group, we say somewhere to ourselves: “that is not me.” This is helpful in order to know our selves and our values; it helps us to identify harm that is being done in the community. I would also offer that taken to an extreme, it places the focus on an individual or group and keeps us from finding communal healing. It draws our energy towards punishment rather than towards restoration and change.

As I biked by the business establishment yesterday morning I saw a poster leaning up against the front door, not obvious from the street view, as if it were left for the owners more so than the rest of us. It contained the first line of a favorite Rumi quote:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

I stopped.

These were not the words I expected to read.

These words did not scorn… nor did they condone.

These words were an invitation.

Where many community members hold anger towards these men, myself included, and most likely do not want to see them other than to hear their apologies, if that … this was an invitation to connect.

This seemed radical.

I thought "I’m not sure the community is ready for this…"

But it hit home for me.

My favorite part of the quote is the second half:

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

This is an image of the world I want to live in, where our sense of connection is so strong that right doing and wrong doing disappear. In a world where we view ourselves as one, we would not hurt each other, we would not need words to define ourselves as separate from the other, or "languages" that we have to attempt to translate, or fingers pointing at wrong and right.

This message is not one of forgiveness; it is a call to something greater than that. It is an invitation to ALL of us, to the business owners, the picketers, the passersby, and the wounded. It is a recognition that we are all united, like a grove of aspen trees. Above ground we appear to be separate entities of different heights, circumferences, bark patterns, and branch placement, but down in the depths of the soil the truth is revealed:

We are all one organism, and maybe if we tap into the life-giving force of our collective root system, we can find a way to survive great hardships and a way to flourish with resiliency into generations to come.

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