.....seeing from different angles

Yogis,
Hello ferns! I see you plantain, poke and clover. Wow stinging nettle, you have grown this week!

Phoebe and I are strolling through our woods checking in on everyone. We are almost back up the hill to the grass when I see someone I don’t recognize. Hmmmm…… A memory floods in of me planting some roots here but that must have been four or five years ago.

I pull out my phone and launch my trusty plant identifier app. Right away it knows it is a plant. Ok good start. It then recognizes it as being in the buttercup family, and eventually narrows it to Baneberries and Cohoshes genus. Sometimes this is where the app gets stuck.

Try different angles it tells me as I lean this way and that, zooming in and backing up. At times we never get any further. This time, however, it finally announces her as Black Cohosh. Indeed, the plant I had placed beneath the earth years back. “Welcome! I guess you were waiting for just the right moment.” How amazing nature is.

It all got me thinking.

I think it is safe to say that more than half of people walking through the woods see a sea of green plants. So why when I walk through a lawn am I seeing the violets, dandelions and spring garlic so distinctly? Why as I drive do the mullein along the side of the road yell ‘here I am‘ to me?

My eyes are no different than yours and it has nothing to do with intelligence. It’s only that I developed a passion for plants and have chosen to pay attention. To spend the effort to see each one as an individual. Recognize its unique gift which then leads us to a relationship.

Maybe for you its birds, where you can’t fathom how anyone could confuse a house wren with a carolina wren. Or your ears know within a few notes whether it’s Mozart or Beethoven. Aware of the stunning differences between the two and the gifts they offer. Or perhaps its trees, or artwork, or how your tongue instantly assesses which spice was used in the sauce.

Those areas where your life app knows not only family, but genus and bores right down to the individual. Unfortunately, we don’t always do this with each other.

How often it is that we classify a group of people by their nationality or color of their skin. Labeling the ‘family’ or maybe down to ‘genus’ and then applying sweeping characteristics to the whole group. Staying up at that surface level where we can convince ourselves they are all the same, like a sea of green. Blinders on that they even all begin to look alike. Prejudices love this easy path in.

When we live here there is no hope of relationship. What if we could make our eyes as determined as my plant app?

Each time we pass a person, after the usual assumptions of who they were, we would be reminded to look from different angles. To zoom in and step back. To open ourselves to witness the subtle. The curve of the jaw. The way a hand lifts to smooth back the hair.  How one side of the mouth lifts higher than other as they smile. Boring down to the myriad of intricacies that comprises an individual. Unique. Unlike any other with a gift they want to share. Now a relationship begins.

As I stand up from the black cohosh, my phone passes over Phoebe. ‘Mammal’ I am told.

Seeing others from different angles,
SARAH