“the faithfulness I can imagine would be a weed
flowering in tar, a blue energy piercing
the massed atoms of a bedrock disbelief”
—Adrienne Rich
In our Community Practice this week, I shared a beautiful essay by Daniela Molnar called “Flowering in Tar” (Oregon Humanities). She invites us into our senses for a “geohaptic” connection. Imagine that your six senses—touch, sight, sound, taste, smell, and intuition—are six thick roots extending from your body down, down, down to the center of the planet, where they anchor into what Annie Dillard once called Holy the Firm.
Holy the Firm can be whatever you name as ultimate:
• Goddess/God
• gravity or time
• molten metal or mystery
• the sacred, the absolute, the hum at the center of things
From that core, these roots rise back through the layers of the earth—rock and soil, water and air—reaching into your veins, your skin, your bones, your mind, and heart.
“You are socketed into the living world through your senses.”
This deep rooting is a gift.
Part of my Back to the Roots series currently taking place free on Patreon.
