The writhing of our species is at times violent, at times gentle. Always we look for the light that shines from our native tongue. Whatever words we use now, came from another tongue. A long ago tongue; a tongue who was energy, and changed with the changing energy across the seasons, and centuries. We came along lately, and some knew the native tongue: others heard it. Some worked at translating it, though it needs no new words to tell its essence. The consonants and vowels of my native tongue are wonder and energy. These two root utterances measure and encompass all that is worthwhile for me to say. They are my native tongue. I speak my native tongue through another language than what you are engaged with at this moment. Energy and wonder cross-fertilize the visual language. It is ever changing.
Wonder-producing work is being done to figure out how life emerged on this planet. Slowly scientists are accruing data that indicate a vast interconnectivity. Our genome contains DNA from ancestor bacteria. The code of human DNA lines up with remarkable similarity to that of our close primate cousins. The places where we diverge from the plant kingdom offer additional connections. We are getting far enough along to know that our belief systems need to change: we are not the unique, highest order species inhabiting this planet that we once assumed as an essential indentity. Witness horizontal gene transfer, and endosymbiosis; two of the plethora of phenomenon uncovered by the careful study of cells, molecules, and their myriad interactions. (The history of this investigation is beautifully delineated in The Tangled Tree, A Radical New History of Life, by David Quammen.)
Another chronicler of connectivity speaks with a slightly different accent, and from the identity of how a person is grounded in a geographic place. Wendell Berry writes, "What I know is that shout of limitless joy, love unbound at last, our only native tongue." His description of the native tongue makes visible the granular play of love; how we parse it in community, dare it privately, and embrace it across complex psychologies. (P. 268, Jayber Crow.)
