An Electric Invitation

On Saving, Savoring and the Unpredictable World

Looking for crocuses on Kwanlin Dün traditional territory by Michael Svoboda

When the last pile of snow melted two weeks ago, we noticed two snowshoe hares on our front lawn. After a severe winter, a winter everyone continues to talk about, the fact that any hares survived feels like a small miracle.

They came daily and so began infiltrating our family group chat. Did you see the bunnies today? Where were they? Was it the Mama one or the baby one?

But last week in the middle of the night, we were all woken up by a screeching commotion of coyotes. They were close to our place– around the area we suspected the hares had their winter burrows. As I lay there listening, I worried, “did they get the bunnies?” As they yipped, the coyotes sounded more than pleased with themselves. I thought, “After all that work surviving, those hares are going to be gonners.”

The next morning, it was clear we’d all been worried. We gathered around the kitchen nook with breakfast cereal bowls in our hands, looking outside for any camouflaged movement. I didn’t see any until I caught sight of a large gray moth, hovering near the lilac bush. But quickly I realized it wasn’t a moth, but the back of the hare’s long ears tucked close together, mimicking an insect.

We waited to see if there was two. But over the next couple of days it was clear, only one survived: the baby.

*
Dinner conversation last night was about another killing. This one brazen- mid morning.

My husband was driving to work and spied a young fox as he was pulling up to his building. The fox was on one side of the road. Then we spied a coyote, huddled in the stalk position, behind some poplars on the other side. He slowed the car down, noticing how oblivious the young fox was, distracted by a midden of ground squirrels. He watched the studious rigor of the coyote who was following, low to the ground. The coyote was closing the gap, ready to dart behind the car, across the road and pounce.

After work, my son asked me with sadness in his voice, “Did you hear Dad saw a baby fox get killed this morning?”

When I asked my partner about it he said, “No, I couldn’t watch”.

*

I feel that often. That I don’t like watching. There’s part of me always trying to escape this animal world. I don’t like the act of hunting, stalking or even sensing the prey-drive in animals. Everyone’s gotta eat. Someone is going to suffer and lose in the bare-knuckle round of the animal world.

But my husband said “he couldn’t watch” not only the fox get killed, but didn’t want to see the coyote go home empty handed either. After the winter we’ve had, you can find yourself uncomfortably on both sides of this animal conundrum.

This typical northern story reminds me of the book I’m writing; the tension between saving and savouring. I often feel the pull to save and urgently act amidst the hundreds of concerns in my own community, let alone my nation, Canada, or the world. I can feel the urgency on the liberal left, which is often easy to participate in, alongside those who are working overtime to protect against the backslide of democracy, ecosystem integrity, and gender equality. Many organizations are flailing and change makers are experiencing disillusionment and burnout.

On the other hand, I also see the valid criticism towards those who fall into a more passive stance in the midst of accelerated authoritarianism, resource extraction and aggression. In the most extreme versions, this might be those who see meditation, prayer or individual wellness as a convenient spiritual bypass to structural inequality. This tension is not lost on me. I can feel the tug in my own being.

Yet, both perspectives are valid but incomplete. Over the last week and a half I’ve been reflecting on a Zen koan: Thirty blows of Tokusan. Answering thirty blows. Not answering thirty blows. As I understand it, the invitation of this koan is to see how life will continually bring me difficult challenges, no matter what I do. I will get sick, lose loved ones, experience heart-break, professional loss and go through cycles of fear-inducing uncertainty. I will also unintentionally be part of wider-scale harm, as humans continue to scramble to defend against and dominate each other and the ecosystems they depend on.

But I’m alert to the false illusion of separation between our efforts and matter itself, like when we try to keep love out of the realm of politics, as surfaced by Hannah Arendt. I can see how hard we try and police “right and wrong” actions, in the flight of urgency. With our nervous systems kicking into high gear, given how much is at stake, I get how enticing it is to be incisive, direct, and morally clarifying- based on one’s politics.

And yet, we live in a world that is constantly remaking itself, often in unpredictable ways. The Buddhist concept of karma, Karen Barad’s idea of agential realism, and Nora Bateson’s idea of combining each point to a reality in which matter, relationship and perspective are always in motion. This is the heartbeat of the creative universe.

I’ve started calling this a “conchoidal ontology”, inspired by the way certain rocks break open along unpredictable lines. It expresses a way of seeing how we’re reshaped and remade, while we shape the world too, one intimate encounter at a time. Through that breaking open, I sense an electric force of creativity.

*

So when I find myself between hare or coyote, championing fiercely for one side of the animal kingdom or the other, I remember that no matter who wins, there is loss and heart-break. When I find myself pulled into easy binary debates about politics or spirituality, morality or ethics, doing and being, I will return to the koan of Tokusan’s thirty blows.

The electric invitation of this universe, I think, is to meet life as fully as we can. Whether we are breaking up with modernity, fighting in the streets, meditating in the Zendo, or raising a toddler while hustling to make ends meet on the side– this wild existence is often beyond our comprehension and control. But in the end, I want to participate wholeheartedly in my short lifetime, in all its unpredictable combinations.

I do not have to fret “what is mine to do” because I’m already taken, already moving– whether I’ve defined or named it or not.

Where do you sense an electric invitation to participate in a creative world? How do your actions, no matter how tiny, matter? Who are the poets, philosophers or teachers (including the more-than-human) who feel most encouraging so you engage in your own unique way?

From the land of hare and coyote,

Jennifer