Hello and Welcome to this Sundays Connection Letter.
This one is about loving the tiny earth angels, the insects.
I’ve been wandering through the land, and the grasshoppers are all over my garden making me smile when I reach to pick a herb and a beautiful green and brown being leaps up and over to another herb or a tall blade of grass. It is such a delight, to meet these little beings.
The more wild my garden has become, the happier I become. When I first met this space around my house, it had been clipped and weedkillered (not a word but I like it) to death. It was just grass. Now, it’s a whole community, and more and more creatures come and bless this space and me with their presence. And with each being I see, my heart lifts knowing this place is becoming healthier and more whole with them there.
It’s quite a thing, how strongly so many of us learn to dislike the insects, the worms, the dark earth, the fungi and the rot that inhabits the land.
We learn, growing up, to call the insects creepy crawlies, the earth dirt and every thing is a strange thing that we don’t want too near us. We learn to look down on these beings as a creepy, dirty and an inconvenience.
Many of us no longer think about them when it comes to planting our gardens, nor do many of us give them grace when they find themselves within our houses, that stand where once there was a stream, a forest, a marsh, a whole community.
An ant crosses your carpet. A spider weaves a pattern older than mammals beneath your stairs. Just nod, breathe, and think, “Good. It’s all still here. The forest, the mountains, the desert. At home in my home.” The sterile white box is the stranger. Not the ant. Not the spider. - Jarod K. Anderson
Many people love the bee, and so they should, for the bee is a wonder for the earth, but the bee is not the only pollinator, nor the only small one who works hard at creating beauty, medicine and goodness.
I believe many of us love the bee, for we have been taught about the goodness they bring and about the work they do. So it changes how we see them, we understand them more and invite them more readily into our gardens by growing the flowers they love.
But what about all the other small ones? The beetle, the spider, the worm, the ant, the wasp and so on.
How come their work goes unknown and unseen and even disliked.
Often I feel saddened at how folk can pray, honour and give love to unearthly gods, angels and beings high up in the clouds and sky, while looking down with disdain on insects, soil, bacteria, weeds and fungi.
Yet these beings are like true earth angels, cleaning, clearing and making healthier the earth around us.
Angels are wonderful but they are so, well, aloof.
It’s what I sense in the mud and the roots of the
trees, or the well, or the barn, or the rock with
its citron map of lichen that halts my feet and
makes my eyes flare, feeling the presence of some
spirit, some small god, who abides there.If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing
continuously.
I’m not, though I pause wherever I feel this
holiness, which is why I’m so often late coming
back from wherever I went.Forgive me.
-Mary Oliver
It is the fungi, the insects and the soft bodied worm who, as little alchemists, clear away the shit, the dead and the decay, turning it into life, into fertile dark matter. This is the work of angels, to guide the dead into transformation and new life.
One day I will lie in the darkness of the soil, one day those same little earth angels will transform my body and make it a part of this ecosystem so it can feed the roots of plants, trees and seeds. How can I look down on those ones who one day will be more intimate with my body than any other.
Without these small alchemists and fungi, we would be surrounded by crap.
Yet maybe, this is another reason we find them hard to love, for they link so closely with death, and our culture has become not so good at acknowledging death. Yet the insects inhabit death in ways that are beautiful, turning it into life again.
Imagine if our food were brought to us by dedicated and almost invisible angels. Imagine them flying, effortless and iridescent, with a beauty more extraordinary than any art of ours can ever replicate. Imagine if those mysterious beings worked freely to keep alive almost the entire living world, including birds, animals and ourselves. Imagine if these angels also gently and tactfully disposed of the dead, tucking the dead back into a deep bed of earth so they can rebecome life in another form. Without them, we would wade through corpses with every step we took.
I wish that everyone who said they believed in angels would actually believe in insects. They do not take the title of angels, being by nature bashful and unassuming: they go by other names: firefly, bee, ant, caddisfly. We humans, it seems, value irreal angels more than the priceless reality of insects. -Jay Griffiths
When the edges press into my life, when the days tighten in on my chest, I look out of my window or stand with my feet on the soft earth, and each being I spy, the spider, the grasshopper, the mushroom, the moth, the beetle, the woodlouse, the ant, the worm, the darkness of the earth, makes me feel better, safer, more secure. Knowing that no matter the chaos of modern humans, still these ones have got my back, have got all our backs. They pay no heed to crazy disconnected modern thoughts on capatialism, consumerism and profit, they keep on with their lives, adding immense safety and beauty to this world.
If, I had kept to the stories of creepy crawlies, beings out to get me, dirt under my feet and weeds in need of control, then standing with my feet on the earth when all feels hard, wouldn’t have the same affect, I wouldn’t see medicine, hard work and support, for my mind would be holding the belief that all was out to get me, a pain and unknowable.
It is time we made friends with these old relatives of ours, these beautiful and humble kin that hold us, even when we have turned our back on them.
As I write this, Im aware, that it is the same with our wild bodies, feelings and sensations, instead of villainizing them, how would it be to remember their use, their teachings, their purpose, so we can feel safe within our own landscape.
THANK YOU for being here, it means a lot.
Much wild beauty and alchemy to you
Brigit xx
“Often I feel saddened at how folk can pray, honour and give love to unearthly gods, angels and beings high up in the clouds and sky, while looking down with disdain on insects, soil, bacteria, weeds and fungi.” ❤️
This is lovely, thank you Brigit! I got to read this right after carrying a roly-poly back outside to be with his family. It felt serendipitous! 💖