What grounds us as we root ourselves in motion?
Ground. Soil, earth. A basis for beliefs, action, or argument. To furnish with a foundation of knowledge. To restrict. To grind down into powder.
Root. The usually underground part of a seed plant body that … functions as an organ of absorption, aeration, and food storage, or a means of anchorage and support… To furnish with or enable to develop roots. To remove altogether.
Definitions from Merriam-Webster
The thing about ground and root, the ground and roots, grounding and rooting: They connect us to something or someone solid, leave us space to grow and move freely, nourish us, and/or they can bind us to what no longer serves us, or destroy us.
It would be easy in this chaotic and disappointing historical, political, and cultural moment to create works that speak to constraint and destruction, hopelessness and hate. However, each person in this section chose to share stories about how family and community ground them – give them a foundation – in ways that remind them how much stronger and powerful we are together.
Instead of trying to summarize each of the works (which would be inadequate even with my best attempt), I’d like to share some of the questions that emerged for me as I read and reread them together as a group, separately from the other works for this issue.
What does it mean to contemplate the extinction of other species alongside the impact of COVID (from its beginning to now) on all living and sentient beings? How do we understand “simple” acts of feeding each other and making chai as profound opportunities to (re)connect with our histories and to honor each person we meet no matter what has happened to them? How do these acts refuse isolation and fear, and invite cooperation and care? Is it possible for our curiosity about each other to lead us to careful and care-full collaboration in ways that expand what we believe/know to be true?
How can collaboration remind us that we are Amazing Beings who can choose to do good in the world? Who and what grounds us as we root ourselves in motion? That is, who and what connects us to all that is sentient, all that breathes, all that is life in ways that remind us that we are human, worthy of love, of being seen?
I am grateful for every work in this issue, and for the chance to focus on this section. When we were deciding which section we each would reflect on, I said I would take what had not been selected by anyone else. How fitting that what I received was about grounding and rooting. Right now, my contemplative, creative, and ritual practices have increased and deepened so that I remain grounded and connected to what sustains me.
And, what sustains me is community – family, friends, collaborators, my Black Earth Institute cohort who are now family and friends – who remind me that co-creating and collaborating are a commitment to carefully tending to each other in ways that remind us that our lives and living are sacred and divine; and that they – we – are interconnected like roots that grow beneath the earth.
