One of the recurring expressions that I used to hear growing up from my mother was: "You are not the only pebble on the beach". Now, if you are familiar with the beaches of southern England, you will know that the pebbles that form the beaches are prodigious in number: pebbles of every shape, size and colour, dry and dusky in the sunlight, moist and glistening as the water surges over them. And the sound! Well, when I first came to the US, I used to take macadamia nuts (in their shells, of course) and rattle them together to stir some "ancient" memory of the endless tides clattering and rattling over the pebbles on the beach. A weak substitute, I will readily admit, but it did serve to stir up the memory! It's a bit like putting a conch to your ear to "hear" the distant roar of the ocean. Simply put, there are gazillions of pebbles on the English beaches. Did I grow up thinking that there are so many of us that I don't count for much? My mother wasn't pleased with me when she uttered those perennial reminders. On the other hand, the sheer number, variety, colours and sounds of the pebbles that make up the beaches and the beach experience far outweigh any admonition not to be selfish and demanding. I am profoundly grateful for pebble beaches. They express not only the massive diversity of life and being on this planet but elsewhere in the universe. You are not all of it here. And this existence here is not all of it either. By no means. Pebble beaches and the ocean seem to connect with the vastness and diversity of the Big Universe.

I recently encountered an article, thanks to a friend who herself seems to be very aware of what I would call "interdependence" and thanks to Michael Pollan who wrote the article, namely: "Some of My Best Friends Are Germs". The title speaks for itself. He writes that he started to think of himself in the first person PLURAL as a super organism, rather than a plain old individual human being when he discovered from his microbiome the several hundred microbial species "with whom I share this body". Some of them are what he calls "generally harmless freeloaders"; some are mutualists who give and take; and a few, but not very many, relatively speaking, are pathogens that do damage to you. (They all sound a lot like humans!) Apparently we humans have what is referred to as a "second genome" of microbial DNA that affects our health and well being as much, if not more so, than the genes we inherit from our parents. More importantly, this genome is less fixed and more reshapable than the inherited genome. You have a whole community of microbes living in your gut, on your skin, in your mouth, in fact all over and inside of you that functions similarly to other ecosystems such as a rain forest or a prairie. As Michael Pollan words it, you can make changes and practice restoration ecology "right here at home, in your gut"! It's a nice message about interdependence as well as proposing some good health practices. Go easy on the antibiotics and other sterilising practices! Be a little more dirt friendly! ("Some of My Best Friends Are Germs", The New York Times Magasine 5/15/13.)

You have probably all done the science project where you fence off a piece of ground and then examine all the flowers, grasses, insects, birds and animals that either grow there or use it in some fashion. Included in that are of course the microbial species which you may or may not have been aware of. All of nature, whether macro or micro, takes up space or existence, and all of nature, whether macro or micro, is interdependent. I have written about this before with the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. It is not about seeing one thing as "bad" and another as "good" but how they interact with each other and depend on each other. Wolves have at times been considered "evil" because they destroy that which humans value. But they are a vital part of the ecosystem and the larger organism, and without them there is an imbalance. Something is missing from the whole. To put this duality of existence into the words of "Tao Te Ching": "When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad". But "Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other" (Stephen Mitchell's translation of "Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tzu).

Elizabeth Warren, the recently elected senator from Massachusetts and a long time advocate for consumer protection and for what she terms "the social contract", speaks and writes about this interdependence at an economic level. To quote her: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own." (Sept. 2011 video of one of Elizabeth Warren's speeches after she announced her candacy for the Senate). And she goes on to list all the ways from education, to workers, to infrastructure etc to show how rich and poor, or producer and consumer are interdependent, with the final statement to the rich "God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along". I mention Elizabeth Warren not to get into some political diatribe or party politics (she has herself been both Republican and Democrat and is now a Democrat), but because she advocates the concept of interdependence at an economic level.

Interdependence does not, to my mind at least, deny individual expression and creativity. Interdependence thrives rather on individual expression and creativity and encourages it. The whole is dependent upon the parts. The more fully the parts function and express, the greater the potential of the whole. But you all need to see and understand what constitutes the whole, and not try to pick and choose what you consider to be the good bits and discard the rest as unnecessary, useless and worthless. You can all look around in your own lives and see how different individuals, different times and places, have all contributed to who you are now and how you express yourself. You need to see that at some level ALL of the many people and experiences you have encountered contribute to your current self. A Course in Miracles teaches a concept of "forgiveness" that nothing harms you, but only gives to you, if and when you can see it. All of your perceived enemies, pathogens included, wolves too if you have a proverbial "axe to grind" with them, also Republicans or Democrats, depending on which side of the political spectrum you stand, your ex, your hated boss, and on and on, all are contributing to you, not taking from you. We are all God in the Becoming. During a very moving meditation that occurred once in a reading, when Charque was encouraging the person present to connect with Jesus at the crucifixion, I found myself up on the cross with Jesus, looking down on a sea of faces surrounding the cross and experiencing the most poignant and intense love for each and every one of them because they had all contributed in some fashion or another to his rebirthing and enlightenment. Even Judas, who was not present, but as a friend once said "needed to hang around a little longer instead of hanging himself". There has to be a drama, a backdrop for all of us to come to consciousness and to awaken. That is itself a kind of ecosystem. It is also often, as I have previously written about, Paolo Coehlo's "lessons of the unavoidable". All and everything that contribute to that drama or backdrop or ecosystem, in whatever function or role they play, are part of your expression and your awakening. Without them, your Becoming would be impossible and Creation or the Big Universe would be hampered in its own Expression and Becoming