“How Ecologies Repair Themselves” by Aaron Brown

In this service, we will examine how ecologies recover from massive traumas like fires, floods, and volcanic eruptions to better understand how we might work on our communities and our electorate in the wake of a scarring political season. We will also spend some time on repairing and caring for ourselves–noting where and how we have been impacted by the tension and pressures of the preceding months and by the results of this week’s election.

Join us for our Time of Gathering with Special Music by Olivia Pevec, Delaney Meyers, Micha Schoepe, & Paul Dankers

Wisdom Story: What we can learn from the lupine and from spiders aloft on the wind by Aaron Brown

On May 18th,1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. As the earth shook, hurricane force winds of fire and poison gas tore across the landscape, torching old growth forests and wetland habitats, annihilating the creatures, and setting aflame every bit of organic matter in their path. The flames didn’t last too long, though. A downpour of rock, mud, and ash smothered them, choking the rivers and burying the land in meters of debris. Through this devastation, as the earth fissured, pyrocastic flows of molten rock gushed forth, sterilizing the ground with temperatures of up to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit.

How might one sum up such a decimating reign of horror and affliction in a single word? “Volcano” sounds almost too tame. After this week, I might suggest: “Tuesday.”

(And I apologize if some in this room are of a different political persuasion. I will be speaking from my perspective but please know that all are welcome here. Whether you are apolitical or you are pleased with the election’s results for whatever reasons, you are welcome here. I am hopeful we will embrace each other in this community regardless of whether we are feeling grief or anger, terror or bewilderment, relief or exaltation, exhaustion or despair. You all are welcome here. For my part, I am feeling all of those things in an ever-shifting swirl. So… back to our discussion of completely politically neutral ecology.)

In the aftermath of the election – sorry “eruption” – biologists kept a close eye on the wasteland around Mount St. Helens, eager to see what nature would do with its gaping wound. What they found was a story of resilience and restoration far superior to anything our most exceptional engineers or architects could have accomplished, even with billions of dollars at their disposal.

It all began with the humble prairie lupine. This eager little plant, which puts forth tiny spires of delicate purple flowers, was the first pioneer to take up residence on the waste, pushing its roots into the ash and fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere into what would become a new layer of soil. 

While the lupine is typically host to butterflies and bees, the first tiny creatures to join these plant pioneers were actually wingless. 

I hope you will be enchanted (rather than horrified) to learn that all across the world, there are tiny little spiders who spin out long gossamer threads to catch the wind and float away for parts unseen. These so-called ballooning spiders drift until the breeze lets them down. Some of these adventurous arachnids landed on the lupine. 

They then spun their delicate webs, trapping both insects and organic debris, all of which feed the earth. Some of which were the seeds of the fast-growing, shallow-rooted Fireweed and Pearly Everlasting. These plants covered the ash like a protective scab with growths up to 24 inches tall, providing shade and structure for more seeds to take root.

Collectively, these pioneers are called “facilitators” by ecologists who study the process of repair, also known as “ecological succession.” It involves several waves of species interconnecting and supporting each other to develop more and more diverse, robust, and resilient ecosystems. 

The nitrogen and industrious rootwork from the first wave of pioneers can turn even sterile ash and rock into receptive soil. Hardier bushes with deeper roots are then enabled to grow, which in turn invite more and more birds and squirrels to stop by, dropping the seeds and nuts of trees as they pass. This is how forests rebuild themselves.

Foresters have caught on and developed a process called nucleated forestry. Rather than planting rows upon rows of saplings–at great expense and with only monoculture on their minds–foresters these days plant little islands of facilitators. Sometimes, the only thing they need to plant are posts in the ground, upon which birds might pause to make some “deposits” before flying along on their transmigrations. From such wastes, whole ecologies emerge. 

Each island of facilitators nurtures new life while reaching its tendrils out in ever expanding circles, eventually touching the roots of other such islands until wastelands become paradises.

On the slopes of St. Helens, mosses and lichens traveled in and clung to the rocks that had rained down from the sky, further breaking them down into soil. Grasses and other herbaceous plants arrived, stabilizing the ground and preventing erosion.

The red alder was the first tree to take route. Like the prairie lupine, the red alder enriched the soil with nitrogen thanks to its symbiotic relationship with root-dwelling bacteria. Its fast-growing canopy provided further shade, cooling the sunbaked ground and creating microhabitats where more delicate species could take hold. Beneath the alders, a diversity of plants began to flourish, from sword ferns to salmonberry shrubs, forming a rich understory that supported ever more insects, birds, and small mammals.

With the alder, mycorrhizal fungi came as well. Hidden beneath the surface, these fungi formed partnerships with the roots of new trees, exchanging nutrients and water. The fungi helped plants thrive and interconnected the young forest, creating an underground network of communication and support. It was this hidden alliance that allowed conifers, such as Douglas firs, to slowly return to the landscape.

Over the decades, the once-barren slopes of Mount St. Helens were transformed. What had been a desolate expanse of ash and rock grew into a mosaic of meadows, thickets, and young forests. Elk returned to graze, frogs recolonized the streams, and birds nested in the growing trees. The landscape was not what it had been before the eruption, but it was vibrant and bustling nonetheless, an evolving ecosystem built on the work of its earliest pioneers and facilitators.

Why is this so vital a lesson for the moment we’re in? 

For a long time, scientists have talked about fight and flight as the primary stress responses humans exhibit when they are confronted by threat or trauma. It turns out this is only a partial picture of human nature. The scientists who first described these stress responses were operating under an unfortunately limited mental model–one which considered all humans to be mostly alike and yet nevertheless valued one type above all others. 

Starting with the research in 1915 that defined “fight-or-flight” as our neat little rhyming pair of responses, scientists mostly studied college-aged men. A couple of other F’s–Freeze and Fawn–were added over the years as this mental model expanded slightly, but it wasn’t until the year 2000 that a team of researchers, led by Los Angeles psychologist Shelley Taylor, widened the lens dramatically to examine whether our human community might have more strategies for stress than just the ones of prey to predator or warrior to warrior that had been described ands studied so far.

Studying women and people not exclusively on college campuses as well as studies of social animals, Taylor’s team coined a new term for a set of very ancient survival practices they were able to define. They called these practices, “tend and befriend.” And it turns out these are just as prevalent and essential to our survival as fight and flight. 

Indeed, they sound a lot like what pioneering facilitators do to turn wastelands into wonders of thriving new life. 

And it is these responses I’m hoping we’ll call forth now.

Pastoral Prayer and Meditation:

I invite you to either close your eyes or let them settle into soft focus on something before you. Let yourself get comfortable, shifting your body to allow it to settle into a supportive position. As you breathe, recognize that you too are an ecosystem. 

Each of us is made of many parts and right now you may be feeling many things. As I said before, all responses to this past week are welcome here, all people, all parts. Whether you feel buried under meters of ash, in numbness or exhaustion or despair, or you feel light and aloft upon the breeze like a ballooning spider eager to see where the wind will carry you, or whether you feel tenacious and ready for a challenge like the prairie lupine colonizing a waste, you are welcome here.

We are all ecologies and all of our parts are welcome.

Let’s take another deep breath and try to allow the fullness of how we feel–the diversity of our many internal responses–to be welcome.

Biologists appear to like their rhyming pairs. After the surge of adrenaline and cortisol that comes with fight or flight, deep breathing and self care can activate our parasympathetic nervous systems and turn on processes of rest and digest.

Our rest and digest system can greatly enhance and facilitate our instinct to tend and befriend. 

Let us allow each new breath we take this morning to be a pioneer, a facilitator, creating or expanding an island of peace within. Let that peace take root like the prairie lupine and the red alder, the pearly everlasting and the salmonberry shrub. 

Resilience and renewal begin here. In community. As together we breathe, together we begin to restore.

And the more we allow ourselves the grace and space to heal, the more that grace and space will take root in us and spread. As we rest and digest, as we tend and befriend, we will build back the strength of all living systems to persist and to bring beauty and vitality into the world. 

But there’s no need to rush. Rushing the recovery of Mount St. Helens would have only crowded out the natural flow. Be at peace simply being where you are.