First Crawl
Before we learn to walk we learn to crawl, as our friend’s child demonstrated today in our living room. Now that she is crawling and mobile her mom realizes that a whole new world is opening up for her daughter. The next major step in mobility will be when she walks.
Another dear friend’s mom passed away. Near the end of her life my friend’s mom had lost mobility and was limited to a chair. Walking easily and crawling were not an option for her.
Much of life happens between crawling and being unable to walk on one’s own. At both ends of this spectrum we are dependent on others to get around. However, as grow up, walk and become adults we think of ourselves as independent, not needing anyone, to live life till we get old, sick or cannot walk.
I do not longer believe this is true. Although we may not have the same needs as a baby or an elderly person we always remain needy persons, interdependent on each other, no matter our age, gender, racial makeup, our poverty or wealth.
In fact we are more dependent than a worm in the garden that just needs compost to eat, cast and breed … what worms do. We need each other for food, energy, entertainment, companionship and basic survival. As one of the titles of Thomas Merton’s books says: “No Man is an Island.”
As we have talked about in these postings this is also a lesson of the garden. The garden crawls in the spring, blooms in the summer, is harvested in the fall and dies in the winter. In between the crawl of spring and the dark days of winter everything in the garden is interdependent, plants, rain, sun, soil, bugs, worms.
Knowing we are persons in need our entire life can be a freeing experience. False individualism fades away and we see how we are one, not how we are divided. Our first crawl lives on in us.
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