Change at 115cm
Audio of this piece included below
Pictured here is a piece of bamboo cut to the length of 115 centimeters. It was cut by the artist James Bridle. James had just learned that scientists, in their attempts to help the general public understand how rapidly climate change was moving, gave us a number. As of 2022, they tell us that climate change is moving at a velocity of .42 km per year. Which is about a quarter of a mile per year.
James divided .42 km by 365 to give him the daily velocity of climate change. Which, as you might guess, is 115cm. Standing in his front yard with the 115cm bamboo stick, James noticed a dandelion. He walked over and laid the stick on the ground, with one end touching the center of the dandelion and the other pointed northwest. He dug up the dandelion and transplanted it 115 cm northwest.
James needed to visualize how far a dandelion would need to travel each day to outpace the effects of global climate change. The bamboo stick, while a method of measuring, is also a symbol, a reminder, and a striking piece of art.
We humans in the West appear to have an innate sense of assumed hierarchies. For the majority of us, it goes like this God, Angels, Humans, Animals, Plants. We got to this via Aristotle’s conception of “The Soul” which he defined as “that essence or vital principle of a living thing which is entangled with the body, but not of it.” Put simply the soul is that which animates us.
James Bridle
The quandary became the question of what things have souls. Aristotle’s theory on the “soul of a plant” was that what animates it is reproduction and growth, but that the plant is insensible and immobile. Because of those limitations, it found itself under animals in the hierarchy of things.
What we now know is that Aristotle was wrong. James Bridle, when he transplanted that dandelion 115 cm, likely felt the helplessness of the plant world to keep up with the pace of climate change.
And yet, the plant world, despite being labeled as insensible by Aristotle, is proving itself to be smarter than the humans supposedly reigning over them in the hierarchy of life. Plant life has been paying attention to climate change, and has been on a steady move for a long time.
In northern Scandinavia, where the pace of climate change is considerably higher, a native Samí woman shares that the traditional name of a lake in the region, Biehtsejaavrre or Lake of the Pines, no longer has a single pine around it. Not because of logging, or some kind of development. No, the lake simply needs a change of name to more accurately describe it’s surround forest.
The pines that surrounded the lake at the time of it’s naming, perhaps as early as the first Samí settlements 10, 000 years ago, have been replaced by birth trees. Entire forests, noticing shifts in climate, extend along their growing edges, with roots creeping towards more water. Seeds float in the atmosphere, laying dormant in unfavorable conditions until the conditions suddenly become more favorable.
Forest Service data from 1980 through 2015 reveals that three-quarters of tree species in the eastern US are shifting north and northwest at a rate of 10-15 kilometers per decade. Scientists believe most plant and animal life will migrate towards the poles of the earth in search of cooler temperatures and wetter conditions.
Okay. So, I learned of James Bridle, his bamboo stick, and migrating trees just this week. It was the only juicy thing that was showing up for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, but it seemed to have no clear message from God in it. Running out of time on Friday night, I thought, “Okay, well, I might have to start from scratch. What is the Church talking about this Sunday?” I sometimes check in on the lectionary to feel connected to the rhythms of the Church. Want to know what the Gospel reading is for today?
It comes from the Gospel of Mark chapter 4. It reads:
He said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
Plants, and their seeds, fruit, roots, leaves, branches, they seem to come up again and again in the scriptures. Despite our apparent reign over them, we feel mystified by how a mustard seed could possibly explode into “the greatest of all shrubs.” Jesus says that the kingdom of God is exactly like the mystery of seeds sown in the ground. Things sprout, and grow, and we don’t know how they do it.
Contained within our fascination with this mystery is that we are incapable of seeing growth as it happens. The velocity of plant growth is imperceptible to us, and yet we know that the sunflower had to have added inches to its growth from the previous day. Using time-lapse photography, we can watch our house plants bob, swirl, twist, and reach out in their pursuit of light.
Perhaps like the bamboo stick of James Bridle, we need the natural world as a sort of measuring stick of movement, of birth, life, death and resurrection. When we pay attention, we may notice how seemingly stationary things are constantly expanding on their growing edge toward more favorable conditions.
Later in his life, Jesus recalls the parable of the mustard seed when he says, “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there; and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
I had to detangle that passage from some toxic Evangelical theology in order for it not to remind me of pastors of my youth assuring us that if we prayed hard enough, God would do anything and everything for us, right there and then. Untangling Jesus from the prosperity gospel, I can see how beautiful of a callback this is. Jesus is offering us a simple reminder of scale. Entire forests are on the move, tiny seeds are being carried into previously inhabitable places, perhaps at 115cm per day, but always moving in pursuit of the life promised in living waters, and ever opening towards the light.
Here are some queries for consideration:
What is your current relationship with change? What tools are you using to measure it?
What do mustard seeds, migrating forests, and relocated mountains tell you about what is possible in your life?