Edge Habitats

Borders

“Everything really interesting and powerful happens at borders. Borders teem with life, color, and complexity. In nature, we find the most diversity where different ecosystems merge. We call these places edge habitats.”
Mary Pipher (Writing to Change the World, p.111)

Nowadays, when we hear about borders, we immediately jump to political arguments about the U.S./Mexico border—that is a border, but not the one I'm thinking about this morning. Some borders are human constructs, and not true borders at all, and that is one of them. All countries, all states, all territories have arbitrary borders, where the language and world-view may or may not change, but the earth under them rarely does. Our earth is one continuous whole, with many different landscapes, climates and ecosystems that merge into one another. Hard boundaries are made by humans.

The borders that interest me are the ones where living systems mingle and create a particular energy of change. Examples of those are the decade birthdays—going from 20 to 30 years old is a case in point. Suddenly we are expected to be adults, we can no longer be “babes” and “dudes,” and “hang out.” Whether we accept it or not, our world view shifts at particular decade birthdays. I just celebrated a friend's 60th birthday. All the gifts were things one gives a child—a cape, a wand, funny, sparkly birthday-cake sunglasses—as though to obliterate the fact that she is entering the final third of life. It was colorful, fun and joyful—a little interlude in reality. That's what borders often are.

Carl Jung called these liminal, or threshold times. They occur whenever one is moving from one reality to another—when the seasons change, when the decades change, when we move from one century to the next and at the change of the seasons. We also encounter these liminal moments between sleeping and waking, between dark and daylight. These are times of unusual potency—when the veil is thin and we are most receptive to new information, new realizations. Dreams are vivid and easier to remember. That's why I don't use an alarm clock—I don't want to be jarred awake and lose the richness of the “edge habitat” between sleep and waking.

Being at the seashore is another such border—where land, sea, and sky meet—and we humans are somehow transformed. Perhaps it's the vastness of the ocean, or the reach of the horizon—whatever it is, we feel the pull of its energy in a supernatural way. Our brainwaves entrain with the slapping of the waves and we become calmer, our attention focuses within. We enter into the oneness of earth rhythm and human heartbeat. I'll bet you feel it just reading these words.

Today, I hope you'll be aware of your own edge habitat. What happens at the borders of you—where you merge, interact and move away from others. What do you think and feel in those moments. Does information come to you without your asking? Energy transfers happen at borders where we mingle and exchange information in our auric fields. Pay attention to what you may learn from your environment and the other beings who inhabit it. It may surprise you!

In the Spirit,
Jane