RE-VISIONING RELATIONAL MEETINGS
Part 3
Adapted from Story of Power and Power of Story
By Dick Harmon
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Third Phase
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I once knew a mountaineer-geologist who over his lifetime climbed most of Earth’s mountains. Toward the end of his life, on a long walk-about with Australian Aborigines, he began to wonder about his relationship with a particular mountain in the outback. After weeks of walking around it with his friends, he saw that the mountain was in fact an event, of great dynamic power, in deep geological time—and so was he an event of great dynamic power, a result of the same immense process in deep space-time that gave birth to the mountain.
And just as he was declining toward death, so the mountain was wearing down, from rain and wind. While he and the mountain were on different time scales and speeds, they were both parts of Earth’s great cycles and systems, which in turn emerged from cosmic creativity.
Both he and the mountain were letting go of their current forms, to return to Earth, its other creatures and systems. They were both participating in the great mutual feeding process of Earth and Cosmos: all energy events sacrifice themselves in order to nourish the Whole. He sought, and found, order and meaning in the living and dying he shared with the mountain. He was profoundly content as he told this story. In 2005, in a late Spring filled with expanding war and runaway real estate speculation, Carole and I encountered Crater Lake, in Southern Oregon. We drove up the mountain, pulled into the parking lot, and got out. The parking lot seemed to be filled with over-weight tourists and their stuffed trailers. The government building where we used the restrooms seemed framed in plastic, a commercial icon to the culture rather than a restful place honoring nature. We crossed that cluttered lot, and stepped up the small lip to view the lake. 
Its startling blueness pulled me into the depths of Earth, into the deep space-time of its birthing, its volcanic eruptions in this place, its water, its meaning for ancient and contemporary indigenous peoples. It was as if, beholding, I was beheld, in recognizing into the farthest depths of this place, I was recognized. Carole and I were silent there, for a whole and kairos time. We then turned and walked, holding hands, to the car. She drove and I tried to write what had just happened. In the encounter with the lake and its blue deepest center, my self had shifted. Away from the turmoil and fragment of politics and economy, to a truer, more peace-filled and more powerful place. Of integration, bedrock if you will, a whole in place and time, a powerful healing moment for me, in a year of great destruction, chaos, and despair in our political economy.
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I see these events as examples of I-Thou encounters. And I’ve discerned that in my particular case, my ability to enter these experiences at least in part rises from my years of relational work with the people of many local communities. Two years later, I encountered the fullness of Earth’s biosphere in the dawn at Oceanside on the Oregon Coast. In this experience, I found that I was part of the Whole—of fog-filled air, quiet incoming tide, seals greeting ocean, plants and humans becoming visible up the hillside, first birds singing, sun’s light emerging over the mountains behind me. I was whole, belonging in the Whole, not a spectator or tourist— within, not separate from biosphere and the cosmic process that birthed it, held in unbound power, healing.
On several later occasions, I’ve had similar experiences in the grove of cedars in our local park, and in my backyard garden. Kneeling next to a raised-bed of vegetable starts, I am enveloped and suffused by Sun’s energy on my back, igniting my nerves to pay attention to air, water in soil, the pulse of each tender root, my own pulse, all ensembling: shape-singers, or jazz or chamber quartet, or chorus and orchestra, gathered, collaborating and working in this small ecology behind our home. There are times in my neighborhood walks when I’m astounded by some ridiculous, audacious cluster of grass struggling up between the sidewalk slabs: by the force of the green shoot driving each blade through, showing off its life to the rest of us weaker beings, demanding recognition, teaching, just through its beauty and strength. From where did this life-strength come? If I stop and pay attention, it is not hard to understand that this scraggly little band of grass-blades has emerged from the same Earth-Cosmic process as me, and that makes us relatives. What about you? I’ll wager that you’ve had many experiences like this. But perhaps you’ve let them slide from your memory, or haven’t told them to others or written them down. Please consider it.
I see these events as examples of I-Thou encounters. And I’ve discerned that in my particular case, my ability to enter these experiences at least in part rises from my years of relational work with the people of many local communities. 
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