Rebbe Nachman in Costa Rica

As far as I know, Nachman of Bratzlav did not winter in Costa Rica. The late 18th century hasidic rebbe remained tucked away in Ukraine, warmed by the fires of fervent prayer while the snow piled high on his doorstep. Still, walking on the beach, I thought of his famous words....All the world's a very narrow bridge....The essential thing is not to fear at all. With this in mind, I abandoned all previous identities. I let go of bookworm, acrophobic, fried couch potato...and signed up for a rainforest excursion that featured crossing a series of canopy bridges leading to a waterfall. It was me, Juan the guide, and a young couple from California. I cast myself in the role of the determined older woman who deserved no end of credit for her courage. The hike began with a climb of more than an hour up rough-hewn stone steps interspersed with other steps made out of discarded motorcycle tires filled with dried mud. The journey had the quality of a pilgrimage, something along the lines of Our Lady of Fátima, only upright, without the part where the devotees walk on their knees. The ascent in the sultry jungle heat was definitely a test. It seemed to be designed to wear me down, so that by the time we arrived at the canopy bridges, my resistance was exhausted. There was no turning back.

It's not often that you encounter a spiritual exercise made literally manifest. All the world really is a narrow bridge! I had planned to say the Sh'ma each time I crossed over. This prayer, central to Jewish practice, proclaims the Divine Oneness of all things. It is said every day by observant Jews, but also at the moment of death, to indicate that the essence of the person is about to return to its source, to the All. I imagined that it would balance out the narrow bridge effect, fortifying me with a connection to the sky, the vegetation, the birds, reconfiguring the landscape so the fear couldn't get me. I thought about saying the Sh'ma when I stepped out onto the first span, but I made the mistake of not waiting until Juan got to the other side. The bridge rocked up and down and swung back and forth like a pendulum under his footfall. After that, I forgot about praying and just waited my turn. Everything was still. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other.

After crossing ten or twelve rope bridges and descending the slope on more improvised steps, we arrived at the promised waterfall. I had already been swimming in the high-saline Pacific for many days, as well as a chlorinated pool in an area that featured a faint septic smell.  Nothing could prepare me for the clarity of the cascading rainforest water, clean like the unmediated joy of a baby's smile. It seemed to be absolutely transparent, with no solid precipitates. It was invitingly cold and regenerating, just the right ritual of purification after the sweaty trials of the day.

Safely back in Manuel Antonio, massaging my feet and considering the spiritual integration of climbing, crossing and immersion, I thought of another of Rebbe Nachman's aphorisms. If you believe breaking is possible, believe fixing is possible. It was noon and I hadn't thought about Betsy DeVos since early in the morning. When the shadow of her malignant presence reappeared in my awareness, I realized that in our current situation, it is no exercise of the imagination to believe that breaking is possible. Everywhere we see the intentional dismantling, the fracturing, of democratic norms and institutions we naively thought were inviolable. Public education, for God's sake! Once it was pretty good, then it became pretty bad. Now it's in danger of falling victim to the wrecking ball....Welcoming immigrants! As recently as 2012, I cried at a naturalization ceremony at the Rockwell Museum when 22 grateful new Americans took an oath of allegiance to our country. Now immigrants are reviled.

It's a stretch in this environment to believe that fixing is possible. In order to get to that place, we will have to exercise our capacity for vision. There will be a long climb over rocky and unfamiliar territory. We may be called upon to put one foot in front of the other and step out onto a narrow bridge that doesn't feel entirely safe and then another bridge and another. Like the mystery of childbirth, getting from breaking to fixing will require faith, endurance and hard labor. We will have to stick together, hold on to the redemptive image of the waterfall and wear good shoes. The essential thing is not to fear.


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Herons yes, humans no

photo by Frank Gioia

Some days, the dread really gets to me. I'm worried about my aging sister in the house on Amador Avenue in Berkeley. I'm worried about the ICE agents reportedly prowling around in Great Barrington. Here in Costa Rica where I'm spending the month of February, I immerse myself in the sea water and the jungle to dilute the anxiety. It's a luxury and it's only intermittently successful.

Much as I think I believe that the natural world is one organism, the body of God, and that we are all its limbs, its ears, I sometimes wonder whether, on the contrary, nature is completely indifferent to us. It goes about its business without a flicker of interest in our preferences. If it feels like snowing, it snows. Screw your travel plans.  I've been thinking deeply about this in Central America where the mangroves and humid forests are teeming with life that disguises itself, often in impenetrable camouflage, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that we can see it. Everywhere in the national parks, you see people with puzzled expressions on their faces. They promised me a sloth. Where the hell is the sloth? We catch a glimpse of the occasional iguana and, of course, the white-faced monkeys. The monkeys, like us, their primate kin, crave sociability and seem to have grandstanding tendencies. Do not, however, confuse them with the exhibitionist-in-chief. Their motives are benign and they do not bite off more than they can chew. Most of the animals hide in plain sight or move so fast that your iPhone is always a step or two behind. The obsidian-colored rock along the beach forms the perfect background for the skittering black crabs. All you can see is motion. On the floor of the forest, everything looks like it's been tossed out of the back of a truck, leaves on top of vines, on top of dead wood, on top of fallen coconuts. I see no order in it, nothing that ties it all together. I have learned that the bats eat the mosquitoes, but it would take another lifetime, which I may or may not have, for my born-in-the-city sensibility to catch up to the larger meaning of this other, more ancient reality. From a boat in the estuary, the guide tells us that no humans, including indigenous peoples, have ever lived in the mangroves we see as we pass by. Herons yes, humans no.

I catch the pungent whiff of a theological question lurking here. This sense of a gulf separating me from the ways of nature, this yearning that stalks me wherever I go, feels like the desire to know and be known by an immanent divine presence, by the One who embraces me and allows me to rest and feel finally at home. Especially now. Like everyone else toting cameras and binoculars, I want to be embedded in nature, to be recognized and loved by the kingfishers and date palms as one of their own. Still, in Costa Rica, where the Pacific surf knocks me down, filling my eyes with searing salt, and the relentless sun, despite all precautions, is nevertheless persistent, I am humbled. I have found, like Copernicus and Darwin before me, that I am not the center of the universe. There are other songs and other stories. I have a potent experience of scale, of divine transcendence, of nature's detachment and my ultimate insignificance. I tell you, it's a great relief.

Some days, it allows me to lower the heat a notch on the political boil, carnivorous politicians strutting their blood lust day in and day out. Years ago on tropical vacations, no cell phones, no Facebook, we could escape the Reagan rowdies, the Bush bozos, but now we cannot disconnect. We know all to well what the big crybaby and his friends are up to. But when I look out on the sea, petrels and terns circling in the expanse of sky overhead, something new comes into focus, the glimmer of a new thought about my relationship to the natural world. I see that it's not there to entertain me, even though every night the mauve and salmon at the horizon stops me in my tracks. It's there to live and breathe in spite of the criminal interference of human larceny, the arrogance of rapacious over-development. Let it be, I say. Let it do what it needs to do before it vanishes. Care about it, love it, whether or not it cares about us. Resist the ascendant climate deniers. Make the necessary political moves on nature's behalf, even though the message of nature is the very opposite of politics. The toucans and the bamboo don't speak the shallow language of lies and false promises. They speak a deep truth that reveals itself to each of us from time to time according to our willingness to listen.


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