To Learn from the Land ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
April 26, 2026
In Northern India, in the state of Meghalaya, which means “the abode of the clouds”, there is a mountainous region known as the Khasi Hills. Many Unitarian Universalists are familiar with this area because many of its inhabitants adopted Unitarianism late in the 19th century. Some of you know this region well. The Khasi Hills are in the foothills of the Himalayas, a land of steep slopes and deep river valleys. The region is also well known as one of the wettest areas on earth: they can receive between 32 and 45 feet of rain per year. (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/01/892983791/photos-living-tree-bridges-in-a-land-of-clouds?fbclid=IwY2xjawRXXBlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFFMlE4MEdpcXFFRFRWMzRpc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHtYvXR8n2QzIYwa-oR9PXnhOqTs2zNRTS5FTPkfZxw9tdGa6-QfHVojKGSbG_aem_kW4CyDyMjFMPqWpxu1QNUg)
Villages are often located on hilltops to prevent flooding. However, this can create isolation, as during monsoon seasons rushing rivers can limit travel and connection between the communities. Traditional roads and bridges would be impossible to maintain. And so the Khasi people learned to carefully observe nature and to find ways to work with the land to be able to create connections. What if they learned to build bridges that were part of the landscape, rooted in the terrain?
A type of rubber tree grows in Meghalaya that has particularly pliable roots. And so, over time, the Khasi people learned to plant young trees on either side of a river gorge, at a good crossing point, and then wait until the trees grew. Over the years, these trees put out aerial roots. Once the trees are mature enough to send out these roots, bridge builders begin to patiently train them, on both sides of the river, to begin to reach toward the other side until slowly, after many years, they connect. Bamboo is used to help create a scaffold so the builders can gradually coax the roots across the river. As the trees continue to mature, more and more roots appear, and those are painstakingly woven into the structure to add strength and stability. The result is a living bridge, part of the forest. These bridges are far more resilient than anything made from wood or steel or concrete; they are rooted and stable, able to withstand flooding and rushing water, and able to join humans to one another and to the earth that sustains them.
This past week, we commemorated Earth Day. There are many ways to approach this day: it is always my hope that people pause to take stock, to think about their own lives and how they can best help to protect the planet. I hope that people pause to notice the miracle of life around them, and to be grateful for how our earth sustains and nourishes us. I hope that we pause to feel awe at the night sky or the ocean, and re-commit to reciprocating all that is given to us by offering all we can to protect and sustain the earth in return.
All of these responses to Earth Day are worthwhile, and valuable. But today let’s take the conversation a step farther, and talk about what life might look like if we look at nature and the world around us in a totally different way. What if, like the Khasi people, we focused on working with the natural world, learning from it instead of trying to control it or manage it?
What the Khasi people are modeling for us all is the idea of sustainable design. Nothing is destroyed to build a bridge. Nature is first observed, then shaped, then cared for.
For most of human history, we have taken the approach of seeing our human selves as apart from what we call ‘nature’, and we emphasize using whatever we want from the non-human world. We extract and harvest. We domesticate. We exercise control, and we destroy what we think will not meet our needs. We fail to value life forms that do not provide for us. As I read recently, why should trees only have value once they are cut down?
This orientation is one in which humans are at the apex of a pyramid; above all else, looking toward the heavens, perhaps, but never looking below, not noticing the value of nature which provides but cannot be given monetary value.
It is becoming more and more clear that this orientation, this hubris, this utter lack of humility, the refusal to recognize value of things that are not commodities, will not serve us well.
In 1997, almost 30 years ago now, a biologist named Janine Benyus created a name for a practice that she calls Biomimicry: a practice of observing and using natural patterns to help us design solutions to problems. She can be credited with naming this way of solving problems, but she did not invent it. The practice of biomimicry has been with us for a very long time. One of the earliest examples we can name was Leonardo da Vinci observing the wings of birds to figure out how to design what he named ‘a flying machine.’ But of course, the desire for flight has been present among humans for far longer. Think about Daedulus and Icarus building wings in order to fly to safety from imprisonment in a tower in Crete. Of course, those who have studied Greek mythology know that this attempt ended badly. This was a cautionary tale, intending to remind us of our limitations. We humans must constantly be reminded to be humble.
More contemporary examples of biomimicry are everywhere, and they can be fascinating. One of the best known since the 20th century is the invention of Velcro. Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral conceived the idea of Velcro in 1941 after observing how burrs stuck to his dog’s fur.
I enjoyed reading about the many biomimicry projects, from studying a mosquito’s proboscis to help develop less painful hypodermic needles, to the design of the front of a Japanese high-speed train that mimics the beak of a kingfisher. I especially wanted to mention one project that is particularly interesting to folks here on Cape Ann: studying the fins of humpback whales to design more efficient blades for wind turbines. Humpback whales’ flippers are not smooth, but rather bumpy. It turns out that this rough surface decreases drag, and increases lift. In Canada, where the new blades are being developed, in some designs efficiency has increased by 40%. (https://www.learnbiomimicry.com/blog/best-biomimicry-examples?srsltid=AfmBOop6eVpK1bmMCE0bValxYUxZC9rseSDRWSshjQTbh1BPCTtmGbmL)
Despite the wide variety of applications, there is a common thread running through all the projects: a deep respect for the natural world, and an understanding that non-human systems have already solved many problems that humans are just beginning to notice and apply to human life. Our work is evolving; we are being called to observe and to learn, rather than to try to control and to extract monetary value.
The Biomimicry Institute, founded by Janine Benyus, has developed three components of biomimicry practices. These are, first:
Emulate: bring principles and patterns found in nature into informing design.
Ethos: the ethic and philosophy of biomimicry, based on respect, responsibility and gratitude for the natural world.
ReConnect: the understanding that humans and other beings are deeply connected, and that humans are nature.
Biomimicry has, in one way or another, always been present in human thinking, but right now, at this perilous time in our history, we would do well to increase our awareness of it, and especially to absorb its three principles – Emulation, Ethos, and Reconnection. The old relationship between humans and the rest of the world is a model that grows less and less sustainable. In order to move forward, we must shift our thinking beyond extractive capitalism toward new relationships based on respect and reciprocity. The world offers all that it has to us. What do we offer in return?
Back in the 1940’s Aldo Leopold put it this way: “All ethics… rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of independent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the Community, but his ethics prompt him to co-operate… The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants; and animals or collectively: the land.” (The Land Ethic, in Sand County Almanac).
Our practices have been divisive and competitive, exploitative and destructive. We risk destroying all that gives us what we need to survive. We must change our sense of value and worth.
To learn from the land we would do well to listen to the indigenous voices in our midst. The botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes of “a recognition of indebtedness that can stop you in your tracks – it brings you the realization that your life is nurtured from the body of Mother Earth.” (The Serviceberry, p. 9.) Can we shift from competitiveness and acquisition to gratitude?
Looking through indigenous eyes we see all that we have to learn:
“Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands alone…
Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall…
Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring…”. (Earth Teach Me, from the Ute Indians, Singing the Living Tradition #551)
Unitarian Universalists share these values. We remember them as stated in our 7th Principle, that we “affirm and promote the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part.” I always say that the most important words of that principle are the last: ‘of which we are a part.’ We now have included this ethos among our six core values simply as Interdependence.
For too long we in the Western world have valued independence and self-reliance – the concept of the ‘self-made man’, and the belief that individual achievement and power is more valuable than being in community.
Thinking of community, and communal effort, brings me back again to the Khasi people. No one person could have constructed a living bridge across a river. It would take two communities, one on either side, and many hands. It would take trees and their roots, and soil and nutrients. It would also take generations to begin, nurture, and maintain a living bridge. And of course, a bridge woven from living trees widens the community to include all other species sustained by the trees and the roots: plants, and insects, and fungi, and animals, and birds. Had logs been cut down and somehow connected across the river gorge, those who would benefit would only be human.
I hope, this April, with Earth Day just past, that we spend time thinking about our communities, and about broadening our concept of what communities are. Can we imagine our community as including trees, and mosquitos, and whales, and kingfishers? Once we begin to think of community in this way, can we ever return to the old destructive way of thinking?
I hope we do not. May we commit to opening our eyes and ears and hearts to all that the land has to teach us, and may we always be grateful.
