TOUCHING CREATURES, TOUCHING SPIRIT
Living in a Sentient World
by Judy Grahn
Red Hen Press. 208 pages, $15.95
THE TITLE of Judy Grahn’s sixteenth book beckons readers into a world in which all living species share a net of consciousness, a mind as distinct from the brain as a biological organ. The ten essays and “true stories” in the Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit exhibit an openness to phenomena that enables Grahn to explore what she describes as her sensory, cellular, and spirit-related consciousness.
The first three accounts describe instances of interspecies communication. In one episode, the writer and two golfing friends come upon a dragonfly trapped in thick algae pond scum. As the golfers painstakingly strip the slime from the insect’s wings, the dragonfly rides from hole to hole on a golfer’s shoulder because the group needs to keep up the pace on the busy course. During this journey, Grahn studies other parts of the creature’s anatomy and begins to feel an emotional connection. First the dragonfly seems frightened but then appears to develop trust until it is eventually freed and able to fly away. When the three golfers return to the same course a month later and arrive at the pond where they had rescued the dragonfly, they discover about fifty assembled dragonflies. When one in particular hovers close to Grahn’s face, she feels a connection; the creature then flies higher and twice performs a kind of spiral dance, as if in gratitude. Because I personally find this example provocative and edifying, I have shared it with friends.
The second section contains four works of creative nonfiction in which the human char- acters have been disguised or combined.
Section Three may present the greatest challenge as it investigates the three levels of consciousness that Grahn perceives to exist. In the first account, she traces the “unembodied presences” or spirits emanating from stones and fire. Particularly striking here is her 1997 involvement with a friend at the Full Moon Ritual at Attukal Temple in Kerala, India. After participating in the rite, she reports that she and her friend return to the U.S. suffused with primordial cosmic energy transmitted through the symbolic flames of the ritual.
The second narrative concerns the net of life that the writer names “Microbia,” a reference to the operation of cells once demonized as “germs.” Grahn’s microbes can be healing and productive of positive outcomes. In this regard, she recalls her 42-year medical history of tonsillitis, strep, and other throat ailments, a history that ends when, while in therapy, she confronts the throat pain and choking sensations occasioned by her brother’s early sexual molestation. In this way, what she describes as “cellular conscious- ness” reveals itself.
In the book’s concluding account, Grahn’s unembodied presence appears in the form of radiance, “mostly invisible waves or rays, detectable by an as yet mysterious ‘sixth sense.’” The most dramatic occurrence takes place on the deck of the California ranch house belonging to one of her teachers. After dinner with the class, Grahn, talking to the planet Venus, expresses grief for dead friends and lovers. When she begins to chant the names of the dead, a sympathetic fellow student encourages her to scream. When she complies, the rest of the class comes running out, and they all sit down touching Grahn and looking at the sky. As the writer sees a viscous stream pour from the sky through her teacher and into her, she experiences a sensation of intense love. Subsequent interviews with the twelve women who had been on the deck that night reveal various transcendent responses all culminating in feelings of deep and powerful love. Grahn speculates that the earth’s aura and the dark matter of the entire galaxy contain repositories of transmissible love.
To be sure, Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit will not appeal to all readers. To appreciate this book requires receptiveness to modes of thought and feeling not often accessible to people in their daily lives. One virtue of the book is that Grahn doesn’t proselytize or insist that readers follow her everywhere on her path. Her tone and attitude could be said to echo the words of warrior poet Audre Lorde, who ended each reading with the gentle valedictory: “Take from this what you can use.”
Anne Charles is a retired teacher and writer living in Montpelier, Vermont.
