Ian Burbidge

Gazing up from my morning coffee on the rooftop terrace of a two-storey building in Antigua Guatemala it is impossible not to be awed by the volcanic backdrop that forms the perfect setting for the rising sun. Into clear skies rise wisps and puffs of steam from the distant crater; I sip my coffee, entranced, imagining the violence under the earth’s crust that was causing such activity, however benign it appears on the surface. A reminder of the power of the forces of nature, the constant flux of geological and biological systems. 

I’m struck by an overwhelming sense that everything is animated, connected to source, to spirit, to the animating force of the universe. Why would you not believe that if you grow up in the shadow of such an obvious, continuous demonstration of nature’s aliveness? Contrast that with growing up in an estate on the edge of a UK town where your reality is cookie-cutter houses, cars and human-designed straight edges, lines of trees and manicured grass. One perspective embedded in nature, one largely removed from it.  

If this connection is one of the things we have lost in the West, with our assumptions that we are above nature and that the earth is our resource to be packaged up, owned and exploited, it’s not been lost for many in Guatemala. The insights of Mayan culture, threatened with extinction during Spanish occupation and subsequently suppressed, have only in the last quarter of a century been able to be openly shared and celebrated. I was fortunate to learn about some of these ideas and practices during my visit. 

The Mayan cosmo-vision is not a religion but a way of life and in that it seems to share many insights from other indigenous cultures, notably the idea that the world is animated by a universal energy that is organised into various forms; this idea that rocks, trees and other seemingly (to Western eyes) inanimate objects are actually alive with a universal spirit is not obvious to us but central to many of the cultural world views that I have read about. It follows, too, that it is important to be respectful of such energy and the change it drives. Things we try to hold as fixed and universal in westernised cultures are seen in others as being in flux and constant change as the cycles of life unfold. A world view that accommodates nuance and gradients, not false binaries.

In Guatemala, my attention drawn to the dance of the volcano as it puffs forth its energy, it feels like a form of madness to think it could ever be otherwise; of course the whole world, human and more-than-human, is animated with energy. Of course we are a part of nature not above it. A simple change of perspective is all that is needed. Perhaps this arises out of looking at things through a much longer, multi-generational, geological time-frame; perhaps simply being in a different place, out of routine and the familiar, as I am this morning. 

I’m humbled by such a simple experience over my morning coffee. Perhaps it’s because it’s not my normal, because I have taken time out to stop and just be present for a while. It feels good to get out of my head and this human-centered world we construct to connect again with the animate world. Perhaps living here that connection would be front and centre, the volcanos a constant reminder of the fragility of human-kind’s place in the world. Maybe over time the familiar would become wallpaper and fade into the background… but I suspect not. The volcano itself draws your attention, continuously, a backdrop looming large over day-to-day life. In doing so it acts as a reminder of the potential for catastrophic change. Nature, through such vivid reminders, demands reverence.