We Share the Same Body

COVID-19 presents us with a quite a challenge.

May we and those we love make it through safely. And those we don’t love, may they make it through safely, too. They are us. We are them.

This is a species event.

Biology is founded on the principle that we share the same body with creation itself, that extends beyond our skin to merge with the living systems that sustain us. When we pollute and destroy them, the same we do to ourselves.

COVID-19, harbored in bats, tells us we share our bodies. Who we share DNA with is, biologically, who we are: mammals, a newly-arrived lifeform on this planet.

The challenge of this pandemic is to survive, then prevent more.

Biocitizen is a walking school that teaches students what their biome is and encourages them to imagine how they fit into it. Imagination is key; we live in stories as much as we live in biomes.

Our biomes are our living systems. To know them is to know ourselves. By walking and identifying the creatures, geology, hydrologies of the place within the biome, we bloom into the awareness of our selves as biocitizens, sharers of the biotic commonwealth.

In the past, an ethic of care for non-human species, and for the environment, was something a person could choose to have. No longer, if we expect to survive.

We’re constituted by living systems: our body includes not only other kindred lifeforms but also water, climate, and biome—the elements.

This is what Biocitizen specializes in teaching—how to recognize, appreciate and care for the living systems that make us.