Visions at the Edge
The Seed of Integration and the Fracturing of Dualisms
Prologue: The Memory Unfolds
It had been thirty years since that autumn night in the woods, but Grace Grayson remembered it with a clarity that time had not diminished. He had been thirty-two then, burning out from his work at the county social services department, still wrapped in the certainties his father had woven around him. Looking back now from his small apartment overlooking the forgotten park at the edge of the city, Grace recognized that night as the fulcrum upon which his life had pivoted—the night he had consumed the mushroom tea offered by an elderly Indigenous client and stepped into a realm where the boundaries between mind and matter, thought and form, dissolved completely.
The tea had been a gift from Maria Whitefeather, an elder who had seen something in Grace that he hadn't recognized in himself. "You think too much with your father's mind," she had told him that afternoon, pressing the small packet into his hand. "Sometimes we need to see with different eyes."
Now, sitting by his window watching the autumn leaves spiral down into the neglected park, Grace unfolded the worn copy of Sallie McFague's essay that had been his companion since those days. The highlighted passage glowed in the afternoon light:
"The link between justice and ecological issues becomes especially evident in light of the dualistic, hierarchical mode of Western thought in which a superior and an inferior are correlated: male-female, white people-people of color, heterosexual-homosexual, able-bodied-physically challenged, culture-nature, mind-body, human-nonhuman."
Grace smiled at the memory of how violently he had once rejected these words. Fresh from the rigid structures of Catholic seminary (which he'd abandoned before ordination, disappointing his father yet again), working as a burned-out case manager in a system that because of budget cuts, sadly, had to process human suffering into statistics, he had found McFague's insight threatening in ways he couldn't articulate. Until that night in the woods.
The memory wrapped around him like a mist...
The Forest of Consciousness
The forest surrounding him had pulsed with consciousness, the trees no longer rooted in ordinary soil but emerging from what seemed to be the collective memory of first encounters between humans and wilderness. The canopy above him had shifted impossibly between seasons—autumn leaves surrendering to winter's skeletal branches, then bursting into spring green, all within the span of a single breath.
Grace had felt the boundary dissolving between the waking world he'd left behind and something vast and liminal stretching beyond—a realm where his thoughts took physical form, where metaphor breathed with literal life. His watch had stopped, time itself becoming something spatial rather than linear.
He had checked his pocket, finding the folded page from McFague that had unsettled him earlier that day. He'd brought it along, intending to compose a counterargument during his solitary hike, but the mushroom tea had transformed his plans along with his perception.
The path before him twisted deeper into the living forest, its stones arranged not by human hands but by the collective weight of accumulated ideas. As the boundaries between inner and outer reality blurred, Grace realized he wasn't alone.
The Green Woman Appears
"You won't find what you're looking for by standing at the edge," called a voice from within the breathing trees.
Grace had squinted into the shifting light. A figure emerged—a woman in a cloak the color of moss that seemed to both clothe her and grow from her simultaneously. Small plants sprouted from her dark hair, their roots occasionally visible beneath her skin like intricate tattoos. Her age was impossible to determine; her face shifted subtly between youth and ancient wisdom with each change of light.
"I wasn't looking for anything," Grace replied defensively. "Just taking a walk."
"In this place, every step is a question," said the woman, approaching with footsteps that seemingly left wildflowers in her wake. "Every path, a thought. And you've brought quite a lot of structure with you today, young man."
Grace glanced over his shoulder and was startled to see that the rigid geometries of his father's world had indeed followed him—the neoclassical columns of the church where Thomas Grayson had served as deacon, the straight lines of the office buildings his development company had constructed, all strangely incongruous against the fluid, breathing landscape.
"That's not my doing," he protested.
"Isn't it?" The woman's smile was knowing. "The architectures we carry within us manifest here.” She flicked her chin towards his feet, “Look there."
Grace looked down to find his feet encased in his father's business oxfords—heavy, polished leather that he'd never worn in his waking life. They pinched uncomfortably.
"These aren't mine," he said, shaking his head in shock and denial.
"Hmph. Inherited, then," she replied. "Which makes them all the more powerful. Come, I need to show you something."
The Father's Shoes
She spun and walked deeper into the forest. Against his better judgment, Grace trailed after her, wincing at the pinch of the unfamiliar shoes.
The forest thickened around them, the trees growing more dreamlike with each step. Some had pages for leaves; others bore fruit that whispered philosophical propositions when brushed against. The path beneath them became less defined, occasionally vanishing altogether before reappearing yards ahead.
"Where are we going?" Grace asked, struggling to keep pace in the stiff, restrictive footwear.
"To the divide," she answered without turning. "It's particularly deep today."
The Great Ravine
They emerged from the trees into a landscape split by a massive chasm. The ravine cut through the terrain like a wound, separating what appeared to be two distinct worlds. On their side, the land was ordered, cultivated—reminiscent of an English garden with mathematically precise hedgerows and carefully tended roses. On the far side, wilderness sprawled in magnificent chaos—plants growing over and through each other in vibrant, untamed abundance.
"What happened here?" Grace asked, stepping carefully to the edge.
"You tell me," said the woman. "This divide has existed since Descartes walked the earth, but it deepens or narrows depending on who stands before it."
Grace peered down into the chasm. Far below, in the shadowed depths, he could make out fragments of broken bridges—some ancient stone arches, others modern steel spans, all collapsed.
"People have tried to cross," he observed.
"Many times," she confirmed. "Mystics. Poets. Even some theologians and philosophers. They build bridges, but the structures rarely last." She studied him with eyes that seemed to shift color with her thoughts. "What do you see on the other side?"
Grace looked across the divide. "Chaos," he said almost out of habit. "Disorder."
Mocking surprise: "Truly?” Again with that flick of her chin, “Look again."
He forced himself to observe more carefully. The seemingly chaotic growth across the ravine revealed subtle patterns—spirals, fractals, interconnected networks of roots and branches that supported one another.
"It's... different," he admitted. "Not the order I'm accustomed to,” a bit surprised, “but not random either."
"Different, not lesser," the woman echoed. "Not inferior. Just another way of being." She turned her penetrating gaze on him. "Yet your first instinct was to rank them—to place the familiar above the unfamiliar, right?"
Fracturing Beliefs
Grace felt defensive again. "That's natural. We categorize to understand."
"We categorize to control," she corrected. "To separate what threatens us from what serves us."
A memory surfaced in his mind—his father at the dinner table, dismissing the concerns of residents displaced by one of his development projects as "emotional reactions" that failed to understand economic reality. The memory became almost tangible in the vibrating air, Thomas Grayson's voice booming across the ravine: "The world divides naturally into those who build and those who complain about the builders."
The ravine widened perceptibly as the words echoed.
"Your father's dualism runs deep in you," the woman observed a little sadly.
"My father was a practical man," Grace said, hearing the echoes of Thomas in his own voice. "He understood that progress requires difficult choices. Resources must be allocated. Some things must be prioritized over others." His voice trailed off into ironic silence, “Budget cuts. Personnel reduction.”
"And who decides what—or who—is prioritized?" she asked.
Before he could answer, the ground beneath them shifted. The ravine began to replicate, smaller fissures branching from the main divide like capillaries from an artery. One crack raced toward them, forcing them to step back.
"What's happening?" Grace demanded.
"Your thinking is happening," the woman said calmly. "Each division you justify creates another split in the landscape."
Grace watched in alarm as the fissures multiplied, creating a complex network of separations across the once-unified terrain. Each new divide seemed to correspond to one of McFague's paired opposites: male-female, human-nonhuman, mind-body. The ordered garden was fragmenting into smaller and smaller parcels.
"Stop it!" he cried.
"I'm not doing this," the woman replied. "You are."
Removing the Inheritance
Grace looked down at his father's shoes, now cracked and tight around his feet. "I don't understand."
"In this state, our deepest beliefs shape reality," she explained. "Your insistence on hierarchical thinking—on ranking, dividing, separating—manifests physically here."
A particularly wide fissure opened between them, forcing the woman to step back. She now stood on a small island of land, separated from Grace by newly formed chasms on all sides.
"This is what dualistic thinking creates, Grace," she called across the gap. "Isolation. Fragmentation. The illusion of separation where there is only relationship."
"How do I stop it?" he asked, genuinely frightened now as the ground continued to split around him.
"You must remove your father's shoes."
Grace looked down at the oxfords, which had grown painfully tight. "But they're just shoes."
"Are they?" The woman's voice carried clearly despite the widening distance between them. "Or are they the stance from which you view the world? The position you've inherited without questioning?"
A rumbling from beneath them hinted at the fracturing soon turning catastrophic. Grace sat down awkwardly and tugged at the oxfords. They seemed to resist his efforts, clinging to his feet as if alive.
"They won't come off," he called desperately.
"Because you're still defending the thinking that created them," she answered. "Let go of the hierarchies, Grace. Question the rankings that seem so natural to you."
"How?"
"Start with McFague's words. Don't dismiss them—enter them. Feel their implications."
Entering the Words
Grace closed his eyes and recalled the passage that had disturbed him. This time, instead of intellectualizing, he allowed himself to feel the weight of her critique:
"The link between justice and ecological issues becomes especially evident in light of the dualistic, hierarchical mode of Western thought in which a superior and an inferior are correlated..."
He saw his father's boardroom, where maps of forests were marked with potential development sites. He remembered the dismissive way Thomas spoke about "hysterical" environmental concerns, about "emotional" women in business, about "impractical" indigenous perspectives. He recalled his own case files, how he'd categorized human suffering into manageable bureaucratic categories, how he'd ranked which crises deserved immediate attention while others could wait.
Each memory brought with it a physical sensation—a pressure in his chest, a tightness in his throat. Emotions he'd classified as irrelevant to serious thinking surged through him: grief for damaged watersheds, shame at his complicity, anger at systems that ranked human value. In this visionary state, these emotions took visible form as colored mists that swirled around him.
"The shoes, Grace," the woman reminded him. "You're almost there."
With a final effort, Grace pulled off his father's oxfords. The moment they left his feet, the fracturing ground stilled its movement. He stood barefoot on the broken landscape, feeling the textures beneath his soles—soil and stone, root and clay, all the elements his constructed categories had separated but which had never truly been apart.
Building Living Bridges
"Now walk," instructed the woman.
"Where?" Grace asked, surveying the labyrinth of chasms surrounding him.
"Toward what you've been taught to devalue."
Grace understood. He turned toward the wild side of the original ravine and took a tentative step. Where his bare foot touched the edge of a fissure, small tendrils of plant life emerged, weaving themselves into a living bridge. He took another step, and the bridge extended.
"What's happening?" he asked, marveling.
"Relationship is replacing ranking," the woman explained. "Connection is healing separation."
With each step, more life emerged from the fractures—not eliminating the differences between one side and another, but creating relationships between them. Grace moved carefully toward the woman's isolated position, the living bridges growing beneath his feet.
When he reached her, she smiled and held out her hand. In her palm lay a seed unlike any he'd seen before—simultaneously ancient and new, both physical and metaphysical.
"This is a seed of integration," she said. "When you return to your ordinary awareness, it will remind you of what you've seen here."
Grace accepted the seed, feeling its potential pulse against his skin. "What will it grow into?"
"That depends on how you nurture it," she replied. "Whether you plant it in the soil of dualism or relationship."
The Transparent Earth
She gestured toward the wild side of the ravine. "There's something else you need to see before you return."
Together they crossed the living bridges that now spanned the smaller fissures. As they approached the edge of the great ravine, Grace noticed something strange—from this perspective, the "ordered" garden where they'd begun looked strangely impoverished, its mathematical precision revealing a disturbing uniformity. By contrast, the "chaotic" wilderness before them now appeared as a complex symphony of interrelationship.
"In your world," the woman said, "your churches and institutions have taught that transcendence—rising above—is the highest spiritual goal. But in this state of awareness, you can recognize that transcendence without immanence becomes mere escape."
She knelt and pressed her hand to the ground. Where she touched, the earth became transparent, revealing layer upon layer of interconnected life—mycorrhizal networks linking trees in underground conversation, microorganisms transforming death into new life, roots intertwining in mutual support.
"This is what your hierarchical thinking cannot see," she said. "That every supposedly 'lower' form supports what has been deemed 'higher.' That mind emerges from body, culture from nature, human from the more-than-human world."
Grace knelt beside her, placing his palm on the transparent earth. He felt a pulse of communication run through the networks below—not words, but a profound interchange of necessity and gift. Tears formed in his eyes.
"I've been trained to dismiss this," he whispered.
"Yes," the woman acknowledged. "Western thought has privileged separation over connection, transcendence over immanence, mind over body, human over nature. McFague isn't creating artificial connections between justice and ecology—she's drawing attention to a split that should never have occurred."
The Split That Should Never Have Been
The great ravine before them seemed to shimmer, revealing glimpses of the ordinary world through its depths—clear-cut forests, polluted streams, communities divided by wealth and power. Grace could now see how each manifestation of damage stemmed from the same root—the belief in separation, in hierarchy, in the right of the "superior" to use the "inferior" as resource rather than recognize it as relation.
"I've perpetuated this," he said quietly.
"You have," the woman agreed without judgment. "But recognition is the first step toward healing."
She stood and helped him to his feet. "Your ordinary awareness will return soon. The mushrooms' effect will fade."
Grace looked at her, suddenly understanding. "Who are you? Really?"
The woman's smile contained multitudes. "I am what exists on both sides of every dualism you've constructed. I am what remains when the hierarchies fall." Her form seemed to expand, encompassing tree and woman, wisdom and wilderness. "Some call me Sophia. Others, Anima Mundi. Your friend McFague might name me the Body of God."
As the visionary realm began to fade, Grace found himself sitting against the trunk of an ancient oak, the forest around him returning to its ordinary appearance. In his hand, the seed of integration remained tangible and warm. In his mind, McFague's words no longer threatened but beckoned:
"The link between justice and ecological issues becomes especially evident in light of the dualistic, hierarchical mode of Western thought in which a superior and an inferior are correlated..."
He understood now that she wasn't attacking reality but inviting a more comprehensive vision of it—one that included what patriarchal capitalism had taught him to dismiss: relationship over resource, reciprocity over exploitation, embodiment over abstraction.
Epilogue: The Tree by the Window
Thirty years later, Grace looked up from the memory to the cracked clay pot on his windowsill. The tree was no taller than his forearm, its leaves translucent in the weak afternoon light. A feral cat—mottled gray, one ear notched—sunned itself beside the pot, tail flicking as if to test the tree’s resolve.
It had grown from the seed, though not as he’d imagined—transplanted three times after being mistaken for a weed, once uprooted by a tomcat’s territorial scrape, its roots visible through the pot’s fractures. Yet it lived.
He’d lost his job to budget cuts six months after the vision (or whatever it really was). The severance pay lasted a year; the shame, a bit longer. He’d taken night shifts at a hospice, where he’d learned to hold silence as a form of prayer. The cats had followed him home those years, slinking from dumpsters to rub against his ankles as he unlocked his apartment. “You’re worse off than me,” he’d murmur, and they’d stare back, unimpressed.
Now, in retirement—his “official” retirement, the tree and the cats were his only luxuries. A small colony of them lazed in the park’s overgrowth, though only the one-eared gray dared approach his sill. It had a name once, gifted by a neighbor’s child, but Grace preferred the silence between them—the way it licked water from the pot’s saucer without permission.
Tomorrow, two graduate students would arrive—sent by a professor who'd dredged up Grace's old journal essays from the '90s, back when he'd tried (and failed) to publish McFague's vision through proper academic channels. They'd call his work 'ahead of its time,' as if time were a linear road and not a mycelial web. He'd suppress a smirk. The bolder one would confess they'd been assigned his essay as 'a critique of neoliberal spirituality.' Grace would stare into his tea, wondering when his grief had become curriculum. They'd wrinkle noses at the cat hair on his couch, the muddy pawprints on his annotated Sallie McFague—the same copy that had survived the woods thirty years ago. From the counter, the gray cat would watch, licking a paw with the serene indifference of a creature who'd never cited a single source. They wouldn't stay long.
Grace touched a leaf, felt its thinness. The tree would never bear fruit, but sometimes a moth laid eggs on its branches, and he’d watch the caterpillars devour and become. The cat would watch too, pupils wide, though it never struck. A pact of sorts. Enough.
On the sill beside the pot, a letter from the city fluttered—another notice about “park revitalization.” The cat batted it to the floor. Grace let it lie. The students would ask about activism; he’d smile and say, “Ask the cats. They’ve survived every revitalization.”
When they left, he’d carry the pot to the park’s edge, set it where the ivy swallowed a chain-link fence. The gray cat would trail him, leaping onto the fencepost to oversee the operation. Let the tree decide its own borders.
🌱 Let’s Keep Listening at the Edges
Did something stir as you walked with Grace across the ravine?
Have you ever felt caught between worlds—between what you were taught and what your body or the Earth keeps whispering?
I’d love to hear:
— A time when an inherited belief no longer fit—and what it took to take off those metaphorical shoes
— A moment when the “chaos” of the wild revealed a deeper kind of order
— A bridge you’ve built (or are building) between parts of yourself long held apart
Leave a comment below, or share this with someone walking their own liminal path.
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Sometimes, the most radical act isn’t crossing the divide—it’s learning how to feel the ground again.
—Grace
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Anarchist squirrels hoarding acorns for the revolution
The ghosts of suffragettes rattling the bars of the status quo
Reader-subversives who smuggle these words into corporate bathrooms
Become a co-conspirator—free subscriptions grow like kudzu in the cracks of empire.
(Or as the feral cats say: "The best way to predict the future is to steal it.")
I absolutely loved this. Especially now, as we see the inevitable result of the doctrine of Separation playing out on the national (and world) stage It's as if myth writ large is unfolding before our very eyes.
There's no separation anymore -- between myth and reality -- it's all unfolding in real time. We can clearly see the antagonists, larger than life. But those being smote? We don't see them clearly at all, though they are portrayed as evil phantoms, avenged. But we know the mighty avengers, the protectors of division and ranking, striking first at the margins, will soon set their vengeance on us. It is we who they blame for the evil that has beset the land and who need to be eradicated. Yet even we are steeped in the ways of separation -- we can't escape it. So the snake eats its tail.
Once civilization has fallen -- and rightly so -- perhaps, then, out of the smoldering landscape, a few will find a way to survive. Perhaps they'll understand how it all went wrong. Perhaps a culture in relation to all living beings will grow into inter-being. Perhaps we, as ancestors, will be a part of it.