Tag Archives: nature

Putting down roots

The tree in the Flammarion engravingI love spending time on Earth. The ephemeral nature of it reminds my soul of the precious fragilities of life. Earth shows us glory and wealth. Earth teaches us that everything has a role to play, that there’s purpose in all things and also that humans suffer most from their own making.

I love the way that all our ancestors that have ever been are right here, still with us. That there’s a little kink in our orientation so that as we spiral and circle and dance around the sun, beautiful repeating patterns are made for us to enjoy.

I mean this, not in some abstract, symbolic way, but in a literal, actual way each day, every year. The physical world of our lives, right here under our feet, is both the source and the destination.

I’m repeating this from last week because this is what is so liberating.

It is freeing to be humbled by the totality of the Earth and accept that the expectations we create, the measures we have chosen, the agreements we’ve made to live our lives the way we do, so many of the things that we crave or expect or demand are all of our own invention. Those things are superfluous. Seek them if you wish, but do so with the knowledge that you’ll be able to breathe anyway, that the sun will come up in the morning, and that the trees will fruit in season.

You have seasons too.

Wishing you were ripe in Spring is very hard to fulfil, creating tension for yourself and those who care about you. Likewise in Autumn to obsess about lost days in youth is so pointless. That’s not to say ‘don’t have them’. Create art with those longings, or seek a higher truth from the impetus to understand, work with what is possible inside the physical limits of our reality. That leaves a lot of room for emotional, spiritual and psychological maneuver, it leaves a lot of room for fun, and for the here and now. Sway with the breeze, drink from the rain, tingle with the fire in your sap. There’s freedom here. There’s liberation in knowing what is real, and what is a wish.

I love spending time on Earth with you. There’s nowhere I would rather be. We’re all in this together.

Image Credit

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You are already home

We’ve come to the core, possibly the most important element that there is in reconnecting to your own soul, your own freedom. It is a bit counter-intuitive, because initially it will seem like it has basically nothing to do with you personally, but if you can stick with it is a big one. There’s nothing bigger in our world. Literally.

Earthrise photo taken by Bill Anders of Apollo 8 1968It is, of course, the Earth.

Our precious planet is so vast and accommodating, perfectly suited to us and so amazingly varied but even that sentence shows a human point of view. We are just one of the multitudes of creatures who belong here (and only here), we consider it ours, but we belong to it. We were born of this world, not just on it. I find this endlessly wonderful but I understand if you’re asking ‘What’s in it for me?’

Imagine you knew, deeply and without question where your loyalties always fell? Wouldn’t that make things clear? What if there was a really simple equation that could always inform your decision making at a fundamental level?

You are already home

The Earth is a single, finite planet. For all the rah-rah of astronomy in the almost infinite reach of the space we’ve been able to explore through our amazing technologies we’ve found maybe a dozen that maybe might do the trick. If we could get to them, which we can’t (the best candidates are between 20 and 1200 light years away). And I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty leery about signing up for a one-way ticket to even a hotel no one has reviewed, let alone a planet no one is confident can support weeds or insects.

What you can get from this is that the Earth is special. We all enjoy a nice Sci-Fi, just remember that the Fi part stands for fiction. The reality is that we are lucky lucky lucky to have this planet. More than lucky, without this planet nothing about us makes sense. We’re formed by this gravity, we’re formed of this chemical mix, and we find only a small range of temperatures and chemicals safe. So how does this help you? YOU BELONG HERE. The needs of the planet are your needs.

Pretty simple.

Anything that damages the planet is not in our interests as a species. Economy, culture, sport, fossil fuels, wildlife, tourism, smartphones, all of it, everything you can imagine is a fully-owned subsidiary of planet Earth. Look at that amazing photograph. Taken on Christmas Eve, 1968 by Bill Anders as the lunar orbit brought the NASA ship into sight of the Earth.

“For the first time in history, humankind looked at Earth and saw not a jigsaw puzzle of states and countries on an uninspiring flat map – but rather a whole planet uninterrupted by boundaries, a fragile sphere of dazzling beauty floating alone in a dangerous void. There was a home worthy of careful stewardship.”

What a lovely line there at the end, “worthy of careful stewardship”. I think that’s a much more graceful way to explain sustainability. No matter how many ways we describe the intricate interdependencies of related ecosystems, that single image sums it up so perfectly – there is nowhere else. It is all there, in that one ball. We are all in this together. Sustainability isn’t an ‘ism’ we should be into because it is cool or underground or a way to achieve carbon emissions, it is because it is the unarguable reality of a closed system. There’s nowhere to throw anything ‘away’ when you look down on the blue-green sphere.

To an individual human the Earth is so huge, so humbling. Our technology gives the impression that we’ve shrunk it, that we’ve tamed it and controlled it and put it to use for our betterment. Try walking somewhere. Try growing your own food. Try to swim to that island you can see. It is hard. We’ve created a tension between our physical and technical relationships to the Earth. They are out of synch. If you get back in touch with your personal, physical reality to the Earth, it can be so freeing. You know, deep into the core of yourself, that you are one of the stewards of the Earth. We all are, we’re born into that relationship. You know that there’s nowhere ‘away’ for (for example) nuclear waste to go – we simply bequeath that problem it to generations on from ours.

You and I, we’re part of this world. Our bodies come from the alchemy of our ancestors and the Earth. Physically and spiritually we are of this place. It is miraculous and obvious and comforting. In the words of Marshall McLuhan  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”

I find that incredibly liberating because it reminds me that everything else is a form of consensus reality. I can choose if I participate or not. When you start with what is real – the planet and the gifts of air and water, when you live from those as your basis, the relative value of everything else is easier to gauge.

So take your shoes off and feel some dirt beneath your feet. Look up at the stars and the moon tonight and be glad for your beautiful blue bubble that holds you tight as you do.

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Follow the wind

Back in our nod to debt grief we asked a core question “Do we have power to release ourselves?”

We yearn for release, for freedom. People have done so through time, it just feels like there’s a stronger sense of entrapment in our wealthy modern world than there really should be. We are not politically oppressed, we are fed, can vote, we each enjoy a quality of life that surpasses that of even royalty just two generations ago. Why then are our quality of life surveys so constantly negative?

This is a haunting question. How can we release ourselves?

I’ve been looking for a choice for us to consider and I was told it would come from an unusual source. I looked and listened and scribbled notes and got nowhere waiting for a teacher to give a hint. Then, while down at the waterfront watching kites, a little toddler said “Follow the wind” and she faced into the breeze and closed her eyes in total bliss. A-HA!
Woodcut of Zephyrus from Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493In that moment she gave us all a reminder of what it is to be free. She reminded us that our shackles are mostly illusions. She saw through to the core of the situation and with her sharp sword of insight she sliced the knot in two.

Well that’s how it was for me, let’s unpack it together.

Freedom is not living in some vague, future utopia that will appear one day without any effort from us. It isn’t a ‘better’ that we can just buy. It is hard to say what it really is anymore because for most people freedom has begun to sound like an advertising slogan or an empty rhetorical stick that a politician uses to make a complicated important issue into a knee-jerk response. Our hearts are gummed up with this foul misuse. At best, we visualise a long holiday, but without the boredom.

But children know what it is. They don’t need to reference a dictionary meaning. They don’t fret about their own value or what curiosity will cost them. We know that freedom is not the same as being childish, but here’s a tantalising clue to lead us back into the right direction.

Our pets know what it is. They don’t even need human language to show us joy in the now and pure experience of whatever the moment is holding. Pets might be tame, but they stay free in a way we deeply envy. You’ve probably met someone who lives through their pet’s experience of the world. We know that freedom is not the same as being wild, but here’s a delicious scent of the juicy potential we used to have.

We know what it is not. We know somehow that these wage-slave lives where people worry about a 3 percent rise in interest rates, or how will they pay for getting any kind of sick that their insurance doesn’t cover aren’t it. Spending a year planning how to use a few weeks off to have a ‘decent break’ isn’t freedom, especially when no-one else does the work while you’re away. Triple jeopardy points if you paid for that ‘break’ on credit. That doesn’t feel like freedom.  We know that it isn’t really having two aisles of soft drink options in the supermarket or having more than 67 brands of cars to select from but somehow that’s what we agreed to accept somewhere along the line and now it is set in stone.

Well, that little girl reminds us that it is not set in stone. That many of the social conditions that we accept and treat as invincible are actually as fragile as a house made out of straw. There are a number of ways that if we huff and puff we could see them fall in. Do you remember how the global economy had a hiccup a few years back over some little ‘misunderstanding’? That was a good example of how things that we’re used to being bullied around by can actually turn out to be rotten or even simply a façade. We get to make a choice about how we participate in our society. We are actually in charge of how we participate.

We are actually in charge of how we participate.

We are actually in charge.

Those companies, those governments, those councils, banks and credit card companies, they all work for us. They’ve forgotten that and most importantly so have we, Everything can be different. They are not invincible. They are not the only way or the single answer. The wind blows the whole way around the earth. The wind blows into every home, every village, it blows across our faces and it whispers ideas into our ears. Welcome the wind and welcome the hope back into your heart. We are all in this together. Take a moment now and feel this, you have something in your hands that we’ve all been told not to notice, to ignore it, to treat it as a bother. It is a tiller. Feel it now. Can you feel that vibration in it? That is the wind of change, the zephyr of self-determination and if you want, the rudder it is connected to that you control, can set you on a new course. Where will you go? Ask some new questions.

That’s what I heard when she suggested we “follow the wind” and I can’t thank her enough.

Image credit: Woodcut of Zephyrus from Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

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  2. Putting down roots I love spending time on Earth. The ephemeral nature of it reminds my soul of the precious fragilities of life. Earth shows us glory and wealth. Earth...
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Blooming Jacarandas

Jacaranda season 

My passport expired last year after ten years of representing the possibility of travel rather than facilitating any actual travel. It has been retired without a single visa or stamp in it. I sit on the domestic commuter train instead, endlessly shuttling backwards and forwards between my work cubicle and sleeping compartment. I stare out the window, too worn-out to read, too numb to hear the music in my expensive headphones. I watch the backyards, queues of cars, the smooth even walls of on-ramps and bypasses slide by. I no longer notice the grounds of the prison, unless the kangaroos that live there are mugging for portraits as the train passes. But this month the Jacarandas are in bloom and every familiar sight is rewritten with lavender punctuation and a sweet soft scent. Jacaranda trees are like me – introduced long enough ago that most assume we’ve always been here. My Nan was born in Toowoomba, but her Ma came from ‘the old country’. Jacarandas (from South America) are officially a pest here now, squeezing out the native trees. An analogy still too close to the bone to bear and a wound salted by the fact that the trees continue and grow as heavily promoted tourist attractions for the locations ‘lucky’ enough to already host them.
I walk the dog and listen for the heavy, trumpet – shaped bloombells to land on the carpet they make. Purple droplets. There are rituals and myths about good luck in exams at those unis and schools with trees in the grounds. The colour is amazing this year – the drought makes the trees desperate to seed and seed needs bees and bees, well bees are where the magic happens aren’t they?
The rest of the year the trees are anonymous in the city. Green among the many greens we take for granted but for this one wonderful month these jacaranda trees invade our senses and give any cherry blossom a hard run for title of most beautiful.
I used to envy the Japanese their Hanami season – picnicking under cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms are a perfect symbol for so much of Japanese culture. Haiku poetry, zen embrace of the now, a reverence for natural beauty, a deep understanding that striving for perfection is misguided. Ah – Cherry blossoms hanging on bare boughs, scenting warm air, and driving spring’s lusts back into our blood. All so very elegant, exuberant, sensual and ephemeral.

Here are our own zen muses. Jacarandas in bloom interrupt routines and demand enjoyment. They invite you to find a blanket and some food and drink and relax, staring at the glory of the sky through an impossible colour.  I’d rather they weren’t an import but life is no longer a game of perfect, it must be dealt with in the reality of here and now not just what could or should be. A blooming Jacaranda now is worth any number of Cherry blossoms that never seen. No passport required.

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