Falling Into the Future.

Thoughts on The Great Unraveling, The Great Remaking.

Just over a couple of weeks ago, we were in school watching the unfolding of a surreal, unreal story, one that felt like we were falling headlong into a science fiction story or movie.

As the story continues to unfold around us, and we are all caught inside this bizarre new reality, there are a few things that stand out for me as I know they have for many others but which I would really like to name here, to acknowledge.

I am deeply moved by the profound recognition of just how connected we truly are. 

For the first time ever, in perfect reflection of the world we have created, we are all truly aware that we are together in the same boat. This Small Blue Dot we inhabit that hangs in space suddenly feels very intimate, more intimate than ever before. For not much more than a couple of decades now, we have been marveling at and loving ‘how connected’ we are. How technology has brought us together. 

But this new situation has really brought that home in a different, more sinister and more real way. We are more deeply connected than we ever truly comprehended, as this virus has shown us. Our connectedness is what allows it to spread, we can’t help ourselves. It takes our governments telling us to distance ourselves to force us to do so, and even then some people are finding it impossible. And so it travels around the world, infecting every country, and all people, without discrimination.
Could we ever have imagined being so as one, so truly together, so truly connected with every other citizen on this planet?

But there is something more to this connectivity, something older and deeper, something we have forgotten that we are now being reminded of, painfully.
I have been immersed, in recent times, in the writings and thoughts of people like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, Richard Powers, and Paul Hawkin, among others, who speak to the deep, indigenous knowledge of how we are actually connected, how we have always been connected, but we have forgotten. It makes our recent technological connectivity seem embarrassingly one-dimensional, albeit useful in its own way.

Looking into these worlds they abide in gives me a strange sense of being a child, lying on my stomach and looking down into a deep, deep well, as though trying to see something that is in the past, that I have lost, only to see the sky and realise I am, in fact, looking up, looking forward into the future. There is no separation. There is no divide between humans and nature. The idea that there is a divide is such a bizarre one and so recent too, yet it is so pervasive that we are all completely ensnared by it.
Looking into these worlds has given me so much clarity, so much understanding, and in turn, peace. I have been moved to tears by the deep recognition of what they are saying.

What have been your silver linings, your Corona Gold?

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.

Song For Remembering.

What is this I now hold, this golden light?

It is fed by the rain and the moon and the stars,

it is Earth, moulded and shaped by my hands.
Hold it up to the light, there, do you see?

The bones, shells, stones,
flowers, feathers, leaves,
the saltwater.
The songs.

The songs it holds, the songs it remembers,
that shimmer and shake,
awakening, rumbling,
that long to be heard again, that call your name in the night,
that come on the breeze through the open window.

You say you don't remember the words,
but the words remember you.
They recall your grandmother's grandmother's names,
their hands in the earth, their sweat and their tears,
how they showed up again, and again, and again.
And they remember you.

So, take to the woods,

walk the soft earth,
find the place that you left that still holds your shape.
Lie down in her arms, your ear to her heart,
your fingers entwined in her leaves and her grasses.

Listen! Do you hear?
The songs of the birds, the worm and the beetle,
the bee and the spider, the snail in her shell.
Let their songs fill your veins, liquid notes in your ears,
for their voices are the ones that need to be heard.

Let their silken threads weave you back into remembering,

for it's in the darkness you will find your voice is among them.

And when you show up for them,

they will show up for you.

We Were Wildlife.

"...the 50,000 generations that preceded us in the Pleistocene, which is the age of the Ice Ages, when we became what we are as part of the natural world — when we were wildlife, if you like; we don’t think of ourselves as wildlife anymore, but we were wildlife then — that those generations are more important for our psyches, even now, than the 500 generations of civilization which have followed the invention of farming about 12,000 years ago. So that there is a legacy deep within us, a legacy of instinct, a legacy of inherited feelings, which may lie very deep in the tissues — it may lie underneath all the parts of civilization which we are so familiar with on a daily basis, but it has not gone; that we might have left the natural world, most of us, but the natural world has not left us."

~ Michael McCarthy in conversation with Krista Tippett

We walk this earth with tender feet,
searching hands,
breath held in silken clouds somewhere in our chest,
eyes wide, unwilling to blink.

Wander in wonder, hearts trembling and cracking open, remembering.

Remembering what it felt like,
waking,
peeling ourselves out of the boggy ground,
the imprint our bodies left behind us,
the empty place we walked away from.

In our ancient woodlands,
dark and leafy,
sun-dappled,
we clambered over mossy boulders,
through quiet pools and meandering rivers.

And somewhere in our journeying,
heads down,
we left the forest,
took to the fields,

and for a while we did not look up,
did not see the treetops dance and nod to us,
beckon,
alive with Life.

Until we paused

and looked back - look
the way back obscured and overgrown.

We are lost.

So, hands scratched,
we search,
cheeks whipped,
hair entangled.
We search.

We search.

Always.

For the way back in.

Listen, Great Silence.
Are you tired of me talking in your ear about this yet? Sorry.
(Not sorry!)
I have written about this so many times before, too many to mention here - heart sore and bewildered, or ecstatic and awestruck, each time reminded of this deep connection we all have to this tellurian mother we are part of, deep in our tissue, our ancestral memory. So many times I have questioned our disconnect, our willing abandonment of a more balanced, indisputably obviously more natural and commonsense way of living.
Yes, I do have others I have met here on the edge of the forest, scratched and whipped and searching like me, but I am interested in you, the Great Silence, who do not want to talk about it.

Come here to me.

Surprise me now, and talk to me.
Tell me, do you know what happened?
Listen to that ancient, scratchy voice inside you that is longing to be heard - that's it right there, 'just in the threshold of hearing', close your eyes, take a moment to search it out, to find it. It longs for you to hear it and has much to say.

We don't need to look very far.

Watch the children.
Do as they do.
For they are our teachers.

"We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist."

~ Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods.

Reach out your hand and you can touch it - the fabric of this place we belong to. It's under our feet, outside our window, it is present in those differently alive beings we share our homes and gardens with; 'our' cats and dogs, the birds in the treetops, the insect on the wall.

Stoop down and push your fingers into the soil, brush your hands through the waving grass, lie down and look at the sky above you. Take a moment to look at leaves. 

We all need to take a moment to look at leaves. 

Close your eyes.

Feel this Earth under your body. 

And listen.

Everything we need is right here.
We just need to reach out our hand to it,
grasp hold of it, and never let it go.

Let it help us find our way home.

Bring ourselves back to [Wild] Life....

The Lover of Earth Cannot Help Herself ~ by Mary Oliver

In summer,

through the fields

of wild mustard,

then goldenrod,

I walk, brushing

the wicks

of their bodies

and the bright hair

of their heads –

and in fact

I lie down

that the little weightless pieces of gold

may float over me,

shining in the air,

falling in my hair,

touching my face –

ah, sweet-smelling

glossy and

colorful world,

I say,

even as I begin

to feel

my left eye then the right

begin to burn

and twitch

and grow very large –

even as I begin,

to weep,

to sneeze

in this irrepressible

seizure

of summerlove.

Watch: Charles Eisenstein on a New Story on Climate Change and our part in it.

Watch: Mary Reynolds on re-imagining gardens and sustainable farming for the times we live in.

Listen: Michael McCarthy in conversation with Krista Tippett

Read: Sharon Blackie on 'A life-changing journey from the wasteland of modern society to a place of nourishment and connection.'

Mapping; finding. The Door To Joy.

You will find me in the edges of things.

In the hinterland where old things coalesce with new and something else begins to be born.

In the edges of things where it all happens, the new and juicy microbial beginnings we at first don't see,
that slowly grow to become part of us,
open up new, unimagined landscapes,
a bloom on the skin of yesterday.

Is this particular edge a threshold or a precipice? Or both?

I trust and thrust, run
forwards, towards something that is still in shadows beyond the edge,
trusting I am not alone,

the wrenching now sweet relief.

And I find it is true, the door to joy opens outwards.