Growth or Life

This two and a half minute video says that we have a choice to make: Growth or Life.  The creators contrast the single story of capitalism which is only about growing capital and the many stories of post-growth economies.  Check it out!

So what could choosing Life over Growth look like?  Hard to imagine?

Here is a quote from futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard.

Here's a way to explore the many stories that are already being created.  Living the New Story Series 2 is an on-line learning experience which is being offered by Findhorn Foundation.  You can check it out here.  Findhorn Foundation works on a pay what ever you want basis so that it is open to everyone.  

Stories on the West Wind

Last week, I read Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by UBC professor and author, Daniel Heath Justice.  On page 77, he writes,

Imagination and curiosity are essential to the empathy required for healthy, respectful, and sustainable relationships with a whole host of beings and peoples, from cedar trees and magpies to thunderstorms and moss-blanketed boulders.  Simply put, there can be no true kinship without imagination.  The more expansive our imaginations, the deeper our capacity for empathy, and the healthier our relationships and communities will likely be.  And the opposite is equally the case: as our imaginations become impoverished and the scope and range of possibility becomes narrower and limited, the health and well-being of the whole world around us will suffer too.

 I was thinking about this while walking along a trail by Georgian Bay.  I came to a gap in the trees where the wild west wind and the waves instantly captured my full attention.  A poem seemed to be the only way to communicate that experience.

The west wind demanded that

I stop and listen NOW!

And so I sat on a nearby bench.

But instead of listening,

My busy brain questioned the wind.

What stories do you carry?

I asked.

Do you bring news of my

Daughter on the prairies?

Or my son deep in the mountains?

Do you carry the yip of the coyotes

Or the growl of grizzlies?

Do you bring me the call of a magpie

Or the scent of red cedar?

Do you bring the smoke of wild fires

Or rain from the western sea?

Yes all of those things

Answered the wind.

Then my mind stilled and I listened

to the crashing waves

Of the lake on the shore.

One after another after another,

Their rhythm a kind of music,

A story of movement and power.

Of timelessness and this moment.

Of faraway and right here all at once.

Wind from the west 
Where two of my children are.

Perhaps you caressed their faces

As you now caress mine.

Perhaps they breathed this same air.

Perhaps it has been in their bodies

As they were in mine.

Perhaps they breathed out water

That lives in the clouds above me.

Perhaps the vibration of their voices

Still quivers in the flowing air.

Then I returned to walking the trail.

The daylilies danced and swayed,

Orange heads dipping and rising.

Red hollyhocks rocked forward and back

And the tall trees rustled and waved

As I walked by.

Cool, dry wind animating us all.

We are part of its story of dancing motion,

Of mighty power, of interwoven connection.

Our breath joins the wind.

It remembers our voices

And carries our story onward.

Daniel Heath Justice (2018) Why Indigenous Literatures Matter.  Waterloo: Wildred Laurier University Press

Wild Space Creates Common Ground

My partner and I have a small piece of land on the shore of Georgian Bay.  It is just 59’ x 75’ in size.  It is not zoned for building.  It used to be tended by a woman who could be found gardening on her hands and knees out there, well into her eighties.  She eventually suffered from dementia and began “weeding” so much that even the grass was pulled out on the land that we eventually came to care for.  So, when she ended up in long term care we were faced with a denuded patch of earth.

As I stared at the ground throughout the winter, I kept seeing in my mind, a giant turtle lying in the space.  And so once the ice melted away, we placed stones from the land and from the shore in a large turtle shaped ring.  We used really big stones for the head, tail and feet.  Inside the oval, I created 13 mounds of earth to represent the plates on the back of a turtle.  I carefully selected indigenous and medicinal plants from my seed catalogue and planted a variety of plants in the mounds.  That was a dry summer and we had to constantly water the tiny plants.  Some thrived while others withered back into the earth.

The next spring and summer were cool and wet.  Some of the plants never returned and others grew like wild fire.  I added some new varieties that I purchased from a local wild flower group.  No need to water that year, but the job became selecting which plants to keep and which new arrivals from nature herself to keep. 

This spring was the third year for our turtle garden.  Some of the original plants like Marshmallow, Arnica, Black and Blue Cohosh, Sweetgrass, Sage and Yarrow are well established.  But the Calendula, All Heal and Feverfew didn’t come back.  Yet there are new arrivals like Butterfly Weed, Curly Dock, Jewelweed, Vervain and some as of yet unidentified plants that appeared.  I leave plants I can’t name to flower so that I can look them up in one of my many guidebooks.

The garden is teaching me about what wants to grow there and about new medicines that arrive on the wind or via bird droppings.  Even my favourite Stinging Nettle showed up this year.  To the untrained eye, the wild plants may be seen as "weeds" but they are in fact a fabulous pharmacy.

This may all sound magical and indeed we are enchanted by it.  However, our next door neighbor is not.  He has pulled up almost all the plants on his small patch of earth and put down limestone screenings.  He attacks the right-of–way that crosses our property with his lawn mower, leaf blower and whipper snipper.  We have occasional encounters when he crosses the line and we have had to erect a fence-line to help him understand boundaries.

Water Lilies and Cattails provide cover for spawning fish

On the shoreline of half of our property, we have let the water plants re-wild themselves as we don’t put any boats in that space.  White water lilies, Cattails, Bullrushes, Joe Pye weed, Blue Flags and Purple Loosestrife have appeared.  My partner has observed Yellow Perch (who are just returning to this area), Sunfish, Bass and Garpike spawning in this small wild space. Some of the cattails have already been eaten by a muskrat or beaver.  It is truly amazing how quickly nature restores the balance once we leave it alone.

Sadly, our neighbor’s son likes to fish right in front of this area with no regard for the fishing seasons.  Recently, my partner observed him setting a minnow trap right in front of the new spawning ground.  A little while later, his father with whom we have had so many negative encounters arrived.  My partner greeted him and the man asked if his son had been down there.  My partner affirmed this and told him about the minnow trap.  The man was upset.  Apparently, he had told his son not to set the trap there because he would only catch Bass hatchlings.  The man had been observing one spawning Bass in this new wild space.  He could see the eggs and had watched the fish protect them.  He too wanted to protect the nest.  So he took the trap away.

We had thought that we had absolutely nothing in common with this man.  We had written him off as someone who saw nature as the enemy.  Perhaps because he likes to fish he has a relationship with the cycle of life for fish.  Who knows?  But the wild space that we had “allowed” to generate became space where we could find common ground with our “enemy”.  I am sure that the plants in the garden still drive him crazy, but we have formed an unlikely alliance around the fish.

Monarch Butterfly feeding from Milkweed flowers in our yard

Back at the house, my partner only cuts the grass once in the spring for a certain area.  Over the past few years, he has left milkweed plants to flourish there as a Monarch butterfly garden.  Every year there are more milkweeds but there haven’t been very many butterflies.  This summer however, he has seen up to 12 butterflies at a time drinking nectar from the milkweed flowers.  We have observed several eaten leaves so we hope that there are eggs and caterpillars out there as well.  It is indeed magical on a hot summer’s day to breath in the sweet smell of Milkweed flowers, while butterflies flit and feed. 

I got to thinking about how these re-wilded spaces are so quickly filled with so many species of life.  The diversity that emerges is in stark contrast to the monocultural lawns of our neighbours.  And yet within that diversity we have found a common space with one neighbour.  Perhaps that is the one of the gifts of diversity; a wealth of connections are possible.

  

How wonderful to be a part of the great Monarch migration story

Underneath We're All the Same

Blues legend Buddy Guy partnered with Playing for Change to create this global collaborative offering of Skin Deep.  “Underneath, we’re all the same…”  Check it out!  It speaks for itself.

You May Be an Imaginal Cell

Elisabet Sahtouris, Evolution Biologist and Futurist, reflects how the competitive and cooperative aspects of evolution relate to what is happening in the world today.  This 9 minute video clip is from Science and Nonduality (SAND Anthology Vol. 2).  The message is a positive one.

And then check out this 1 minute video on the metamorphosis metaphor comparing a butterfly’s metamorphosis to yourself.  The idea was originally put forward by author/speaker Norie Huddle and further substantiated by Sahtouris.  You may be an imaginal cell!