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!

The Enchantment of Marsh Drifting

Sharon Blackie writes, in The Enchanted Life, about cultural myths that underlie societies.  In our society, the myth of progress, drives the culture. “Progress means never sitting still, never counting our blessings – always wanting more, more, more.” (p. 155)  On the next page, she wonders, “What if we found different myths to live by, and what if those myths taught us to truly value what we have, rather than always striving for more?  What if they taught us to value enchantment rather than exploitation?” (p. 156)

Due to some physical challenges, my partner and I can’t paddle long distances in our canoe this summer.  Luckily, we bought an 18 foot freighter canoe last summer and put a small 2.5 hp motor on it.  This long green vessel allows us to motor across the big water of Georgian Bay until we find marshland.  Then we cut the motor and sit quietly.  With no goal in mind and no where to “get to”, we let the wind determine our course.  Occasionally we have to push ourselves away from submerged rocks with a paddle but for the most part, we sit quietly and wait.

The silent marsh gradually comes to life once its inhabitants have forgotten that we are there.  Or maybe they are aware of our presence but have decided that we pose no threat.  Gradually,  we begin to hear a chorus of red-winged blackbirds, marsh wrens, goldfinches, swamp sparrows, bitterns, grebes and the occasional great blue heron croaking.  This past week, we heard one bullfrog calling and then a second in what seemed to be a call and response pattern.  Then another and another until we were surrounded by deep bull frog calls on all sides.  We grinned silently at each other at this symphonic delight.  All the while, the sun was setting on Georgian Bay in pinks, blues and purples and the marsh music provided the sound track to the images that surrounded us.

Blackie quotes theologian and cultural historian, Thomas Berry who proposed that a new story would have “’an integral vision’ in which ‘human persons bear the universe in their being as the universe bears them in its being.’  In other words: one in which we see ourselves as an intrinsic part of the world around us, not as separate.” (p. 160)

As we drifted through the marshland, we were inside the wind, it bore us across the surface of the water.  Below us were bass, sunfish, trout, pike, map turtles, gobies, countless underwater forests of aquatic plants and aquatic insects by the millions.  Above, flew flocks of blackbirds, cormorants, Caspian terns, Ring-billed gulls and Mallard ducks.  Just over the water were millions of newly hatched insects that were picked off by dragonflies and birds.  High above us, soared Turkey Vultures, those graceful windriders.  And in the middle of what we perceived, we floated in our green canoe, being born by the universe, while we felt the universe within us.  The boundaries blurred and we were no longer other.  We belonged, we were part of this grand parade of life and we soaked in the magic, the enchantment like parched soil does the rain.

Before it got dark, we were filled up and we returned to the town, with its walled houses, fenced yards and no trespassing signs.  The old story was played out in a thousand ways as we walked through the streets. But we were immersed and saturated with the new story, it fed us and would sustains us in these challenging times.  It is becoming our new story and the old story confuses us more and more with its insanity.  Then we have to return to the places that allow us to be a part of the new story in which we value what we have and we value enchantment.

Oh and Happy National Canoe Day!

Sharon Blackie (2018) The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.

Daring to Let Our Music Out

He had seen a newly hatched snapping turtle with a shell about the size of a toonie at the edge of a swampy pond the week earlier.  So when we came across the pond on our spring walk, he looked for it again.  We saw a leopard frog but no baby turtle.

Walking along the dirt road about forty feet past the pond I noticed something at my feet.  Stooping down to investigate more closely, I discovered that it was another baby turtle.  My partner squatted down and picked it up to see if it was alive.  Sadly, it was not.

Just a few inches away was a shallow hole in the road.  Perhaps this was the nest that the turtles had hatched from.  Turtles that hatch in the spring are from eggs that were laid the previous year.  They overwinter deep in the earth and then fight their way through the soil to the air before finding their home in the water.  This nest was on the road that becomes the cross- country ski trail in the winter and the soil had had a heavy snow pack and lots of ski traffic on it all winter.

Wondering if there were live turtles trapped under the earth, he started digging with his hands, gently removing soil, hoping for a miracle.  At first, he found turtles that had fully hatched but had not been able to make it through the hard-packed soil alive.  As his excavation continued, he found turtles that were partly hatched, their little heads emerging from the shells.  The deeper he dug, the turtles were totally inside the eggs.  But he kept hoping for life even in the face of certain death.

There was no miracle that day.  When he had finished digging, there were about two dozen tiny snapping turtles lying on the dirt of the road.  No happy ending, just the reality of how our seemingly harmless activities of cross-country skiing had made it impossible for the hatchlings to break out of their earthen nest.

The image stayed with me and I pondered what I had seen.  It seemed like such a waste, all that unrealized potential at a time when turtles are endangered.  My partner came up with several solutions to prevent this from happening again while I waited for my own message to emerge.

Later that week, it came to me.  Nature is nature and most snapping turtles are predated while still unformed matter in the eggs.  Many more are hit by cars while crossing roads to lay eggs.  The intersection of turtles and people is one story.  But the story that came to me, came in a phrase, “dying with your music still in you.”  I thought about the potentials inside of all of us that want to be born, the music in each of us. The hard-packed dirt reminded me of the weight of responsibilities that can at time feel crushing.  At times, there is nothing left at the end of the day for myself, for birthing my own creations.  Sometimes, the news creates such fear that we “turtle”, crawl into our shells in a seemingly safe place.  There are times for such a retreat, but if hiding becomes the norm, then part of us dies.

And so, in this strange time that gets stranger every day, where the dirt keeps falling on our heads, threatening to bury us, I resolved to use my voice to speak my truth, to use my creativity, to use my resources, to let my music out.  This is not a time to hide under our bushels or to give up.  Just because we don’t seem to know where we are going doesn’t mean that we can’t use our creativity to find new ways of being together.

Today, I got an email from the David Suzuki Foundation celebrating the good news about a new library in Varennes, Quebec which is just south of Montreal.  The library is net zero for energy use through solar and geothermal energy.  It feels like something from the future.  Sounds too good to be true?  Check it out here and dare to dream!