Winter Solstice, Australia 2016

Happy Winter Solstice everyone. Here in Narooma, on the east coast of Australia, i watched the sun rise over the beautiful Pacific Ocean and sent out my thanks for life to the sun. The traditional owners of the country here, the Yuin people, address our local star as Grandfather, so i was happy to take that on as a sign of respect for their ways of being here over thousands of years.

The Youtube video embedded here is of this dawn, Tuesday June 21st 2016.

The words are inspired by the evolutionary interaction of the elements, as well as by what i have learnt from Yuin elders, especially the Harrison clan (more to come on this in the City Living, Nature Calling ecomythic documentary film series). I’ve been spending as much time as possible around these parts watching and listening to the sun, the ocean, the sand and the land, the birds and animals around here, the stars at night, the wind and the trees and that deep inner voice that reminds us about what is important.

The sun gives birth to life, which rises out of the ocean. We, along with all creatures, give it body. Every day we are fired back into life by the power of the sun. We rely on the salt water to maintain the basis for life and the fresh water to keep us hydrated. We are elemental beings, with conscious minds, who are sometimes confused into thinking that the sideshow is the main attraction.

The earth, the sun, the ocean, the stars and the other creatures. This is home. This is what matters. When we get our minds and bodies together and remember this we are better for it.

Let the light return and draw you up.

Storms, Sea Monsters and Climate Change

In ancient mythology, there are stories about great sea monsters that roam the deep, far from the eyes and lives of mere mortals on the surface of the earth. Until times change, something goes wrong with the planet, and they resurface. Humans might not be guilty of any particular crime against life at the time; but often the old stories make it clear that we are to blame for the upsurge of the sea monsters. When the forces of good and evil go out of balance, they return from the deep, not to exact revenge but to even things back up a bit. The Kraken wakes, the giant squid come after boats instead of whales for a while, the seas roar and we are swept up in the tide. The shores are cleansed and humility is returned to the world; seeing this power, the human race remember that they can be swallowed up whole by the all-consuming power of the ocean, if they are not lucky.

 

Here we go again.

But this time it is not gigantic, scary looking creatures we have to worry about; it is the spirit of the sea itself. Perhaps it was always this way and the monsters were just a symbolic representation of the power in the oceans. Regardless; watching the hugely impressive storms over the last few days on the south coast of NSW has been a humbling exercise and one that reminds me of something i thought following the Boxing Day tsunami, which killed hundreds of thousands of people just a few years ago. The sea itself is the monster now. And it is rising.

 

Have we really even begun to accept what anthropogenic climate change is about to do to our coastlines? I live on one – the most beautiful place i have ever found, a place i have fallen in love with – and i am beginning to think about where to settle so that my kids can live there too. With 2m of sea level rise – something climate scientists have been telling us is inevitable, given the lack of change we have seen since we realised the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ had been given the stamp of consensus at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 (that’s right folks, we have known this was coming for around 25 years now) – not only will millions of hectares of fertile land go underwater, but heavily populated cities across the world will become emergency zones.

So, i will be thinking about that when I choose where to settle along this coast. More importantly, meanwhile, i’ll be supporting the community to change, to create bioregional networks of exchange and support, and to think in terms of resilience and loving kindness while we build renewable energy grids and figure out what grows best here.

And i will keep listening to the ocean, which on halcyon days like the ones we’ve been enjoying lately tells me life is beautiful, and on stormy days like these reminds me it is also deadly. How we respond to both extremes tells us a lot about who we are. Let’s remain mindful of these co-creative forces in the world all around us. And not become monsters ourselves …

 

 

Spirituality, Leadership and Management – hop on board!

How do we bring a sense of the spiritual – the integration of the worlds beyond this one into our everyday lives, the linking between physical reality and our higher, deeper, greater selves – into professional practice, business, negotiations, life?

 

When conventional religions have let us down and so much of politics is bunk, a new era of leadership requires our creativity. Inspired by the world of ideas, the possibilities inherent in the human mind and body and heart and soul and spirit, and our innate sense of what’s right, combined with the traditional wisdom that continues to speak to us from the earth and the stars and the people who have kept listening, we can forge new meaning with depth and reliability.

Being part of this movement means walking the talk, accepting the challenges of a world that all too often defers to an orgy of meaningless consumption, and speaking out – both against this corporate desolation, and for the incredible, marvelous array of ground-breaking (and ground-nurturing!) actions taking pace across the planet right now. We are part of the critical mass, which is crystallising around an emergent understanding of the potential of the human race to evolve into a better species; one that takes care of its home, even after it has developed high technologies (which bring so much danger with so much promise!).

 

I’m proud to be part of the team that is bringing this work to Australia, in the form of the SLaM (Spiritual Leadership and Management) conference to be held in Sydney, August 21-23. “Mind in the Matter; What is Mindfulness in Business and Professional Life” promises to hold all participants in a space that is generative and supportive; and that takes us all through the stages of deep inquiry and carries the gifts of such work back into the field of everyday life. It is with love and gratitude – and professionalism and expertise – that i will facilitate the “Programmed Strand” of workshops, alongside a gifted team of committed practitioners. To ensure the most profound spirit of transformation possible, it will take place as a 2 and 1/2 day retreat at Wiseman’s Ferry, where we will immerse ourselves in the work and find truer, clearer connection to ourselves, our community, and our planet in this time of need.

See the website here for more information; and below is a copy of the Newsletter outlining the theme and flavour of the conference. It is beautifully written by Susie Goff, current President of SLaM. It would be wonderful to see you there. Please feel free to explore this exciting field of endeavour.

And please share this opportunity with anyone, or any organisation, you think might be able to make it to the conference, or who might be able to let more people know about it.

Keeping it real, Geoff Berry (White Fella Dreaming).

SLaM-Newsletter-May-2015

The Cosmic Walk

The Cosmic Walk has amazing similarities with my work and the Ancestral Movements of my last post. While all three approaches embody the same philosophy, the Walk is a song, which relates the path and time scales of evolution, and then has each participant walk the spiral of time from the big bang to now.  As each participant walks the entire history of the cosmos, we all chant along the simple chorus:

     “I am as old as the universe, I’ve been here before and I’ll be here again;

      I am a child of the universe, a part of all women and a part of all men.”

The beautiful brass spiral used for the Cosmic Walk at Moon Court, home to some of the events run by Pagaian Cosmology

The song “Child of the Universe” was written by British singer songwriter Theo Simon in the early 1990s.  It originally had four verses. At some stage John Seed, tireless activist in defence of the earth and developer of the Cosmic Walk concept, heard the song and requested Theo to write an additional two verses to complement the walk as an entire musical experience. The cosmic walk was originally devised by Sister Miriam Therese McGillis of Genesis Farm in New Jersey, a colleague of Thomas Berry (The Great Work) as a symbolic re-enactment that helps us enter personally into the story. Participants walk around a spiral that represents the entire story of the unfolding and gradual differentiation of the Universe and the Earth from the beginning to the present – and to us! 

John saw that with additional material, Theo’s song could extend to the epic it now is, ready to carry the whole story of the universe into a performance that can be enjoyed by groups anywhere. You can see John tell this story and sing the song here, at MoonCourt in the Blue Mountains of Australia, which has a brass spiral inlaid in the floor representing the Unfolding Cosmos for the telling of the Universe Story. John had been facilitating an Earth, Spirit, Action workshop during which that story – our Story – was told. 

The verses of the version sung at Wild Minds were sung by Helena Read, who herself has performed it on stage with Theo’s original band World Without Walls, unbeknownst by the Triple Ecology gang* who asked her to join them. Synchronicity abounds in this work.

The full lyrics can be heard in some renditions of the song, found here. Theo now performs it with his band Seize the Day along with this extensive repertoire of folk music in the British tradition of social and ecological activism. 

You can imagine how the Cosmic Walk is a similar experience to Ancestral Movement, although where that practice literally embodies the animal forms that have been integrated into our physical selves, this one is more in the style of the labyrinth walk. It is an occasion for meditation on the incredible journeys our bodies have undertaken from the bursting forth of the universe to this moment, pregnant with significance. Carried by the crystalline wave of the chant, we walk, sing, hum, and re-place ourselves exactly where we are. Try one as soon as you get, find, or make the chance!

*The Triple Ecology gang (as I have just dubbed them) are holding an event in April (24-26) devoted to sharing the learnings of three frameworks: Sacred, Deep and Healing Ecology.

Sacred Words: Home

 

When we finish ritual, or prayer, or any other kind of shared meaning in a circle with others, we often find a closing word or phrase helpful to show we value what has been shared, we care for what has been said, consumed or enacted, we wish to hold it as sacred and embody some aspect of it in our everyday (read: magnificent and meaningful) lives. Having been burnt free of any alignment with Christianity by my childhood experiences, I cannot include the word “Amen” in my repertoire without gagging on it a bit. And as a person who experimented with a wild variety of New Age practices in the ’90s, but who then became educated into the abuses of other cultural practices by the modern western marketplace, I cannot in good conscience utter a Vedic “Om” (or “Aum” if you prefer that spelling) or a Lakota “Ho,” without knowing I am at the same time uttering evidence of my own culture’s spiritual poverty, as well as its voracious appetite to fill that emptiness with the gifts of others – often the others it has colonized, slaughtered, marginalised or otherwise processed into neat, inoffensive packages to be bought and sold. What to do in this postcolonial, secular (post-Christian, for me) void?

 

I have an answer. You may find it helpful also, if you are interested in having a daily practice that aligns you with the sacred in nature (the nature within the self, the body, the mind and heart, the land and sea and air and other creatures and night sky; the nature we are indistinguishable from). At these moments I say “Home.” This practice reminds me of what is most important – look after the place you live in, along with all else that lives in it. This Home is planetary, including all races and cultures, but the word for these purposes also relates directly to our own local conditions and loyalties. It sounds remarkably similar to the other traditional sacred words I have come across – almost combining them, including the Native American with the Vedic and Christian. And it is true to me, to being here, to loving and caring for and beyond the self. I see it as another little marker of what White Fella Dreaming can offer my people, I hope. Now to find out what the local Australian Aboriginal peoples, the Wurunjerri people of the Kulin nation, would have used for such a word! (Report to follow soon.) Home!

 

*NB: The ancient Greeks used the word oikos to mean something like home and this word became the root for both economy and ecology (as well as all our other usages of “eco”). Another pathway along which we might combine the ways we do things, dissolving another dualism along the path to a resacralised world: an economy that truly takes care of its home, the earth, and all of its ecological diversity.

Cacao Ritual – is chocolate sacred?

Chocolate. We all love it. But is this another case of modern society simply farming the land, ripping off the locals, spraying alarming amounts of pesticides around and reaping the profits? If chocolate is so great, is there some kind of super ingredient in it, a chemical that makes us feel love or power, a natural kind of magic that deserves a bit more respect than we grant when ripping off the wrapper to another bar of our favourite variety?

The cacao ritual altar

I love the move towards more organic, raw, whole foods as well as fair trade. These shifts in consumer sentiment reveal a deepening awareness of and care about the source of our foods and this shows more respect for the earth – a shift that underpins a lot of what White Fella Dreaming is all about. But the next step – the thing that brings us back in line with the source at another level, that hums with the sacred and fills life with meaning – is to perform ritual.

The chocolate being dispensed

Ritual can be very simple and brief, a silent giving of thanks or a bow, or it can be complex and lengthy, as in many initiation rites. It can help facilitate transformation, from one time of life to another, from everyday to sacred space, from one state of mind (such as so-called ‘ordinary consciousness’) to … something more. A type of awareness that appreciates more of the different levels or dimensions of a thing, or a time, or a feeling. So, yeah, I participated in a cacao ritual.

Asher and Lydia

Facilitated by Asher Glass and Lydia Marolda, the group imbibed a batch of cacao imported from Guatemala specifically for this purpose. Inspired by his meeting with Keith Wilson, when travelling in Central America, Asher has begun bringing this same amount of respect for the active ingredient in chocolate – and for the place it is from, the people who farm it locally there, the process that goes into transforming it into an edible delicacy for us western consumers – to Melbourne. After discussing how we could allow the cacao, under these conditions of conscious intent, to help unfurl the body’s prayer, we danced. What’s the body’s prayer? Whatever it is for you. Mine, when offered to the group as we all did, was to more deeply embody the sacred mysteries. Yours could be whatever arises – yes, you can try this at home!

Getting down for chocolate!

The dance session was facilitated in the same style as the Dancing Freedom events that Lydia runs. We dance as if we are earth, which we are; water, air, fire … we dance in the elements and celebrate life. The wind-down included some feedback from each participant following their experiences and their body’s response to the unfurling of its prayer through the ritual. For myself, I felt the usual reawakening of spirit I get from successful ritual; no surprises there, after the vehicle of ritual opened me up to a wild dance with conscious intent.

Meditating on & sharing the experience

Finally, though, I just have to add: how easy would it be to dismiss this as a laughable new age fad, without some context. Chocolate shamanism, pfff. If I hadn’t shared so many of these kinds of experiences over the years, I might be part of that dismissive crowd. The intellectual field of academic thought and research, for sure, works hard to protect itself from seemingly irrational challenges much of the time. I know, I have spent years in that game. But what that perspective misses is what I had to go outside and look for – or rather, remind myself I always had – direct relationship with the sacred behind all things. To keep that alive, I’m prepared to consider rituals that resacralise any aspect of modern life; especially when such practices also align with the values of environmental justice I support as part of the ecospirituality movement. So enjoy your next taste of chocolate – in the best possible way!

All photos by author. Asher and Lydia are intending to hold this event monthly and the original invitation can be found here.

Practicing Embodied Spirituality

After introducing the idea of Embodied Spirituality recently, i promised to begin to ground it in some actual ideas about how such a thing could be practiced and experienced. When it comes to actually finding a way to experience transcendence while still firmly in the body, I have previously mentioned breath meditation. You can find my introduction to Zen here, if you are interested; it isn’t limited to that particular practice, although that is what I wrote it for (as a member of the Melbourne Zen Group). It’s just a set of simple instructions to help get you sitting right for a meditation practice in general (the stuff on posture and the point of meditation will probably seem most helpful).

 

Part of what I think is important about any experiential awareness exercise – this includes mindfulness, which I may discuss in more detail some other time – is what I call ‘synching in.’ I like the play on words, because using this term reminds me that I am both sinking in to the body and to its intuitive awareness of the world around me right now, and I am getting in synch with that world. When I get this flow right – breathing just so, nothing forced, allowing myself to become more deeply aware of being here and all the subtle sensations that often go unnoticed during everyday life – I can also pick up on other dimensions of my experience.

 

In this way I can experience immanence, which as I wrote earlier is a more ecospiritually attuned form of transcendence. I’m not looking up or out to some external agency that I hope may help or even save me. I’m looking in, for resources that may enable my abilities to dissolve challenging circumstances – and this means I am often looking through myself, to the more-than-human forces that are active behind the façade of persona or the toolbox of ego. To get to this place means I have to get to know my mental patterns and habits fairly well, so that I can catch the little games I play that maintain my identification with more ordinary states of consciousness, and move on from them when they limit my awareness of deeper levels of self.

 

Because I need to attend to such habits, this practice is not always pleasant or easy; and it does not always lead to a feeling of freedom, overcoming or transcendence of worldly limit at all (in fact far from it). Sometimes I may end up crying myself to sleep and needing to let myself be sad (aka depressed) for a while. Telling someone that cares about me often helps at this point, although I am usually more inclined to simply wait it out; not because of some over-imagined sense of independence or fear of burdening others, but because I find such times so close to who I am that I sometimes find I can even cherish them once they have passed. And at other times, this kind of subtle attention to the endless realms accessible through going within leads to the discovery, reconnection and/or building of relationships with guides, guardians and allies that I meet in dreams or these kind of meditation experiences. Such relationships can be ritualised so that these powers can be called upon – silently, not always consciously – as we go about everyday life. Either way, I get to deepen my relationship to other dimensions of the self, whether that seems personal or more-than-personal/transpersonal/archetypal/ sacred or other.

 

Part of what can help at these times is the memory that in many traditions, especially native wisdoms of those who live in close relationship with the rest of nature, all life sings. As such, even when parts of the self are in conflict, each part belongs, or finds a home, within the extended psyche. Myth relates powerful stories about such relationships, through conflict and diversity and harmony and transcendence, as a set of models we can use to experiment with transformation. The kind of transformation I am most interested in developing on behalf of White Fella Dreaming is from the limited story of self we are conditioned to accept by modern consumer society to the deeper sense of self we can discover and support that works in alignment with Earth Wisdom and Celestial Intelligence.

Images 1, 3 and 4 purchased from Shutterstock. Image 2 is my photo of the passageway leading in to the central chamber deep in the heart of the magnificent mounded dome at Knowth in Ireland, certainly one of the most impressive megalithic sites in the world.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

It’s not just about the birth of Christ and recognising that spiritual generosity, compassion and irrational, beautiful love should guide the way we live. It’s also about the solstice. Like churches built on old pagan sites, most seasonal festivals we know today originally replaced events on the annual calendar that celebrated the turning of the natural cycles. Around December 21 every year in the northern hemisphere, the sun hits the lowest point on the horizon and this means the shortest day of the year. Downunder, here in Australia, this is reversed; but the same cycles operate (obviously life at the equator presents a whole different scenario! Generally, i will take any opportunity to reflect upon inner riches, even if it is summer here!). But think back to the early Europeans, who are my generic and cultural forebears. Winter is closing in, the leaves have fallen from the trees, we’ve eaten all the berries, many animals are hunkered down in dens and lairs to hibernate … life is retreating.

There is less to eat, less sun to draw us out into the day, more reason to rug up ourselves and hope to survive the coming of a cold, dark period. What I would like, under these conditions, is to remember that everything comes back; that life returns after this symbolic death; that the sun awakens from its slumber, shakes the hoary frost from its shoulders, and beyond its all back to life. And now that I am reminded that we are all in this together, that in order to survive we need people to gather and store, some top stitch up rugs and cloaks, some to nurture little children, some to keep the fire going, some to sing and tell stories … I want to be reminded life goes on in company. I want the tribe to come together, to celebrate this important moment in the year with my kin, to forgive the ones that have annoyed me and to have them get over my own dumb transgressions. Not only because we need each other – which we do, and may do again soon, as the ecological crisis decreases the capacity for industrial society to cater for our every need – but because I need to be able to draw on everything within me to come through this physical challenge.

And just as importantly, because I can now take this opportunity to do as nature does – to go within, to purify my heart and soul and therefore to breathe more fully again when spring finally arrives, to stretch my arms and legs and move in the world in the fulness of my strength as soon as i get the chance again, to feel liberated in my body and mind, to be free of spirit. When there is so much death and withdrawal in the outside world, it is time to follow suit. Let yourself lose the external sun, for a while, and remember to draw on the powers within. The winter solstice presents us with real challenges and metaphorical possibilities at the same time. And when we give ourselves over to the full story of the inner world, the parallel life we lead in our heats and minds and bodies and souls, we come to know it as just as real as the physical world. These are the kinds of lessons we have too often put aside with the modern world; forgetting to learn from nature, we forget also our deepest inner worlds, our greatest spiritual treasures. Ironically, getting back in touch with the natural world can also lead us directly back to our souls, our depths, the greater realities of the more than human world, the archetypal realms, the gods within and without.
This Christmas, dive in to the ancient truth of your body. Let the solstice remind you of your beautiful spiritual greatness and give freely of this wealth. Blessings be upon all those who align with earth wisdom and celestial intelligence.

Images: 1. “Weihnachtsbaum Römerberg” by Thomas Wolf (Der Wolf im Wald) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weihnachtsbaum_R%C3%B6merberg.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Weihnachtsbaum_R%C3%B6merberg.jpg 2. By Goldmann Jo, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 3. Russian Bear coming out of winter den. By Photochrom Print Collection [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 4. By Emilio del Prado from Valladolid, Spain, España (Acebo – European Holly) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

So what’s it all about then?

 

 

I guess i’d better define my terms and honour the inspirations behind this blog site, before i go much further.

‘White Fella’ is a a term used for ‘new Australians’ by Black Fellas, which is what many Australian Aboriginal people proudly call themselves. You’ll note there’s no gender distinction; it’s a bit like the old fashioned term ‘man’ as used for all humanity. As a matter of fact, great and influential Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner’s collection of essays was titled White Man Got no Dreaming, which was a wry comment on the comparative poverty of our connection to the land (or ‘country,’ which has a very definite connotation of a place filled with living resonance and relationships amongst kin, both human and more than human). The idea that we have no Dreaming applies in some way to all modern people who are removed from that kind of kinship identification with the earth that sustains them – and sadly this means even those living right where their ancient forebears lived, if they have lost that connection.

Therefore white fella doesn’t necessarily connote Caucasians, or those of British descent, or western Europeans on the continent or displaced … it just means those who are not living (or who are now beginning to live) in deep connection to the land upon which they live. But for me, as a white fella, it can also mean that, because we live in a westernized world, a Hindu or Chinese wearing jeans and t-shirt, any shopper anywhere out for a dose of retail therapy, all those speaking and reading English and using this kind of technology – the kind I’m composing on and we are using to communicate with – we are all implicated in white fella ways.

 

The train – it seems such a symbol of western technology, following inflexible straight lines mechanically to the next trading post.

 

It could have been different, but the combustible steam engine was invented in England, where there also happened to be a steady supply of local coal and a competitive market … and bingo. Now us ‘new worlders’ are a long way from our ancestral lands and we have a lot to learn. But how many modern people anywhere today are really in touch with the traditions that link them to the sacred, to earth wisdom, to celestial intelligence? How many Europeans still living in the same ‘hood where their ancestors lived, breathed and worshipped still ceremonially link themselves to their indigenous soul, follow rites to embody an animistic conception of the sacred, regularly get in touch with the pulse of the land and rivers and seas and trees and birds and animals around them, as well as to the stars above? In my PhD i traced this loss to the rise of large scale settlement civilisations – basically, the same story being told by many ecocritics, that the agricultural revolution changed our relationship to ‘resources’ such that soil and fresh water were now thought of as the basis for farming, trees became known for timber, the discovery of metals leading to open cut mines and so on. While we need to re-know ourselves as nature, we also need to redefine what we are prepared to accept as culture; and enjoying mutually sustaining relationships with the land and its other creatures is part of the redefinition project that i like. White fella dreaming draws from ancient traditions, but in a way that is true to self. A black fella once said to me, you’ve got to get your own dreaming back. This is my report, my thanks, my path back to the earth and the stars.

 

A billabong amongst the Henty Dunes, Tasmania

 

‘Dreaming’ is a term to help cover all these possibilities. Thinking up new ways, having vision and making that real, creating, or divining, or perceiving other worlds, whether asleep or awake; experiencing otherwise hidden realms behind or within this one/these dimensions, bringing forth and holding true what we find sacred anywhere (in the mind, heart, body or world), getting in touch with the creative force of the universe and staying there (thanks to Joseph Campbell on that one), finding responsive ways to mediate conflict or to evolve towards a higher synthesis of complexity beyond seeming oppositions … recognizing the underworld journey we all take beneath the veneer of this ‘ordinary’ reality every day; becoming something fresh and new, emerging transformed from the night, waking up to new realities where utopian potential hasn’t been erased or edited yet, where cyber codes rain down from the stars, where breath rises up through us from deep within the earth and from the rivers and the salt water and the sand dunes, where we give thanks to the trees and welcome kinship with the other creatures and live more free of unworthy concerns.

 

 

White Fella Dreaming is a lot like all the ancient stories from everywhere but in new forms. Respect for the ancestors (that story coming soon), experience of the immediate sensory aspect of timelessness, embodiment of the unlimited spark, grounding of all that is and was and ever will be in self-aware primate bodies … breathe it in and let go into the Dreaming. All the time.

White Fella Dreaming

 We thought we were making something beautiful.

Some more than others. The slaves always grumbled. The elite always won. The cities grew. The light shone out of the windows.

What were we chasing? That light. The way it made us feel. Filled with love, power, ecstasy. Overcoming. Transcendence.

But to make this all happen, we had to tap nature. Tap it, transform it, bank it, roll it up and smoke it.

And somehow we convinced ourselves we were going to get away with this.

 

Next come the lightning storms.

And we remember we need to find those things we always wanted – lover, power, ecstasy, overcoming, transcendence – here at home, on earth; without breaking the bank.

We might have already broken the bank – we’ve poisoned the soil, acidified the oceans, razed the forests, choked the skies – but we are still going to try and find those old things, those drives that rise spontaneously from within and without. So now we need to try and find them in a new way. While we still can.

With more of a feeling of being at home, here, without needing more stuff. Singing the song of the land and of the sea, of the fresh water and air and soil, with all the other creatures and the ancestors and the blood in our veins and the electricity of our thoughts and nervous system endings and the breath of life coming through us all the time like it always did.

And hopefully will keep coming.