Travelling With Grace

The Mantis Goddess

2011-05-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

On a mild Autumn Saturday afternoon, she made a jagged flight into our garden, and headed straight for my boots. I moved my feet, and she climbed up the smooth leg of my chair with some difficulty but an impressive determination...

We moved her to the safety of the flower-bed, but she was on an intriguing mission, and she wasn't that interested in safety. It is possible that Autumn is breeding time for the Mantis in our part of the world.

She is a queen, and a fine poseur...

She was not shy. She leapt onto the lens of my camera, a few times!...

Eventually, she made her way across the lawn to an ancient cypress tree, and climbed up it until we lost sight of her. A beautiful creature with a powerful energy.

In southern Africa, the indigenous Khoi and San people regarded the Mantis as a god...

Life goes on

2011-04-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

Perhaps Life's greatest quality
is its relentlessness

Life doesn't need me and it doesn't need you

A plant or an ant, will do

I like this toughness
I don't actually care that I am superfluous

I always hope that Life wins

I also always hope though,

that as a species, we might make the choices
that support winning side
because
Life is beautiful

Riding the Waves

2010-11-10T14:00:00.000-08:00

There are times when I feel overwhelmed by the scale and pace of the destruction of Life on Earth. I get into the grip of that "too little too late" fear, and with the despair comes a deep weariness of spirit. During those times I don't want to learn anything else about the problems; I don't want to hear about another ecological disaster or ongoing struggle; I don't even want to know about another 'bright green' solution that is ever so bright but still not BIG enough to actually change things...

During those times, all I want to do is curl up inside the beauty of the world, and let it be all that is... just for a little while...

Safe for a moment. And then, I can recognise that the despair is a reason for apathy, an excuse for carelessness. Refreshed for a moment. And then, I can acknowledge that my hope for sustainable human existence is a powerful force for creating the long future I want for my child and her children; and my despair is part of the problem! Inspired for a moment. And then, I realise I should be spending more of my time immersed in David Attenborough's TV series than reading the news!

Year of the Tiger

2010-10-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

2010 is the Chinese Year of the Tiger, and also the United Nation's International Year of Biodiversity. While the polar bear is a most arresting poster species of climate change, probably no other animal can fit the same role as well as the tiger when it comes to looming mass extinction and our ongoing loss of the Earth's biodiversity. Despite years of conservation funding, all sorts of legal protections and masses of blood, sweat and tears from dedicated human champions, tigers are still worse off in 2010 than they have ever been.

The animal most widely regarded by humans as the most beautiful of all, endlessly evocative to poets and artists, and the epitome of wildness to many nature-lovers, remains precariously confined, in the smallest of numbers, to pitiful, isolated slivers of land; as vulnerable as ever to death by poaching humans, mostly for consumption for completely superstitious or egocentric reasons.

How can this be?

In the days before I gave birth to my child, a friend came by with a pile of books she had cleared out. Amongst them was Ruth Padel's Tigers in Red Weather. I pounced on it. Here was a celebrated British poet and great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin writing of her travels through tigerlands in 2005. It was irresistible, and after my daughter was born I ignored the wisdom 'to sleep when baby sleeps', and instead lay with sleeping child in my arms as I consumed the book. While I relished the quality of the writing so much, the dismal plight of tigers hit home very hard; extra cutting when you have just brought a new life into the world.

What is happening to this world?

190 countries have just reached agreement in Nagoya, Japan on 20 goals to minimise mass extinction in the next 10 years. This includes increasing the amount of protected land from 12.5% to 17%. The area of protected ocean will increase from 1% to 10%. This is being heralded as a landmark agreement. Every gain, no matter how paltry is a gain. Yes.

Of course, what justifies the decimation of wildlands and the extinction of species is always "human interest". We've got to look after business first; then people, then tigers, then habitats, then eco-systems, then the Planet. We're still way short of the acknowledgement that all human interest is irrevocably embedded in Nature. There is no business on Earth without the eco-system services that sustain life. We need biology because we are biology. How much do we need to lose before we understand this? When do we look to our precious children and say it is not okay to bequeath this world of loss to them?

There are probably no more than 3000 wild tigers alive today.

At the top of their particular food chain, tigers are a measure of the health of our eco-systems. As their viable populations collapse, so millions of other species are vulnerable to collapse too.

Read more: Convention on Biological Diversity http://www.cbd.int/2010/welcome/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8098540/Landmark-UN-Nagoya-biodiversity-deal-agreed-to-save-natural-world.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/opinion/21iht-edlovejoy.html?_r=1

Blog Action Day 2010

2010-10-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

The theme for Blog Action Day 2010 is water. The problems are so vast and varied, it seems the world over, wherever there is water, we're wasting it, polluting it and killing off all life in it. In comparison, the solutions being implemented seem so very small and limited. For example, it is a good idea for individuals to choose not to buy bottled water; but what would be revolutionary is if the beverage companies all committed to never bottling water again! That kind of sweeping change in consciousness would feel like the kind of triumph we are sorely missing at the moment. However, in commemoration of Blog Action Day, I don't want to be a harbinger of doom. So I am remembering this wisdom from Tom Robbins, and applying it to the waters of the world:

This is not a quote but an accurate paraphase of the gist of the message:
If you look at the world through one eye and see everything that is wrong; look at it then and vow to live in such a way that you change what is wrong. If you look at the world through the other eye and see the beautiful fields stretching to the majestic mountains against the backdrop of a glorious sky, know that the world is also perfect. Then open both eyes and hold these two ideas of the world in your mind's eye in perfect, dynamic balance. For if you see only out of the first eye, you will be a contributor to the darkness of the world; and if you look only out of the other eye, you will be vapid and ineffectual.

Water is in trouble and needs as much good action from us that it can get. Water is also beautiful and stupendous, glorious and life-giving, awesome and unfathomable. It will, of course, survive us; but I hope it won't have to.

Living Wall for World Food Day

2010-10-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

This is not one of my photographs - copyright Woolies

http://www.woolworthslivingwall.co.za/

Happy to admit my bias - I wrote the copy for this campaign. I love it. It is a wonderful virtual rendition of a permaculture design for vertical food gardening. Just a few clicks and you plant a strawberry, spinach, basil or tomato seedling on the virtual wall. For every seedling 'planted' the Woolworths Trust donates a real-life plant to an under-resourced school with a permaculture food garden. It makes a difference to food security in South Africa. Even if you don't like getting your hands dirty, you can still plant!
The 2010 theme for the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organisation's World Food Day is United Against Hunger. Plant to grow something different from food shortages and rising food prices; and the unrest it begets. It's free and fast and fun...

Spring Antidote to Indifference

2010-10-07T03:51:00.000-07:00

2010 SA Blog Awards has been great

2010-09-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Travelling With Grace was nominated in the Top 10 of 2010 SA Blog Awards Old Mutual Best Green category. Thank you to everyone who made nominations and voted. This has been my space to find my voice for the Travelling With Grace book project, so I have approached my blog like an author-in-training rather than a traditional blogger. It has been very inspiring that Travelling With Grace has been recognised by the SA Blog Awards, and I am grateful for the opportunity to think more expansively about the value of the blog.

Well done to http://www.urbansprout.co.za/ and http://www.sprig.co.za/ for making it into the final two. These are great blogs. Another finalist that is very well worth checking out is Project 90 by2030 http://www.90x2030.org.za/ . I also find a lot of value and heart at http://www.mothercityliving.co.za/ .

Thanks to SA Blog Awards and its sponsors for providing the opportunity.

The Urban Foodshed

2010-09-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

'Bright Lights' Swiss Chard

It is Spring in the southern hemisphere and like most home food gardeners, I have been busy sowing and planting the summer crops. The news that the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has called an emergency meeting to discuss another looming food crisis has given a certain edge to what is usually a peacful and satisfying pastime. Once again, global food prices are soaring, with wheat, oil-seed, sugar and meat all at unprecedented premiums. Riots, that resulted in the deaths of seven people and scores of injured others, broke out in neighbouring Mozambique this week as the government tried to hike up bread prices by 30%.

Fava Bean flowers

The food price surges are the result of an ever-increasing demand and a critical shortage of supply. Weather has made a big impact on the poor harvests of the northern hemisphere. It was an unusually hot Summer over much of Europe and Asia bringing drought and wildfires. There has been unusually wet weather across Canada, and of course, the catastrophic floods in Pakistan. But, of course, the problem goes a lot deeper than the weather- a resilient food system can withstand such shocks. The bigger picture is that the global food system is far from strong and hardy; it is patently unsustainable and the need for transformation is urgent.

Garden Pea

One of the 'bright green' ideas to facilitate this transformation is the urban foodshed. The term seems to have first been coined by W C Hedden in the 1929 book "How Great Cities Are Fed". It is analogous to a watershed, referring to the geographic areas that feed the urban population centres. Mapping the urban foodshed enables a city to answer the questions - Where is our food coming? And, how best can we enhance and protect our food system? The urban foodshed is also being increasingly used as a framework to envision local and sustainable city food systems as the antidote to global and unsustainable ones.

Strawberry flower

Many international cities on the road to sustainability have strategies in place to to enable and strengthen local and regional food systems. A local urban foodshed is often defined as being within 100 kilometres of city and the regional urban foodshed within 300 kilometres. Common 2020 international goals are to have at least 25% of the food consumed in city coming from the local foodshed; and 65% from the regional foodshed (which encompasses the local foodshed). The advantages of a local and sustainable urban foodshed are not least, lower food prices, local supply and reduced carbon footprint.

Rosa Tomatoes

Growing some of our own food is an action that just about everyone can take, and many individuals are nowadays inspired to get their hands dirty. City food gardening is blooming all over the world, and not just in the suburban backyard. Urban community gardening projects abound, and city-dwellers are also growing fruit, vegetables and herbs on balconies, decks, rooftops and walls. There's a growing awareness that the city landscape can, and should be edible. Urban food gardening is no longer regarded as a hobby for the green-fingered; but for the green-minded, it is a lifestyle strategy for food security, health and sustainability.

Here you will find a useful paper, "Foodshed Analysis and its relevance to Sustainability" by CJ Peters et al 2008
http://www.greentechboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Peters_FoodshedAnalysis_2009.pdf

Who Needs the Healing?

2010-08-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

UNTAMED is a year-long, living exhibition at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Cape Town that combines art, plants, poetry, sustainable architecture and a solar panel. It's a poignant, pressing statement designed provoke individual consciousness about our relationships to Nature.

The spiraling, solar-powered, naturally-lit pavilion has been designed by Enrico Daffonchio. The living wall comprised of re-fashioned plastic cold-drink bottles filled with indigenous ground covers was planted by the Kirstenbosch horticulturalists.

The sculptures are by Dylan Lewis, renowned for his animal works in bronze. Here he explores humanity's balance with Nature in a way that evokes a lost wildness, and a lost serenity. The words are by Ian McCallum, poet and psychiatrist, wilderness guide and psychological analyist probably best known for his book, Ecological Intelligence.

I rushed through UNTAMED - after an appropriately wild toddler who loved running the spiral and would not be tamed by the conventions of viewing an exhibition. But despite this, words by Ian McCallum jumped out at me: "We need to stop speaking about the Earth being in need of healing. The Earth does not need healing. We do."

Because I feel so urgent about giving Nature the chance for the restoration and renewal of wildness, I often think, speak and write in terms of us 'healing the Earth'. So I really enjoyed the challenge of this statement. It's not a new idea but it is certainly has value in being revived. Mr McCallum's view is that we are pathological in our relationship to Nature. He echoes American monk, 'Earth scholar' and Deep Ecology advocate Thomas Berry who described humanity in relation to Nature as being autistic for centuries.

What they, and many other sustainable living activists, are saying is that we won't get sustainability right without addressing the fundamental problems in the way we see and relate to Nature. While we exist in a paradigm that disregards and attempts to dominate Nature; while we find the most value in Nature in terms of what we can extract from it, instead of learn about it; we will remain in opposition to the force that gives us life - eco-illiterate, pathological, unresponsive - doomed. The challenge of awakening to respect, love, appreciation, even reverence for Life - ours and all others, is an individual one.

Gardening for Resilience

2010-07-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

We have such a deeply ingrained urge to cultivate. Maybe one day they'll find a genome for it! The second last chapter of Stewart Brand's book, Whole Earth Discipline, is called: "It's All Gardening". He writes: "Ecosystem engineering is an ancient art, practiced and malpracticed by every human society since the mastery of fire. We would be fools to repeat their mistakes and just as foolish to ignore some of the brilliant practices that worked for them."

How should we be gardening today?

We are facing unprecedented challenges. The ways we choose to garden will have an impact on our resilience in the face of climate change. We should be gardening for biodiversity, for local and sustainable food, for sustainable water and for zero waste. Here's an example of a folly in my home city, Cape Town:

- a rose garden in the showpiece Company Gardens - Why? It even gets a mention on the city's "green map". Why? The Cape Town city and environs is blessed to be home to one of the unique floral kingdoms of the world. The smallest floral kingdom in the world in terms of space but the second most diverse in terms of species - and that's second only to the Amazonian floral kingdom that spans multiple countries and continents. Why aren't we proudly growing our native flora in our showpiece urban garden? Why are we growing roses?

It's time - let's grow for food and biodiversity. Let us plant native plants and restore our biodiversity. Let us plant for food and create an urban foodshed. Let us get off the train at the new revamped Cape Town station and pick a banana or an orange on the way to work. Let us plant an Erica or Buchu on our balcony and feed a butterfly and a bee.

Let the landscapers give up on the hungry lawns and sterile exotic palms. Let us create food-rich, nature-rich local environments that make us strong.

Nature Play

2010-06-21T01:30:00.001-07:00

Today's parents are beset by anxieties about providing our children with the 'right' development opportunities that will prepare them for "success". The current children of the developed world are the most over-regulated, over-organised, busiest children in human history - and some would argue, also the most limited. The greatest of these limitations is not being able to roam freely in Nature. Fear for children's safety and dwindling Nature are just two of the reasons why children of today spend far less unsupervised time outdoors than their parents did. The commercialisation of childhood is another major factor. Indoor play areas have become big business in the same way that video and TV products evermore replace a child's primary experience of the world.

In his influential book, 'Last Child in the Woods', Richard Loev proposes that in fact enabling our children to play freely in Nature every day, come rain or shine, is one of the greatest things we can do to prepare them for fulfilling adult lives. He presents a vast array of studies that indicate that unstructured Nature play impacts positively on physical, cognitive and emotional development. For instance, a comparative study of pre-schoolers in Norway and Sweden showed that children in a 'green' playschool who spent most of their school time rambling outside in a natural setting had significantly better physical prowess than their counterparts who were engaged in some organised physical activity on a level playground. The Nature children, who ran and tumbled over uneven ground, climbed trees, waded in water and built forts in long grass had better muscle tone and strength, greater balance and co-ordination skills.

Physical development may be the most obvious benefit. However, Nature play is also increasingly being used with promising results as either an alternative or supplementary therapy for children diagnosed with ADHD. Parents involved in these studies report both the immediate calming affect of Nature on their children and an increased capacity to focus after Nature experiences. In a world with an increasing demand for innovation, it may also trigger the ambitions of some parents to know that studies show that children who play often in Nature show markedly greater capacities for quality creativity.

Scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson uses his "biophilia" hypothesis to argue that humans have a biological need to "affiliate with other forms of life" - that is, a physical connection to the natural world is fundamental to our individual development.

Leap for Sustainability

2010-06-14T02:50:00.001-07:00

Bright Green thinker and writer, Alex Steffen of http://www.worldchanging.com has long maintained that we cannot achieve sustainability by taking little steps. He also warns that focusing on small, simple changes can dangerously distract us from taking the necessary big leaps that the complexity of our world demands. Instead Mr Steffen urges us constantly towards consciousness of the whole system in which we are embedded, as well as high level actions on political and personal levels.

In this article, How to Really Green Your Home, Deep Down

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/011094.html you can watch Catherine Mohr's entertaining and smart TED talk of how she grappled with her ecological impact when she was building a new home. Its provides great insights into embodied energy and water, and shows how to take them into account.

For many of us, our homes represent the largest systems that we have control over, and they are therefore the most significant places where we can make an impact on sustainability. It is important to fully understand our homes in terms of processes, networks and relationships. Bits and pieces of green technologies and some 'simple' actions won't make the difference that is possible with a whole-systems understanding and approach.

Changes

2010-05-31T11:22:00.001-07:00

I love books that change me. Reading Stewart Brand's 'Whole Earth Discipline' did that last week, and I feel invigorated. I love the way this man thinks, and how brilliantly he writes about his intelligent ideas. Once founder and editor of the famed 'Whole Earth Catalogues', Stewart Brand is also largely credited with planting the seeds of the USA environmental movement of the 70's through his button campaign demanding to see NASA's pictures of the Earth after the 1969 moon mission. For me, he has always been a person to watch. He has a knack of being on the button.

Many serious environmentalists and Earth-Lovers felt a range of negative emotions, from disappointment to fury, when about five years ago, Stewart Brand wrote articles and gave interviews that seemed to champion the very 'Evils' that 'green' activists have long rallied against. Very controversially, he started to say that urbanisation is good, cities are green and world population is mostly likely to decline, not explode. Even worse, he started to say nuclear power is green and that genetic engineering offers valuable technologies for a greener world. Brand transformed himself unapologetically, from Saviour to Judas. I admire his bravery in much the same way as I relished Bob Dylan going electric.

Still, I wasn't sure I wanted to read 'Whole Earth Discipline' when I first saw the reviews, but I am delighted that I did. It is not that I have been fully convinced by Stewart Brand's new arguments about what's 'green'. It is that he reminded me to think for myself and to freely change my mind when appropriate, when times change, when there's new information and new ways.

There's a crucial aim at stake: to sustain human civilisation on Earth. For a long future, for our children and their future generations; that means sustaining the ecosystems and species that sustain us as well. We go hand in hand, and we all need substantial change, right now.

We're stuck in old ways. We don't understand today's science. We're romantic when we need to be pragmatic. We're not visionary enough. We're anti-intellectual. We fight before we listen and understand. We're pessimistic, and we don't trust. We hold onto the old; scared to change our minds and be different in case we lose some kind of credibility. Sometimes, because of this, we may stand in the way of what might help us. That has to change fast. We have to change. Fast. Climate change is already here.

Happy Earth Day!

2010-04-22T04:44:00.000-07:00

The Song

The song of the small bird was a dream of a world inside me.
Sweet, clear notes drew attention to the vastness of possibilities
I could inhabit.
Each possibility had its own skin and they could all fit me perfectly.
I was free to choose, to try on, to go out,
to come back and to change…

The song of the small bird could be heard through
the branches and leaves of very big, very old trees.
It had a purity that could be heard best by the heart.
It told of a place of peace and quiet,
a home of blessed, wordless stillness,
a temple of knowing and being full of Oneself,
without any limitations at all…

From the song came bones from the sky and hair on the water.
There was blood in the veins of the leaves of grass
and under the bark of the living forest.
Mushrooms loved the song.
Flowers mimicked its sweetness and offered it up in nectar
to the brown velvet butterflies that came to sip.
I could breathe in the song; smooth and fine.
Soon, all of us in the garden came to be the song
in different and wonderful ways.
All the same, our molecules could now dance and sing
a new way of being that was abundant and hopeful,
and very satisfying.

I love this message from Earth Charter International:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnGcf0mRZ98

It starts with One... Transform yourself...

The Old Oak and The Kingdom of Mushroom

2010-02-14T13:10:00.000-08:00

The Biomimic's Worldview

2010-01-28T00:46:00.000-08:00

Described as both a science and an art, the field of Biomimicry offers much more than practices and processes for the innovation of a sustainable global human community. The shift to relating to Nature as our Model, Mentor and Measure offers us something we really need right now - the choice of a new, sane and hopeful worldview.

Biomimics are changing the way we do things by asking questions about how Nature does things, and then emulating the genius of Life's designs. It's hard to argue with the rationale - Life has 3.8 billion years of experience of sorting out what works and what doesn't, what lasts and what doesn't.

In contrast, the human species has had much less than even one blip's worth of experience in finding sustainable solutions to Life's challenges on Earth. The human 'genius' that we've become so enamoured with is ridiculous in comparison. In the face of a teeming mass of sustainability problems, we might well find that investing our energies in the myriad of well-proven, long-term solutions offered by Nature is a chance to make the first monumental display of our actual intelligence.

As we learn of more and more ways that Biomimicry is being used to develop new, sustainable human products, processes and systems, we are also gaining insight into the Biomimic's worldview. It is a substantial shift from the stress and pessimism of delusion into the calm, optimism of reality. It provides us with a new story of ourselves and our place in the Community of Life on Earth.

With Nature in the respected role of Model, Mentor and Measure we align ourselves with the truth that we are but one, short-lived species amongst multi-millions, over billions of years. It calls on us to reassess our fond perceptions of our "success" as a species. It gives us another perspective on the attitude that just because, for a nanosecond in the history of Life on Earth, we colonized just about everywhere and held the fate of so many other species in our hands, that we are extraordinarily powerful. Extraordinarily stupid might be closer to the mark!

At this point, all our technological genius has failed to make us independent of arable soil, fresh water and clean air. In fact, our technologies have increased our dependence on Earth by fostering addictions to other non-renewable, finite resources such as oil; all the while severely depleting and degrading the stocks of land, water and air. We are as deeply embedded in the biosphere as we have ever been. Like any other species, if we push past Nature's limits we will fail.

In an illuminating conversation with founder of the Biomimicry Institute, Janine Benyus, which can be found here http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/about-us/what-do-you-mean-by-the-term-biomimicry.html - she talks about the need for our species to evolve from a pioneering, weed-like niche to filling the ecological role of a mature, hardwood forest. Key to this will be our capacity to respectfully adhere to Life's Principles in everything that we do from now on.

Eco-literacy underpins our success in creating a sustainable world. We have to understand how Life works before we can know our limits. When we live within Nature's limits we will shift harmoniously into optimising our eco-system by being a participant in creating conditions conducive to more Life. Biomimicry invites us as individuals to get out into Nature, to start learning, and be inspired...

Find out more about Biomimicry at:
http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/
http://www.asknature.org/

Read: Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus

Beauty

2010-01-16T11:13:00.000-08:00

Let Beauty speak for itself

Let your love of Beauty

be absolutely innocent and silent

Let your awe

be a strong, honest, grave and unknown prayer

for Beauty's own Eternity

For the sake of nothing at all

But Beauty

Our Goose

2010-01-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

Our Goose

On top of the ridge
overlooking the road
From the sheer height
of a stark old pine tree
Against the sharpness
of today’s blue sky

The Egyptian Goose stands alone
on a thick black branch
inelegant
honking for its mate…

In our sheltered valley garden
we can hear it loudly
and know
it’s inevitable
goose shape

On the road
a smash of feathers
and bloody speed

The rising sun
turns the leaves gold
the shell of a Cicada
clings to the Comfrey
as if we could heal Change

Knowing Your Name

2010-01-09T11:48:00.001-08:00

This is a photo of the blossoming of South African tree, Dais cotinifolia, the Pompon tree, in the southern Summer of 2010...

I have been reading Richard Loev's great book, The Last Child in the Woods. He recorded a quote of a child who went on a Nature walk and learnt the names of trees and plants and birds that had always been around him, but he didn't know. The boy said that after learning the names he felt like he had made new friends, for Life...

This ancedote made me smile. For surely, every gardener, bird-watcher, Earth-activist and naturalist has experienced this very same thing. When we know the name of another living thing - something changes for the better, forever...

Our experience of the community of Life expands and enhances with every new friend that we make. Our capacity for knowing names/making friends is infinite -an abundance that could surely banish the loneliness of the world, for Life...

A Good Start

2010-01-01T11:17:00.000-08:00

I never imagined
the possibility
of the passion
of reptiles...

But I saw it -
in its glory
and its ridiculousness...
Funny and sweet,
intense and hopeful...
Rude, uncomfortable,
and powerful...

Really,
not at all different
from us warm-blooded animals...

Just
Life begetting Life...

Thank goodness!

All Systems Thinking

2009-11-22T10:41:00.001-08:00

I love, and often think about that old story to explain systems-thinking - that a butterfly languidly flaps its wings in a hot, tropical Rainforest of South America, setting in motion an energy that ripples across the world and, amongst other things, results in the hat flying sharply off the head of a man on a cold, blustery Oxford Street, London.

Every time, it makes me think about my own smile. If I smile now, and send out a ripple of smiling energy, might a husband in Malawi hug his wife? Might a child in Ethiopia eat a meal? Might a grandmother in India enjoy a belly laugh? Might a girl in Cambodia get a scholarship to finish school?

Who knows the power of my smile?

I remember that every time I love Life - every time I admire a flower, delight at a stick insect, save a worm, plant a tree, stop and acknowledge a squirrel, regard a mushroom as special, feel lucky and excited because I saw a whale - I am sending out a ripple that encourages more Life somewhere on this extraordinary planet, in some extraordinary way.

Love Tiger

2009-11-14T09:18:00.001-08:00

I close my eyes and sink into a green world. Dark and light greens, untouchable greens and the furry greens of mosses under my fingertips. Across my entertainment of leaves and grasses, of vegetable, meteor and verdant seaweed, flashes a powerful amber light – on and off, so that I conjure up a tiger.

As I receive this tiger, my heart starts to hurt instantly, my head rolls images of hunting and desiccated skins, hunger and deforestation, desparate claws and cruel traps. Decimated populations hit like bullets. Disappearing sub-species puncture the lining of my stomach.

Wait...

I want to stop this roll. I do not want to share in the extinction of the Tiger I love.

I am so weary of thinking of great tigers with despair. What I really want is to be unequivocably thrilled to my bone marrow by Tiger. What I really want is for wild tigers to recover, restore and thrive again. What I really want to do is fill each and every wild tiger still holding onto to Life with my great love for them. I want them to feel my gratitude for their against-all-odds existence in their own cells, in their precious DNA.

I want to be a light for the long future of wild tigers.

Now. I just thought that thought. I just filled wild tigers with all my love. Love Tiger.

Maybe a mother tiger just slipped away past a poacher; maybe a conservation officer just won a small battle against urgent villagers, maybe a logging company just turned away from a big, bad deal.

I love the black and amber with its white flashes rippling through the green of my mind. I am grateful. I am love. I am hope. I am Tiger.

Family Nature

2009-11-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

In his U.S.A best-selling book, "Last Child in the Woods", Richard Louv coined the term 'Nature Deficit Disorder' (NDD) and inspired an international movement to reconnect children with Nature. Mr Louv highlighted concerns that resonated intuitively with multitudes of today's parents - that children disconnected from the Natural World are children at risk. The consumerist society takes their children for walks in shopping malls instead of the mountains. It provides passive entertainment with children sitting still, indoors, absorbed on screens - instead of running, climbing, swimming, slipping and sliding outside in woods, streams, meadows and trees. It substitutes 'Animal Planet' for real-life encounters with wild-living birds and beetles, porcupines and caracals. In crucial ways, the child of this consumerist world is a child raised in a special kind of poverty who manifests real and long-lasting symptoms of its disadvantage.

There's an abundance of research that tells us what we know anyway - Nature is good for human beings. We understand and connect to the wild and wordless essence of ourselves when we deeply and truly experience the greater wild and wordless context of our World. There is no possible virtual, technological solution to meet this need. To provide our children with opportunities for this essential part of whole human development, we have to get them outside into the Natural World - often.

It is arguable, that this generation of children needs this more than any other - they are facing unprecedented environmental challenges in their lifetimes. We cannot expect them to grow into adults responsible for sustainable living and sustainable human development if we are raising them in conditions conducive to Nature Deficit Disorder.

It is this realisation that is motivating mothers, fathers, grandparents, neighbours, environmental educationalists, non profit organisations, businesses and governments to organise and support formal and informal groups, clubs, networks and programmes that involve families in Nature walks, hikes, camps, adventures and holidays. Being in Nature, experiencing wild places, observing and connecting with all aspects of the Life around us is increasingly recognised as a vital part of family well-being. It is not something that parents can leave up to schools. As role models, as the nurturers of our children's development, we need to be actively fostering their connection to Nature on a daily basis.

Big picture ideas, support and connections can be found at: Children and Nature Network - http://www.childrenandnature.org/

More about Richard Louv and "Last Child in the Woods" at: http://richardlouv.com/

I love this stunning Cape Town-based initiative: http://www.kidsofnature.org/

The Earth Charter

2009-11-03T07:25:00.000-08:00

I am immersed in The Earth Charter this week - busy conceptualising and writing educational resources, for teachers of ten-year olds, with the Earth Charter as a theme for enhancing sustainability education.

I think that The Earth Charter is an extremely valuable initiative. It is wise, helpful and hopeful. It provides a sound and inspiring ethical framework to guide the transition to sustainable living and sustainable human development. The Charter's great strength is that it both recognises and accommodates the irrevocably interconnected aspects of Life on Earth in its 16 succinct principles. It serves to remind us that social justice, peace and the end of poverty are intertwined with the protection, respect and care of the wilderness, biodiversity and other species that we make use of.

The Earth Charter began as a United Nations project, but was then driven and fully implemented some years later by an independent global civil society initiative - at the urgings of the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev. A decade-long process of the most inclusive and participatory consultation has helped The Earth Charter to gain legitimacy and further its goal of becoming an international 'soft law document' - morally, if not legally binding on its signatories. It has been endorsed by more than 4500 organizations, including governments and international bodies. Because of its status as a 'people's charter', you can as an individual, a family, a school or a community also endorse the Earth Charter, take action and use it as a wise guide to 21st Century living.

The mission of the Earth Charter is:

"... to promote the transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework that includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace."

Read the principles, take them to heart, sign The Earth Charter and be inspired to take action at: http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/

For kids, teachers and parents, there's the Little Earth Charter - the 16 Principles synthesized into 8 communicated through beautiful animations and songs:

http://www.littleanimation4kids.com/LEC_home.html

Sweetening The Place Where You Live

2009-10-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

Many of us feel a huge and hopeless heart wrench at the prospect of wild tigers, polar bears and orang-u-tans disappearing forever - and these are just the "poster-species" for the massive amount of biodiversity we stand to lose in the next 30 to 50 years. It may seem like there is nothing we can do to stop the downward slide to mass extinction - but there is something that every one of us can do.

Nature writer and Biomimicry expert, Janine Benyus calls it "sweetening the place where we live"- what a great line. It reminds us that Nature relentlessly keeps on creating more and more conditions conducive for more and more Life. It's not simply great numbers that sustain Life, but also a wealth of diversity - multitudes of different forms of Life.

Disconnection from the Natural world fosters behaviours such as eradicating the creatures that live around us instead of celebrating them. We grow alien plants instead of indigenous ones. We poison the places where we live instead of sweetening them. We can change this, and when we do, we abandon an artificially imposed sterility and embrace the abundance that is utterly natural.

Love the Life around you. Know it's name. Be proud to foster as much biodversity as you can. It does make a difference. If you live in a city, even in a high-rise apartment, you can still do something to sweeten the place where you live. I recently read about a project encouraging urban-dwellers on the North American butterfly migration route to grow indigenous butterfly food plants not just in their suburban gardens, but on city rooftops, window-sills and balconies with the aim of providing a continuous source of food for the travellers. If you know your place, you can sweeten it so well. It's the kind of small action in the big picture that feels really good.

Anyone can be a champion of biodiversity:

Regard the place where you live as an ecosystem and foster its health and robustness
Grow native plants and trees that can support other native Life
Avoid poisons - if necessary, use only natural pest control strategies until you achieve a self-regulating ecological balance
Strive for your environment to provide as much opportunity as possible for as many different living organisms
Enjoy your abundance

All Species

2009-10-19T07:15:00.001-07:00

No one knows how many species live on Earth. Despite more than 250 years of scientific discovery, identification and classification, no one knows. Estimates range from 10 to 50 million species - but some scientists who study insects propose that there could be 100 million species of insects alone. We have classified less than 2 million species of Life on Earth so far - just the prologue of an extraordinary set of encylopedias - just our toes in the water grasping a ribbon of the extent of the only Life we can be sure of...

This life on Earth represents our only proven companions in the entire Universe...

We are currently living in such a way that half of what lives now, a massive amount of what we don't even know, will be extinct in the next 30 to 50 years. The kind of mass extinction Planet Earth last experienced about 65 million years ago - and this time, our species may well go along for the ride...

The kingpin of the robustness of Life is diversity. Lots and lots of Life forms keep Life happening. Another essential is the size of populations - 3000 tigers on the Planet are not enough, 20 000 Lions are not enough, Honey Bees in Costa Rica but not one in Idaho is not enough...

From the slum-dweller in Mumbai to the CEO in SIlicon Valley - and just about everyone in between, we live our lives as if other Life forms do not matter. It's a terrible, heart-wrenching and absurd way of seeing the world. We are not exempt from Nature. We cannot be. We are Nature, and we depend on everything else that is also Nature.

We depend on clean air, clean water, arable soil, safe food and a temperate climate. For 65 million years, possibly 10 to 50 million species have been providing this stabilty that sustains human lives. No, it hasn't actually been oil, coal or uranium; nor gold or paper money; nor cement or highways or shopping malls; nor celebrities or fluffy toys made in China - none of that makes the world go round for us.

We live because there are eco-systems bursting with biodiversity. We live because there are rainforests and tundras; we live because there are arctic ice sheets and billions of antarctic krill; we live because there are old whales and old elephants and old walruses and old trees. We live because there is an abundance of Life we don't have names for. When half of these species disappear and eco-systems collapse because they are not there - we are in peril, and even more importantly, our precious children are doomed.

We've got to change. http://www.speciesalliance.org/video.php

The Encyclopedia of Life: http://www.eol.org/

Cooling Down the Planet

2009-10-15T00:51:00.000-07:00

Blow...

Yesterday I found a book in my postbox. 'The Fire Dogs of Climate Change - An Inspirational Call to Action' by Sally Andrew, published by Findhorn Press. I had been thinking about what I might write today, Blog Action Day, so when this gift about Climate Change arrived, I read it immediately.

Sally Andrew has written a very personal account of our deep universal concerns, pains and fears - and it is a powerful, intimate, global book. Interweaving autobiographical sketches and fact sheets, Ms Andrew achieves what few writers about Climate Change manage - the meeting of human hearts and minds in the face of the catastrophic end of all Life.

Fire Dogs are all of us across the globe working in myraids of ways to mitigate and adapt to Climate Change, and we are lucky to have Ms Andrew read stories to us. Her courage to open her heart to the pain of the Earth; her succinct offering of practical ways that we can contribute to the caretaking of the ailing Planet; and her insistence that we must be well-educated about the facts makes for a wise and inspiring teaching.

She also does not shy away from the possibility that all the many efforts to restore the Earth may well not be enough. While our intentions are to save, protect, heal and renew, the forces of destruction are massive and we may not be successful. Time might reveal that instead of doing the work of restoration, we are the forerunners committed to the palliative care of an elderly, terminally-ill Earth.

In the face of this devastating prospect, Sally Andrew reminds us why we should persevere:
"...so it should be with the Earth. However, strong or weak she is. However much hope there is or isn't. I can love her, heal her, celebrate and appreciate her. I need to do this not from despair, fear nor shame; but because by doing so I experience my own integrity. Integrity is being true to myself and others, whether I live in a web of damage, or a climate of joy."

The Fire Dogs of Climate Change - Sally Andrew

http://firedogs.findhornpress.com/

http://sallyandrew.findhornpress.com/

Blossom

2009-10-11T04:40:00.001-07:00

Summer Story

starring

Clivia Miniata

On the Other Side

2009-10-05T10:34:00.001-07:00

On the other side of our despair at the state of Life on Earth is empowerment.

In the Work That Reconnects, Joanna Macy teaches that to get there, we have to first acknowledge the truth of the pain we feel for the world.

That pain manifests most commonly as grief, anger, fear, guilt, emptiness and feeling overwhelmed.

We mourn the immense amount of Life lost - individuals, species, ecosystems.
We are outraged by the ideologies and systems, institutions and individuals, actions and motives that have caused all the death and all the waste.
We are terrified for ourselves and for our children as we face the uncertainty that Life itself may not go on.
We experience emptiness all the times when we are numb, witless, collusive and immobile in the face of all the destruction.

Macy calls this "Pain for the World", and she makes 3 important points about it:
1. It is Universal - we all feel it at some or other level of our consciousness. It doesn't matter if we are a peace activist or an arms dealer, each of us is an 'open-system' embedded in Life, utterly interconnected, and so we all feel pain for the world.
2. It is Unprecendented - while our predecessors experienced many hardships and trials of life, they lived with a certainty that Life would always go on. That certainty is lost, and this is the pivotal psychological framework of the times.
3. It is deeply suppressed - as if we fear getting lost in this huge anguish, we tune out our pain for the world, which is a problem because it is this very suppression that renders us powerless and passive.

Finding the ways to truthfully acknowledge and express our pain for the world, preferrably in community with others, is an empowerment process. In our deep sorrow, we reconnect to our great love of the world. In facing our terrors, we find our courage and our capacity to trust. In giving voice to our anger, we allow our passion for justice to bloom. In acknowledging our emptiness, we make space for the new to arise.

In her book, Coming Back To Life, Joanna Macy offers a wise, inspiring and practical guide to understanding our angst, safely owning our pain for the world and moving out of apathy into compassionate action.

In this state, we can be useful, positive contributors to today's all-encompassing revolution - A Great Turning from the doomed global Industrial Growth Society to a Life Sustaining one.

You can learn more at:
http://www.joannamacy.net/
and
http://www.greatturningtimes.org/

Planetary Boundaries

2009-10-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

It's a stressful time on Planet Earth. Uncertain. Challenging. Threatening...

It is also, still, a very beautiful time in a wondrous place...

This week I went to see the BBC feature film, Earth, on the big screen. Incredible cinematography, I am so glad I had the chance to see it in a theatre. In a loose kind of way, the film interweaves three main mother and offspring stories - a polar bear and her twins waking up after the winter hibernation to melting summer ice-sheets; an African Elephant and her calf on their annual Kalahari march to the Okavango in the hope of the flood that may or may not come; and a Humpback Whale and her calf trekking 4000 miles to the southern Ocean where increasing acidity is diminishing the blooming plankton that the whales and many other sea creatures depend on.

In this film, Earth landscapes, waterscapes and creatures are so rich, so alive, and seemingly, so plentiful, that you get caught up in a visual celebration of Natural splendour and abundance that is at odds with the warning narrative.

It is a reminder of today's connundrum - we are well-aware that we live on One Planet with finite "resources" that humans can tap for their growth and development. But, how finite is Earth? How limited are those "resources"?

Interestingly, these quantifying questions have been avoided by scientists and environmentalists, by journalists and politicians until very recently, when Johan Rockström and his colleagues from The Stockholm Resilience Centre ventured to define 9 Planetary Boundaries, and to present actual thresholds for 7 of them. (We have already long over-stepped 3 of these boundaries - which is critical because every boundary, of course, impacts on all the others. So even the 6 boundaries not yet breached, are significantly threatened and weakened.)

The authors offer the 9 Planetary Boundaries because quantifiable limits may well help us to be faster and firmer about finding the ways to carry on the business of being human in a safer space. But, of course, it is going to take a lot to get everyone to agree to what the limits actually are, or should be.

One of Nature's great life-enhancing principles is that it optimises the power of limits. One of human beings' great life-depleting attitudes is that we seem to regard limits as some kind of challenge to overcome so we can carry on doing whatever we like. We'll have to change our minds in order to find our prosperity and well-being within Planetary Boundaries. It means we need to harvest within the carrying capacity of soils and seas; we have to maintain an energy balance - we cannot use more than we add; we must function within a specific and strict range of temperatures conducive to Life.

The 9 Planetary Boundaries are:

climate change
rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine)
interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles
stratospheric ozone depletion
ocean acidification
global freshwater use
change in land use
chemical pollution
and atmospheric aerosol loading

A debate we don't really have time for is just begining. Thoughtful consideration about Planetary Boundaries could shift us into an appreciation of the real power of limits - that is, using them as devices for focus.

http://www.nature.com/ has a great set of articles including the authors' exposition and expert comments, go to: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html

Sustainable Food Gardening - Surviving and Thriving

2009-09-28T05:20:00.001-07:00

There's an ever-increasing realisation that growing our own food in the places where we live, using natural systems farming is a core strategy to survive, and possibly, thrive in the face of challenges such as peak oil and climate change.

The effectiveness of community-based and small-scale sustainable food gardening is probably best demonstrated by Cuba who inadvertently provided the world with a valuable model in the aftermath of its economic collapse in the early 90's. This has been well-documented in the film, "The Power of Community - How Cuba survived Peak Oil".
http://www.communitysolution.org/cuba

When the Soviet Union fell apart, proud and resilient Cuba was almost brought to its knees. The economy collapsed - GDP crashed, oil imports halved and 80% of Cuban import and export markets were lost. Across the country, citizens experienced frequent and enduring black-outs; cars, transportation and farm machinery ground to a halt; factories and industrialised farms shut down; basic services, work, school and universities were constantly disrupted. The greatest threat was looming famine. The people of Cuba were experiencing a politically-induced "Peak Oil Crisis" and the country's response is something we can all learn from.

In the face of chronic food shortages, the Cuban government rapidly implemented a supply programme based on providing the minimum daily calories set by the United Nations. It kept widespread famine at bay for a time, but the programme, under increasing strain due to intensified USA sanctions, was not sufficient or sustainable. Cuba's exemplarly record of child care was now blighted by incidents of malnutrition in children under 5 years old and the births of underweight babies. Cut off from global institutions under USA-influence, there was no one "out there" to turn to for help, drastic action needed to be taken by the Cubans themselves.

One might ask, why a country with such a strong agricultural sector faced such a deep food crisis? The answer is, that Cuba had long embraced large-scale, mechanised agriculture - it practiced the most industrialised farming in all of Latin America and used more chemical fertilisers than the USA. Industrialised agriculture is the major consumer of the world's fossil fuels. Cuba was highly dependent on chemical fertilisers derived from natural gas, oil-based pesticides and diesel fuel to power farm machinery. Without these costly, and now rare inputs, industrial farming faltered, leaving ghosts in the machines and dead soil.

Another contributing factor is that Cuban industrialised farms focused on growing monocultures of tobacco, sugar cane and citrus, mainly for export. Cuba had never met its own food production needs. More than half of staple foods, such as rice and vegetable oils for cooking had always had to be imported.

Cubans had no option but to look to the antithesis of industrial farming - sustainable, natural-systems, organic methods of food production. In high-density Havana, there was an ad hoc citizen response inspired by desperation. Lawyers and doctors, engineers and artists, students and the elderly were suddenly food gardening by trial and error. Neighbours got together to clean up disused lots, to plant and tend vegetables. Families planted pot, patio and roof food gardens. Kiosks selling fresh produce started to spring up on the city streets. People who produced food had more disposable income. Soon, all this effort was a recognisable urban food gardening movement.

Permaculture experts arrived in Cuba and began to train-the-trainer. Similar to its roll-out of a successful literacy programme right after the 1950's revolution, Cuban trainers spread out through urban and rural communities teaching Permaculture principles and skills. Cuban scientists turned their attention to bio-pesticides and bio-fertilisers.

While it did take 3 to 5 years to rebuild soil fertility in many places, the food gardening programme was a stunning success, and still quick enough to avert famine.

The results in Havana alone are impressive - by 2006:

50% of the city's fresh produce was grown right in the city at the cost of zero food miles
140 000 people were making their living from food production - food gardening became a growing sector of the economy
fresh, organically-grown "neighbourhood food" was available in 169 municipalities

In smaller Cuban towns, community food gardening was supplying 80 to 90% of food needs.

The next step was to reclaim land from the industrial farms and transform it into the small-scale, labour-intensive, community-based concerns that are conducive to sustainability. By 2006, 80% of Cuba's agricultural land was farmed organically using soil fertility, crop rotation, green fertilisers, inter-cropping, inter-planting and natural pest control techniques.

Cuba had successfully transformed its agriculture from a dependent, unsustainable, industrialised model to a gloriously independent, sustainable, life-promoting alternative.

Out of hardship and adversity, came important lessons, that:

People who grow food are very important in the community and to their country - they deserve to earn a good living and to enjoy dignity
At any time, but most especially when the going is tough - co-operation is far more advantageous than competition
Growing food in harmony with Nature works
Soil is a living system
Being active in your community can be the difference between abundance and poverty, between life and death
Everyone can make a difference

Why Ecoliteracy is a Life Skill

2009-09-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, there’s an abundance of information about sustainable living solutions. At every turn there is more news about 'green' products and technologies, ‘green’ homes and holidays, communities and cities… It is great to see so much human ingenuity and energy committed to creating a better world.

However, our transformation from wasteful societies voraciously eating into the Earth’s Natural Capital, to sustainable societies living harmoniously within the bounds of Nature is going to fundamentally depend on our collective mindset.

A sustainable world demands of us different values, different ideas, attitudes, priorities and ways of being. We’re also going to need to have different knowledge and different skills.

One of the most striking shortcomings of modern, consumerist life is the profound and widespread ignorance about how Life really works. 'Ecoliteracy' is a word coined by physicist Fritjof Capra, and it means knowing and acting according to the basic facts of Life.

Way back in the 70’s and 80’s, Dr Capra was urging us away from a damaging mechanistic view of the world by presenting erudite and compelling teachings on holistic systems-thinking. In essential, best-selling books such as “The Tao of Physics”, “The Turning Point” and “The Web Of Life”, Dr Capra made the need for the paradigm shift beautifully clear – we cannot understand the world wisely and intelligently by studying and explaining components.

Life is encapsulated by eco-systems – dynamic sets and networks of relationships, nesting within each other and connecting with everything else – Everything. To understand how the world really works we need to understand relationships, connections, contexts, systems – and we cannot shy away from their complexity. In essence, this is a long-heralded call for the human mind to stretch beyond the rational, intellectual cleverness that it takes to understand a tangible component, and to invoke all our intelligences to comprehend the intangible Web of Life that sustains all the different components in a system. This kind of thinking and knowing underpins sustainable living.

While this may seem daunting, Dr Capra has this succinct reminder:

"We do not need to invent sustainable human communities. We can learn from societies that have lived sustainably for centuries. We can also model communities after nature's ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life."

Dr Capra went on to found the Center For Ecoliteracy - www.ecoliteracy.org - dedicated to sustainable living education aimed at school children. It advocates four guiding principles as an anchor for all sustainability education:

Nature is our teacher
Sustainability is a community practice
The real world is the optimal learning environment
Sustainable living is rooted in a deep knowledge of place

Climate Change Wake-Up Call

2009-09-21T04:56:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow, in New York City, the United Nations convenes the highest level talks ever to be held on Global Climate Change. It's a tense occasion. 100 world leaders will be brought together and urged by the UN to make real progress on the Climate Change agenda, ahead of the December Copenhagen Summit.

The current state of the negotiations is frightening. So far, there isn't a country in the world with a government that has significantly stood up to the issues. Negotiators are ineffectively floundering around, gripping on to the concerns of their rich and powerful backers with white knuckles, or pointing fingers demanding that other countries make changes before they will. The UN is desperately trying to get them to step up and act like Global Leaders making critical decisions for future generations, for the future of all Life on Earth.

It's easy to feel pretty depressed and hopeless at the extreme narrowmindedness, lack of foresight and lack of courage of those we have put in charge to do the best they can for us and our children.

However, rather than being immobilised, there is action that each of us can take today to demand that our leaders reach wise and proper consensus with all other nations on Global Climate Change. All around the world people are gathering together at Global Wake-Up Call events, and we are also making phone calls to our governments to tell them that we want them to attend Global Climate change talks and negotiate a fair, ambitious and binding - 'FAB' climate deal.

Today, I called the South African President's Office and asked them to register my call. After being swiftly transferred twice, I was told by an assistant, Moira, that my details are now added to a long list that will be handed onto to the President. It took just a few minutes and it was quite exciting

If you are South African, you can call President Jacob Zuma on (+27) 012-300 5200 (+27) 021 - 464 2100.

You can find out more about the Global Wake-Up Call campaign at http://www.avaaz.org/en/sept21_hub/

Privilege

2009-09-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

I am privileged to live in a city that still has real Nature. These are African Penguins that formed a small colony on Boulders Beach, outside of Simonstown in the 80's, a place just a 30-minute drive from my home. African Penguins are listed as a vulnerable species in the Red Data Book.

Like all ocean-living species, threats to African Penguins have been escalating.

In the early 1900's, egg and guano collecting decimated the southern island colonies of these birds. It is estimated that maybe 10% of the population survived. Since then, we've had a lot of oil spills and a lot of fishing. Today, we know the problems at sea are even worse.

Once I visited Boulders Beach and photographed a pair of penguins lying together in their sunny burrow with old-wing-flippers across each others backs. Penguins form deep monogamous bonds.

Today, I felt grateful that these penguins were there - toddling around boulders, burrowing under wild olives, braying on the beach and standing still in their moult, waiting for the next Ocean.

Is your "Now" short or long?

2009-09-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

The present has a flighty reputation. Ephemeral, too surreal to hold any substance, hard for us to "be" in. It's not heavy like the past we trawl through, understanding at our leisure. It's not tense like the future we fearfully and excitedly anticipate. It's "Now" - a phenomenon almost too quick for us to grasp it's bridge and it's duality. Now, this moment that isn't just a moment, is a tantalising space, irrevocably shaped by the past and profoundly pregnant with the future.

In one of his best expressions, the essay: "The Big Here and The Long Now", Brian Eno proposed that we have the choice of engaging with a "Long Now" or "Short Nows".

He wrote: "The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes. It’s ironic that, at a time when humankind is at a peak of its technical powers, able to create huge global changes that will echo down the centuries, most of our social systems seem geared to increasingly short nows. Huge industries feel pressure to plan for the bottom line and the next shareholders’ meeting. Politicians feel forced to perform for the next election or opinion poll. The media attract bigger audiences by spurring instant and heated reactions to ‘human interest’ stories while overlooking longer-term issues – the real human interest."

This essay was first published by the Long Now Foundation, http://www.longnow.org/, of which Eno is a Board Member and contributor to the iconic "Clock of the Long Now" project.

You can read the full essay at: http://digitalsouls.com/2001/Brian_Eno_Big_Here.html

Life thoughts about Life

2009-09-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, in a soft, silver rain, a friend and I talked about ways to respond to the Earth crisis. She's inundated with messages to stop the shooting of wolves, save 20 000 dolphins from slaughter, rescue starving bears... Many of these types of messages arrive in our inboxes and on our social networking interfaces complete with violent, traumatic imagery. It is a pornography of Earth despair - and most of us, don't want to look at it.

At a deep level, it brings us down. Even if we take action and sign the petitions, it doesn't feel satisfying when we press 'send' because in the process we have read or seen horrors, now imprinted on our psyches, now infusing our being with grief and anger, fear and despair. A powerful cocktail of negative energy - now emanating from ourselves...

At a 'Law of Attraction' level, what this means is that woven into our positive actions and efforts at protection, is despair at the ravaging of the Natural World. My friend said: "I think it's better not to know." And she got a valid point. What we really want to be doing is engaging with a life-giving, restorative, graceful FORCE...

But I still disagree that the way to do that is not to know. We must know what is going on in the world. We must understand the state of the Planet and we must act on what we know to be very wrong. The big challenge is to find the ways to deal with our painful emotions so that we can know, and still feed the good with our powerful positive energies. We must pay attention to Life, not extinction. We must celebrate every resilience and every new growth. But we cannot afford to be ignorant about what is under threat and what must be changed.

So what do we do?

In his video presentation for the 'Hands That Shape Humanity' project, novelist/wit/wild man, Tom Robbins shined up one of his loveliest gems - I can't find it on the web, so I am paraphrasing here:

When asked to give humanity one piece of wisdom, Mr Robbins said a few great things including something like this:

You've got to look out at the world with one eye and see everything that is wrong and suffering. You must vow to live your life in a way that changes that. Then you look at the world with your other eye and see beautiful fields spreading out to glorious mountains with the extraordinary sky above - and you know that all is well, just as it is. Then you hold those two contradictory thoughts in your mind simultaneously, in an ongoing dance of dynamic balance and understand that this is consciousness. It is in this state of acceptance of duality that we can be most useful - for if you act on the view of just one eye, you will either be so negative that you become part of the problem; or you will be so idealistic, you will fail to engage appropriately with reality.

As challenging as this way of seeing the world might seem, the message is that 'in the world of 10 000 things' nothing is 'either-or', but always 'both' - and we need to achieve this kind of individual consciousness.

Beyond our grief is a place of empowerment, and we really need to get there.

Adventures in Sustainability

2009-09-09T13:04:00.001-07:00

There's a good case to make that the 21st Century human quest for sustainable living, may well be the real "Mother Of All Adventures", at least to date.

It seems that the urge to leave home to find something new, to be irrevocably changed, is hard-wired into the human soul, psyche and ego. From the daughters of Africa's Eve to the wayfaring Westerners, human beings are always restlessly journeying - entranced, pressed, intrigued, hell-bent on survival, full of hope that there is something better 'out there', downright curious to know what it might be.

So here's an exciting journey that started on this auspicious date of 09.09.09 - it's a project of the non-profit organisation, 'The Lifeline Global Initiative' called The Lifeline - http://www.thelifeline.tv/

Three film-making teams left New York, London and Sydney today - each to journey around 6000 miles to arrive some 13 months later - on 10.10.10 - in Buenos Aires, Cape Town and Tokyo. Their collective mission is to find and record sustainable living projects along their paths in order to create a digital ark of inspiration and guidance that will help us to transform our lives for the better, and for the long future of our children.

Over the next 13 months, stories will unfold in team member blogs and vlogs as they meet people and contribute to growing organic food, conserving wildlife, educating others, implementing renewable energy and design solutions to address our current global crisis. After 10.10.10, there should be a unique treasure trove that can sweep the inveterate armchair traveller along for the ride.

It's very cool idea. Bon Voyage, The Lifeline...

It's Time

2009-09-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

09.09.09 is the occasion of the launch of the citizen call-to-action campaign - 999 It's Time. While the initiative is powered by high-profile UK campaign ambassadors; the events, UK-based and the marketing 'hook' 999, UK-relevant - the big message and the model is global.

If you're a UK citizen, 999 is what you dial in an emergency. What 999 It's Time has to say is that it is time to make the call that sustainable living is an emergency.

Who around the world can really argue with: "Socially, economically and ecologically, we're in a State of Emergency" or "If not us then who? If not now then when?"

Making the call, declaring the emergency, comes down to individual responsibility. In taking action, we each make an expression of our personal power.

We do make a difference - even one simple action has phenomenal ripple-effects: When we refuse to buy products containing palm oil at our local supermarket, we resist the cutting down of forests in Indonesia and Malaysia which destroys the habitat of endangered creatures such as Orang-U-Tangs and Sumatran TIgers. We become extraordinary powerful protectors when we choose to be aware and active about what we buy on an ordinary day, in an ordinary shopping aisle.

999 It's Time is one of many current, great efforts to emphasise that to get to the point where human beings live within the bounds of Nature is not some place that governments or corporations are going to miraculously transport us to. In fact, all signs are showing that it's going to happen despite governments and corporations.

It's about you and me and the day to day choices that we make. To paraphrase the great Mahatma Ghandi, we are the change we want to see in the world. Don't expect anyone or anything else to do it for you. It's time to step up and make those individual day to day choices that protect, foster, restore, renew, recreate, renew...

There is such a wealth of information on how to do this on the Internet. If you're new to this, start with http://www.999itstime.org/ - it's an intelligent and heart-warming adventure, and it's readily available. Make a change for the better, take an action that makes a real difference and give generously to the long future. As you bless, you will be blessed.

Post-script:

I'm proud of this photo today - this is a close-up of the first spring bloom of Clivia miniata in my garden. I'm proud of South Africa when I note that it is indigenious. How beautiful! My baby looked at the real thing and she said, "Wow!"

Resilience

2009-09-05T11:07:00.001-07:00

This afternoon we took a walk down our lane. It is a paved track on the narrow valley floor that ends in a close. There's a wood opposite the homes, with a stream running down from the mountains and lots of big, old trees - though they are all exotic to our land - Oaks, Cypresses, Pines, Bluegums. Most of the undergrowth too, is exotic.

While it's not at all ecologically sound, our little stretch of Nature still supports abundant Life. We have resident breeding Forest Buzzard, Gymnogene, Wood Owl and African Goshawk as well as Hadeda Ibis, Eygptian Goose, Cape Francolin and Guinea Fowl, and many smaller delightful birds. Every now and then some night traveller sees a Porcupine; and one dusky evening our landlady glimpsed a Caracal. In our Winter rainy season, black River Crabs cross the Lane.

There's an effort now amongst the residents to take better care of the Nature around us. Some young indigenous trees have been planted and neighbours are better informed about invasive species. People are keeping an eye on others to discourage the dumping of garden waste along the stream as this is what leads to much of the taking over of exotic species.

Today, at the end of the Lane, I noticed a clump of Bugweed - I don't know it's scientific name, where it originates from or how it came to be in South Africa. But I know it is very invasive and needs to be pulled. I stopped and grabbed hold of a plant, and then noticed this beautiful little chameleon on a twig right next to my hand. It's a Cape Dwarf Chameleon, the only chameleon on the Peninsula.

My parents' generation remember gardens full of chameleons when they were children. All that changed by the time of my childhood, mostly thanks to gardeners using pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers. Chameleons were uncommon when I was a child, and in my adulthood, a sighting causes major excitement.

I am so grateful my baby saw this particular Chameleon today. From now on, a Chameleon is no longer a picture in a book or a wood sculpture on the windowsill. It is an exquisite, alive, leaf-green, pink-and-blue, unbelievably delicate and extraordinary creature.

I am so grateful for Nature's resilience. We need to be determined to save this Earth. Life will meet us halfway.

Crazed Glass

2009-09-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

Crazed Glass

Turtle life
paddling the Deep Sea
and Reef

Only it’s hotter than it should be
Only there’s a long line around my flipper
and a trawler scooping
my body out of shell

Wolf life
trotting through the Great Woods
and Plain

Only it’s hotter than it should be
Only there’s rifle-scope trained on me
and a trap pulling
my paw right off my leg

Elephant life
swaying along the Old Paths
and Riverbeds

Only it’s hotter than it should be
Only there’s fence around our history
and a conservation officer selling
our offspring

Vulture life
soaring the Blue Thermals
and Cliffs

Only it’s hotter than it should be
Only there’s no wild land left to scavenge
and I'm feeding crazed glass

to my baby

Transition Towns - Doing It For Ourselves

2009-09-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a story about how something good grows. Around 2005, Permaculture teacher and designer, Rob Hopkins gave his students at the Kinsale FET college in Ireland an assignment to come up with a community 'energy descent action plan' that took into account local response to peak oil and climate change.

So compelling was the project that the Kinsale Town Council adopted the plan of one of the students. Hopkins then devised an evolving Transitions Town model which has now spread through Ireland, England, Wales, the U.S.A., New Zealand, Australia, Italy and Chile. Transition Towns communities now include villages, towns, boroughs, districts and cities.

The main aims of the project are to foster local hubs of self-reliant sustainable living and build community resilience in the face of peak oil and climate change. People like you and me are mobilising, reinvigorating the concept of community to address food production and transportation concerns, waste reduction, energy alternatives, alternative commercial exchange systems and a new and better way of being in the world.

The central idea underpinning Transitions Towns is that sustainable living, that is living within the bounds of Nature, is actually richer and more fulfilling living than what we experience now. That it offers us all wise ways to be truly thriving, resilient and abundant. Transitions Towns is a relief from the lonely, depressed world of consumerism, waste, greed and war-mongering - freedom from the myth that there is such a thing as unchecked, unlimited 'growth' on a finite Planet.

There are various global hubs now supporting more than 200 Transition Towns, you can find them by starting with http://www.transitiontowns.org/

The Mother's Tears

2009-08-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

Today I watched the documentary, The Story of the Weeping Camel - released 2004, a film festival darling and Oscar-nominated. It is a beautiful, deserving film. Set in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, the story takes a slice out of the life of a nomadic shepherd family who face a particular challenge one Spring when a new mother Bactrian Camel rejects her white colt after a difficult birth.

Sparse dialogue and harsh landscape provide the perfect backdrop for the gentleness and consumate efficiency of the human family to shine through onscreen. These are people 'in their element' - great grandfather, grandparents, parents, tween, child and baby intermingle with the animals they herd, with neighbours and visitors, with the landscape, with the wind storms - at ease, with a companionable generosity and a traditional order that is peaceful and productive. There is no violence in this film. No depression. Nothing neurotic.

The efforts to coax and press the recalcitrant camel mother into accepting her ailing colt include a sacred ceremony where the shaman speaks of so much damage done to the Earth by humans that the Spirits which have always protected the herders from adverse weather and circumstances have withdrawn. He leads them in a prayer of asking for forgiveness, and they pray sincerely even though they are not the people doing the damage. They are not victims blaming someone or something else, they are active participants in the healing of the world.

However, the prayers are not enough for this camel Mum. She continues to refuse her colt milk and tenderness.

The family then send their two young sons on a journey to find a musician in the nearest permanent settlement. The youngest boy encounters television and market-place selling - all enthralling to him in comparison to the organic life he knows.

The boys return with a Morin Khuur player willing to perform the Hoos ritual. As the story goes, if the camel Mother weeps in response to the music she will accept her baby.

This camel weeps.

But it's not at all a story about whether or not the creature will weep. We knew it would from the film's title. It is a story about people who are exquisitely tuned to Life, for whom doing all one can, practically and mystically, is unquestioningly just what one does to the save the life of one vulnerable animal. The Story of the Weeping Camel offers a pertinent and pressing theme for the wasteful and war-mongering modern 21st Century dwellers - that there is innate worth in every life. Not financial worth. But Worth. The wondrous human Mum notes that the beleaguered colt is beautiful.

Beautiful Life.

That's worth a lot.

The movie was directed and written by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni when they were film students.

Blessed Unrest

2009-08-29T12:05:00.001-07:00

Blessed Unrest - How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice and Beauty to the World - by Paul Hawken, is one of those treasured books that expand the mind, quicken the pulse and open the heart. It changes you, and you are grateful to be changed.

Hawken, founder of the Natural Capital Institute and http://www.wiserearth.org/, author of a number of best-selling books, must be one of the brightest and most knowlegable of the Earth's spokespeople.

In Blessed Unrest, he skillfully draws together a minimum of 130 000, that is actually more likely well over 1 million organisations - consisting of 10s of millions of people from all over the world who are actively engaged in environmental, social and indigenous culture protections. Hawken proposes that this disparate, 'under the media radar' movement that holds no guns, is not only the greatest Civil Rights movement in human history but also a response that is akin to a Planetary immune system arising all over the ailing Earth to counteract the rampant greed, pollution and waste inherent in free market fundamentalism.

Contrary to the corporate media depiction of a raggle-taggle bunch of ineffective, mis-guided do-gooders, hippies, activists and radicals, Hawkens argues that this global movement is rich - full of grandmothers, students, poets, professors, businesspeople, designers, tribe members, teachers, artists, friends, mothers and fathers, ordinary and extraordinary people.

It is a movement without leadership, without a single ideology. It is organic, coherent, informed, increasingly connected and self-organising - qualities of a living system, qualities that are highly conducive to Life.

Viewing it with an eagle-eye, Hawkens comments that when asked whether he is optimistic or pessimistic about the future, he responds: "When you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven't got a heart."

For sure, Blessed Unrest is happening in your neighbourhood, right now. If there's a group cleaning up a local stream, a person taking kids out on Nature walks, a human rights organisation intervening in a low-cost housing scheme, a CEO funding a women's shelter, a volunteer bird-watcher protecting a pair of Black Eagles, a school planting a Permaculture food garden - it's all part of Blessed Unrest.

In the entire history of humanity, there has never been so much energy, skills and creativity committed to the restoration of grace, justice and beauty in the world.

It is an immense time.

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1fiubmOqH4

Read: Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken

In the Mirror: One Species

2009-08-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

Before I was a Mum, I could read a book in a day. Things change. I am currently enthralled by Peter Heller's book "The Whale Warriors" - his account of the 2005 expedition of the controversial Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's campaign to save whales from hunters in Antartica. Despite being gripped by this rollicking and wrenching eco-escapade, I feel like I am actually limping through the chapters, grabbing at the time it takes to absorb the words on the page inbetween my other loves and responsibilities.

What is echoing in my mind though, in the spaces between the absorption of a great story and living life, is Heller's quote of Sea Shepherd leader, Captain Dave Watson that: "To the Earth Warrior, a redwood is more sacred than a religious icon, a species of bird or butterfly is of more value than the crown jewels of a nation, and the survival of a species of cacti more important than the survival of monuments to human conceit like the pyramids." Heller adds that Watson reitierates that all of our human arts - music, poetry, architecture "were as dust when compared with the survival of a single species of bird or insect."

I have a great love for human arts - but I still agree wholeheartedly with Watson.

Our greatest, most meaningful love is a fundamental love of Life. Irascrible pirate that he is, Watson's call is a call for Reverance. I believe this is so vital to human beings today. Without reverance for Life we are so very vulnerable to follies. Unacceptable follies that cost other species their existence, impoverish our present world and degrade the places our own children will inherit.

To be of any real good use, our capacities to respect and care need to extend throughout the Web of Life that sustains us now, into the long future. Every species counts. Whaling and logging, polluting and mining, burning and treating with chemicals must stop. Why are we still doing this? Let's use all that human ingenuity and energy to renew, restore, re-create and re-build. It's not just time, it's overdue...

A Species is Important

2009-08-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of years back I was at a social gathering with a father-of-four who is a keen ocean windsurfer. He was bemoaning the fact that our Atlantic coastline is so polluted that is dreadful for sportspeople to be in the water, and that our Indian Ocean bay is now so riddled with big Great White Sharks because of the hunting ban, that is it perilious. He advocated the hunting of adult sharks in the East so that his sport could be safer and cleaner. (Not that we clean up the West.)

I took him to task as a father, rather than a sportsperson, and I did so, insensitively. I have always regretted that I was adverserial rather than constructive in that moment. But still, I did have a point that is even more critical now. We do need to care for existence of all species. Whether or not we like them. Whether or not we know and understand them. Whether or not they inconvience us. For the sake of our children.

Whoever we are - parents, sportspeople, urbanites, searchers, researchers, investment bankers, singers, professors, presenters etc. - we need to be aware of our connections in the Web of Life that supports us and our offspring.

The odd thing about us humans with our gigantic intellect and our arrogance is that we don't even know what there is on Earth. We destroy without knowing the names - to our own detrimint.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327224.600-e-o-wilson-we-must-save-the-living-environment.html

Friends

2009-08-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

How different everything would be

in a world without enemies

without the need to define anyone else as 'other'

without the need to make anyone else 'wrong'

without the need to call anyone else 'freak'

to understand, truly understand

that We are One

to love, to support and encourage

to hold, to uphold and protect

to delight, to rejoice and give thanks

that We are One

circles

2009-08-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

Let Beauty Be Enough

Keen on Kindness

2009-08-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

If I were a boy at a Dance

- which I am not -

I would seek out the kindest girls

and ask them to move the Earth with me

If I were a vigilante in my Community

- which I am not -

I would seek out the kindest families

and do my utmost to protect them

If I were a whale in a Pod

- which I am not -

I would seek out the softest souls

and stay very close to them for a very long time

If I were a speaker in a Corner

- which I am not -

I would stand on my box and talk about kindness

Fierce Kindness

Fierce Random Acts of Kindness

Bring them on

I Am...

The difference between knowing and empathy

2009-08-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am really interested in the gaps, the spaces, the chasms and canyons between hearts and minds.

Intellectually, we all well know we are part of Nature, deeply invested in the Web of Life, and yet somehow many of us are emotionally aloof - affording the Living little respect, nevermind love, kindness and empathy.

How is it that with our great minds we know, and with our great hearts we fail to feel?

Is the mirror simply reflecting our failure at self-love? That is, if we were more adept at caring well for ourselves, being truly friendly to ourselves - would we find it easier to care well for the places where we live? - The places that include many other life forms.

I guess the Big Question is what will it take to make Life sacrosanct? My life, your life, the CEO's life and his company workers' lives, the Humpback Whale's life and the Purple Bacterium's life...

Many of the effective change agents today are saying that issues of social justice, environmental justice and spiritual consciousness are indivisible...

Commitment

2009-08-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

I am in awe when I come across the work of people with incredible, effective commitment to saving the Planet. From people like Paul Hawken of Natural Capital and WiserEarth, who focuses his brilliant mind and warm heart on constantly teaching, informing, connecting and advising - to people like Julia Butterfly Hill who spent two precious years of her youth sitting up high on a platform in an ancient California Redwood to prevent it from being logged.

People do extraordinary things with their lives for the benefit of Life. I feel really thankful about that.

Along with my awe and my gratitude, I also feel a sharp disappointment in myself that I haven't yet stepped up in such a way. It's an enormous personal challenge.

10 Assumptions We Can No Longer Afford

2009-08-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

Our Governments will take action at the last minute

Corporations will go green before it's too late

Technology will save us

People won't change/ can't change

We don't need Tigers anyway, it will be okay without them

Global climate change won't affect me

Whatever I do doesn't make enough difference

We can just move to another Planet

Doing less harm to the Earth is good enough

I can't do anything

A Story of An Accidental Avocado Grower

2009-08-13T11:12:00.001-07:00

Over the past few years, young avocado trees have been sprouting up on my compost heap - mostly from organic seed. The first "yield" presented more than 20 trees! I obviously couldn't leave them where they were. They were such beautiful little trees with such nutritious potential that I also could not bear to pull them up and return them to the heap. I live in South Africa where despite the affluence of some, about half our people live in unacceptable poverty and approximately 1.5 million of our precious children under the age of six years are permanently damaged by malnutrition.

So, I started to transplant the avo saplings into re-used containers and supply them to local community and schools' food gardens. By now, I've lost count of how many avo trees have come to life in this shady, unassuming corner of my garden. It was a sharp realisation for me, how the waste of a family who can afford to buy organic avocados from the supermarket can be turned into good food for the future with hardly any effort at all. Since then, I have been saving seed from much of the organic produce I buy - collecting, sharing and also growing in my small sunny plot.

Here is something special that I love about avocado trees:

The avo is bisexual, that is a single tree does produce male and female flowers.

However, the trees present what my landlord once described as a "conundrum of fecundity" - a biological condition known as 'synchronous dichomagy'. A clumsy phrase for a mysterious process - what happens is that the flowers of different avo cultivars open on 2 subsequent days presenting different sexes.

It works like this: Day 1 - A Hass avocado tree flowers presenting the female stigma ready for pollination but the stamens are all bent away at right angles, young and release no pollen. On Day 2, the flowers open with stigma shrivelled and unresponsive when the stamens are laden with pollen and leaning in a little closer. When the flowers close at the end of the second day they never re-open and so the opportunity for self-pollination of the Hass tree cannot happen even though it's got all the necessary gear.

On the same days, a tree of the Feurte cultivar will open its flowers first with ripe male parts and close; followed by ripe female parts on the second day. So you need a few trees of different cultivars in the same vicinity for the bees to do their work successfully.

This means that the avo tree is structurally bisexual and functionally unisexual. I wondered if this might be because avo trees, like horses, like people, have powerful needs for friends?

Nature is extraordinary...

Earth Circles

2009-08-11T03:54:00.001-07:00

I so value the Internet for the way it connects us, empowers us and enables us to learn. I also love the way that smart, creative, conscious people use the Internet to make wisdom, information and tools freely available to others. Today, I discovered www.earth-circles.org - a really well-conceived resource that provides the structure, guidance and an excellent workbook for people to transform their deep concerns about climate change into meaningful local action.

As with much of the leading work in this area, Earth Circles acknowledges our collective and individual grief at our disconnection from Nature and the damage we are doing to the planet. That grief, suppressed and ignored results in denial, numbness, evasion and feeling so overwhelmed that we justify staying on the same mechanistic, materialistic, consumerist treadmill - even though we know it's wrong, even though it makes us feel terrible, even though it's destroying Life...

Drawing on Joanna Macy's despair and empowerment work, Earth Circles encourages the meeting of small groups of people to provide the supportive opportunities to air their despair and tap its power to transform our current human lifestyles into sustainable, just, more fulfilling, more conscious ones.

For humans to live in balance with all other life forms, we need a radical change in our thinking and ways of seeing the world. The prospect of radical change frightens and immobilises us. By working in small groups, Earth Circles propose that we will find the comfort, the will, the inspiration and a greater intelligence that will help people to move. It's clear from a browse through the seven sessions in the Earth Circles workbook, that participants will not only be better equipped to take effective action, but will have gained valuable skills in self-reflection and connection with others. It's a great curriculum for raising human consciousness.

Word Play

2009-08-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today was a cold, blustery public holiday. We took our children on an outing to the Aquarium. The awe I feel at seeing extraordinary, beautiful creatures so easily, so close-up like this is always tarnished by a greater sadness at the beholden's aimless captive existence.

It reminded me that not so long ago, humans too were displayed for the interest and 'education' of people who would pay.

Once, the rights we afforded to business enabled and fostered hundreds of years of the mass death, trade and enslavery of other people. Still, the rights we afford to business enable and foster the ongoing mass death, trade and life-long servitude of other living species.

What helps us justify this ruthless exploitation is the words we use - we don't call them "species", we don't refer to them as "living", we certainly turn away from calling them "beings". We call the tigers and trees, the whales and wetlands, and every other life form we want to make money from - "resources".

It's an old trick playing out again and again. Our forefathers didn't call slaves "human beings" or "people". Today we call people who work in sweat shops "labour" or "the poor".

Words are important.

It's not just about some words, it's also about the ways we put lots of words together - the philosophies people find in their religions. This is why there are factions in every major religion, who in the face of the Earth crisis, are now scouring their texts to mitigate against old proclamations that humans have an unfettered, short term profitable dominion over all other life forms and landscapes.

I looked a great turtle in the eye today. I said: "I'm sorry."

But it's not good enough. I need to take my child out into the world and show her these creatures where they live - in what's left of the wilderness. That's a thrill I have known, and it shaped me every time so that I lack the structure to enjoy an aquarium. I think that's a good thing.

There's something truly obscene about regarding other living beings as "resources". They are not. They are Caspian Tiger, Green Turtle, African Lion, Common Octopus, Emperor Moth, Outeniqua Yellowwood, Streletzia Nicolai, Blue Crane, Honey Bee, Black Oak, Bumphead Parrotfish, Pel's Fishing Owl, White-lipped Peccary, Sockeye Salmon, Quinine Tree, Crested Quetzal, Purple Bacteria, British Otter, Clivia miniata, Oyster Mushroom, Cape Vulture, California Condor, Bald Eagle, Koala Bear, Mountain Gorilla, Bactrian Camel, Pink Star, Indian Elephant, Evening Primrose, White-tailed Tropic Bird...

We love these creatures and plants. They are our companions and our connections in this wondrous web of Life.

Dancing the Love of My Life

2009-08-09T12:44:00.000-07:00

Dancing the Love of My Life

On a sunny day
I gave my prayer wings

I stared at the wind for hours

A child looked at the blue sky
and pointed out the pale moon

I looked my Patience in the eye
and asked it for evidence
of its usefulness

I found a burrow
where I could curl up my dreams
and the grass sang

I reached out a hand
to a woman in a veil
She lit a candle
for my hope
and made a promise
to snuff out my fears

I rubbed gold coins in my hands
until they were hot

I wondered, what could I believe?
and a Starfish melted under my foot

I blew ashes into bubbles
but nobody saw this

I watched an egg laugh

I heard a song
no one has sung
and for a moment
an Owl smiled at me

I wrapped up my Blessings
and put them in an envelope
I bought a stamp from a man
who sold flowers

I went to the park
when the cherry trees blossomed
and I waded into the waters

I burnt off my limbs and my face
and my hair and my heart

so that you can love me

A kingdom less explored

2009-08-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

I photographed these mushrooms today in a corner of my garden - a community of them pushing up through the mulch in the deep shade near the compost heap. They look delicious and safe, but I can't identify them yet, so we won't eat them - yet.

It reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with an ethno-botantist who talked passionately of Mycelium that can absorb toxic waste out of an oily soil and break carbon-hydrogen bonds so effectively that you can pick the mushrooms and eat them after they've cleaned up our waste in the soil. Mycelium even use radiation of a source of energy.

Fungi is one of the Earth's Kingdoms that we have largely ignored - if we understand these life forms well we could do so much. Early studies show incredible anti-bacterial and anti-viral qualities.

Paul Stamets is a leading mycologist with a passion for sustainability. Check out his TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

Creating Conditions Conducive to Life

2009-08-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

I've just read an article in Chew Magazine Issue#07 by Frankie Chevalier titled The Green Screen that irrtated me. http://www.chewmagazine.com/

The writer, putting down 'eco-friendly' fashion efforts in order to punt trendy remakes as the NEW 'NEW', authoritavely states that when it comes to textile production 'no matter how you do the Maths it will never come to zero'. No references are cited to back this up. The writer overlooks the fact that there are number of USA and European textile manufacturers who have attained Cradle to Cradle accreditation. http://www.c2ccertified.com/

If some textile manufacturers can operate profitable waste=food businesses - then they all can.

And this is the important point the Chew writer completely misses - we are not trying to get to zero. Sustainability is about waste=food; that is creating value for other species in the eco-system, not achieving no value.

To back-up the arguments for fashion remakes, the Chew writer asserts that the goal of sustainability is putting in place the 3 R's - reduce, re-use, recycle. For sure, the 3 R's are important - recycling is essential, reducing and re-using are a good start and a virtuous habit. But the 3 R's are not the whole bottom line of sustainability - and they certainly weren't proposed to be interpreted as some kind of a zero-sum guide to Life on Earth...

The bottom-line of sustainability is for humans to stop using up the Natural Credit that belongs to our children and to join in Nature's efforts to constantly create conditions conducive to Life. At the baseline Nature doesn't just re-use, reduce, recycle - Nature also builds, cleans, restores, renews, recreates... As a principle Nature keeps creating more and more conditions for more and more life - that's the nub of true sustainability...

I am paraphrasing here from Janine Benyus's excellent book, Biomimicry Innovation Inspired by Nature - here's the way Life works to create more conditions conducive to more Life:

Nature is powered by sunlight and only uses exactly the amount of energy it needs
Nature relies on diversity
Nature fits form to function
Nature recycles everything - the waste of one species is food for others
Nature rewards co-operation
Nature needs local expertise
Nature curbs excess from within
Nature uses limits as power

What's critical here is to break free from the effeciency-imperative of the current economic model and shift into thinking like the living beings we are. Then, we might re-connect to the importance of effectiveness, instead of being lured by the smokescreen of efficiency.

Nature is not efficient - most especially, not by any business school standards. Nature is abundant. Bill McDonough, poineer of the Cradle to Cradle concept uses the example of a cherry tree that yields thousands of blossoms, many of which fall to the ground without bearing fruit. Waste? Not at all. There were enough possibilities for the tree to bear enough fruit, and the surplus flowers have provided food for countless creatures and micro-organisms, as well as building the fertility of the soil to support the tree's next blossoming.

The goal of sustainability is to foster more Life.

Yes, reduce, re-use, recycle - but also sweeten the place where you live by building fertility, cleaning the air and the water, making food, using limits as a source of power, adding information to structure, drawing your power from the sun and only using exactly what you need. Value diversity, co-operate and be part of developing local expertise.

Think like you are part of an ecosystem, because you are.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature's way.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

More information on Cradle to Cradle:

http://www.mbdc.com/c2c_home.htm

Growing Our Own Food

2009-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Growing our own food at home, at schools and in the community using natural-systems farming techniques such as Permaculture, is one of the most fundamental ways we can all make a great difference in the world today.

Just meeting a few of your seasonal fruit, veg and herbs needs by growing food in the place where you live has a postive impact. You don't even need to set aside a plot of land - many veg and herbs are happy pot-dwellers making dense-urban food gardening a pleasure.

A Permaculture family food garden is a particular asset that provides a healthy, outdoor activity for children and parents.

Here are a few reasons why it is worth the effort:

You can produce much of your own fresh, organically-grown veg in an extremely cost-efficient way, reducing or freeing up some of the family food budget.

You will be participating in the global movement towards eating more locally-produced food – you cut back on your household contribution to ‘food miles’ and reduce your family’s ecological footprint by producing food just a stone’s throw from your own kitchen.

You can put your family back in touch with Nature’s seasonal gifts and most especially, give children a first-hand awareness and appreciation of how good food is produced.

You can save seeds from season to season building up a valuable store of healthy, natural seed - and share them in your community.

You can reduce your household waste and make more efficient use of resources.

You can experience the satisfaction of reaping your own harvests and creating rich family traditions around the growing, preparing and eating of fresh, healthy foods grown by your own hands.

Your family can become an inspiration when you share your bounty with other gardeners and families.

My Circle

2009-08-04T06:33:00.001-07:00

My Circle

I woke into the circle of my life

Under a silver shawl of dew
shining on my skin
and my nails
and my hair

I wore the fronds of ferns
the mould of dead leaves
and bits of bark that had been
scratched by squirrels

I opened my throat
and howled

like a wolf
like a wave
like a wind

I felt joy
and then power
touched my cheek

I was
grateful

I spoke to a particle
and it gave me
good advice

I called to a swallow
and it showed me a
delicate map

I smiled at an owl
in a camelthorn tree
and it blinked
its great eyes
into a desert

As if by magic
the owl conjured up
a salty whale
steaming in the Ocean
It slapped its great black tail
and scattered my stars
all across the lonely sky

A bear looked up
and shook its head

A tiger growled

A giraffe walked
the grassy plain

At the lake’s edge
a goose
nestled down
on its eggs

Deep in a tree’s roots
a wombat
curled up warm
with its baby

An old mountain
shuddered

A bat fluttered
and then settled
in a pitch-dark cave

A dry seed
broke into a wet life

I lay on the floor of the forest
a mollusc
divided from
an impossible shell

In celebration
I burnt the fern fronds
the leaf mould
and the bark
scratched by squirrels

I breathed in the grey smoke
of an unknowable future

And I died.

Why are we numb?

2009-08-03T12:25:00.001-07:00

The Planet is in crisis

solutions exist but we don't yet use them

all over the world, people and their people-structures

are trying to uphold unsustainable systems

rather than change

Why?

It seems so strange

A friend said: "People need to know. If they know they will change."

I don't think this is true.

Joanna Macy, revered pioneer of the 'Work That Reconnects' says we do know.

And it is our deep knowing that causes our disconnect.

At our most fundamental cellular level,

and at our most fine soulful level,

we know that what we are doing and how we are living;

what we think and how we act must change -

now.

We think, say, act and be numb because we have a big grief

we don't want to deal with -

we are losing Life,

robbing our own children

We have to face our grief, our guilt and shame -

and, get over it.

We have to grow up

So that we can be something so much better.

We can do it.

Looking Deep into Nature

2009-08-03T02:58:00.000-07:00

Look deep into nature,

and then you will understand everything better.

Albert Einstein

The exciting field of Biomimicry gives me hope for the future.

Imagine a world where everything that humans design - everything, from water waste systems to sunglasses - is based on the principle of creating conditions conducive to Life.

Nature already has solutions to all our design problems. Life is billions of years old, and the millions of organisms on Earth right now embody perfect designs for enduring Life. As leading Biomimcry advocate, Dr Janine Benyus points out, the essential mind shift that needs to happen is for humans to change from learning about Nature to learning from Nature.

Biomimicry upholds Nature as Model, as Mentor, as Measure...

When we learn from Nature, we can create colour from structure instead of using toxic chemicals and dyes...
We can build homes that maintain a near-constant internal temperature using vents and tunnels, as termites do...
Like a lotus leaf, we can make self-cleaning surfaces that require no harmful chemical maintenance whatsoever...

Biomimicry offers us a myriad of inspiring opportunities to redesign, recreate and remake our human environments so that we can live well, wisely and respectfully within the bounds of Nature.

It's irresistible...

Read: Biomimicry Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus
Watch: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/janine_benyus_shares_nature_s_designs.html
Visit: http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/