Category: environment

Winter Solstice Drama by Sara Wright

Last year I attended a bonfire on the night of the winter solstice at a friend’s house. As my companion and I walked towards the ledge where the fire had been the year before we were both astonished. Where was everybody? We stood in the dark confused. Minutes passed.

After suggesting we leave, my companion remarked with annoyance, “What the hell is going on here?” A Rhetorical question. I sure didn’t know.

Sudden hooting split the night and some dissonant musical sounds seemed to be coming from out of the bushes below us.

Following the sounds we descended the steep hill and discovered that the fire was at the river’s edge, and that a few people were already gathered there.

Unbeknownst to either of us the location had changed, and from our vantage point on the hill we couldn’t see the fire or hear any sounds. I had been looking forward to this celebratory turning, and liked the idea of sharing it with friends. Yet, now I felt uneasy.

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Ant Hill by Sara Wright

Yesterday I gave a poetry reading at a local library beginning and ending with thoughts about how Climate Change is affecting all living things. I am a naturalist who holds the radical belief that all living things are sentient. I also argue that we must not equate animal intelligence with that of humans.

Almost every poem I read was about my intimate relationship with some aspect of the natural world, for example, the changing seasons, my friendship with sagebrush lizards, steadfast trees, Sandhill cranes, beloved Black bears. Intimacy and inter –relationship are part of every experience I have with nature and by sharing these poems I hoped might draw others in to new ways of perceiving the earth and her creatures.

The whole point of my focusing on non – human species was to raise awareness that these animals and plants desperately need our help. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough about how critical it is to bring animals, plants, trees, mushrooms into the picture in this age of the Anthropocene, that is, the period in which we live where a few men with power rule. Today, it is not an exaggeration to say that humans control every aspect of our fragile planet.

I repeat: Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough or perhaps almost no one was capable of listening? Maybe both. As soon as I concluded my reading one woman did actually bring up an incident involving a very difficult child who became attached to a lizard, so she at least, was on the track I hoped I had laid….

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Climate Change, the Generations and Religion’s Bad Rap by Susan de Gaia

As I reflect on my experience at the climate strike on September 20, 2019, I see a connection between climate change and the bad rap that religion has today. When asked what they think about religion, many are quick to point out how history has shown that it has been at the center of numerous wars. Even today we find conflicts between groups grounded in religious difference. There are other differences in these conflicts, such as ethnic differences, differences of social organization, and disagreements over territory, but religion is a clear element. Colonialism, misogyny, and priest sexual abuse are some other ways that religions have earned reputations for being too strict, too old fashioned, and too corrupt, among other things.

The climate strike was called Youth Climate Strike and had as one of its leaders a very special young woman, Greta Thunberg. It isn’t often that the youth are given a platform for their complaints and even rarer that a teenaged person – and a female at that – is seen as a world leader on one of the most important issues facing civilization. Not only does this young woman have the wisdom to see the problem from a global, even a cosmic, perspective, but she also stands before us as the face of the only group on the planet that is more impacted by climate change than any other – the youth.

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THREE POEMS OF LIFE by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

As Above So Below

Yes, I believe we are made in god’s image.

If god is the wild, passionate, loud, sexual, sizzling, dancing fires of creation.

And should I ever forget my fiery, heavenly vision, the sun comes out every day to remind me.

 

And I ask myself, which is more miraculous? Our local star feeding earthly life?

Or me, reflecting the sun, feeling the passion, sizzling in response?

Jacob Dreams and So Do We

(inspired by Genesis 28:12)

As darkness slips into light,

dawn,

with its unique melody,

grows brighter.

As light slips into darkness,

dusk,

with its mysterious possibilities,

settles softly upon the land.

 

Creation is oneness, but we need duality to experience sex, symphonies, hot fudge sundaes.

Creation is pure love, but it is to the passions of the human heart that we owe our earthwalk

 

Dawn and dusk hold open the thresholds of mystery inviting our human hearts to experience . . .

The sacred dance where one becomes two becomes three.

The sacred song where three becomes two becomes one.

 

Pele’s Birth Dance

Twinkling stars ignite waves of fire that explode into a tumultuous, joyful noise:

“EH YEH, EH YEH, EH YEH.”

 

And Mother Earth awakens.

 

Matter bathed in Pele’s cauldron flares up, erupting into waves of baby earth while roaring:

“EH YEH, I AM, EH YEH.”

 

As seeds rise from great watery oceans of fire, my heart swells, breathing air into newly forged matter and causing my breath to become song:

“I AM, EH YEH, I AM.”

 

Fire,

that reflects flame-drenched stars,

that reflects Pele’s dance,

that reflects the passionate seed,

echoes within my belly until I glow with waves of love which burst forth to sing:

“I AM, I AM, I AM.”

 

And then . . .

Riding a watery wave that gushes forth new life, my newborn erupts from my body, then twinkles, then cries tumultuous joyful noise:

“EH YEH, EH YEH, WAHHHHhhhhhh.”

(Note: “Eh yeh” is God’s name in phonetic Hebrew as given to Moses in Genesis 3:14. “I am” is its traditional translation into English)

 

Janet Rudolph has written three books on the subject of ancient Biblical Teachings.  One Gods: The Mystic Pagan’s Guide to the Bible, When Eve Was a Goddess: A Shamanic Look at the Bible, and the just recently released book, When Moses Was a Shaman. For more information visit her website at /www.mysticpagan.com/

 

A Blinding Light? by Sara Wright

Nature is a Living Being. Animals and plants have souls, and a spirit. Each species is unique, and yet we are all interconnected, human and non – human species alike. This is more than a both and perspective; its multi-dimensional.

Many books are written about using nature to heal humanity of its ills. ‘Recreate’. Climbing a mountain, or taking a walk are common examples of using nature to help ourselves, but how many of us are asking the question of how we can give back?

This is a question I was obsessed with for about thirty years and may be the reason I gained entrance into this seemingly secret world that we call Nature.* When I experienced unconditional love from both animals and plants I needed to reciprocate in kind. This idea of reciprocity between humans and the rest of Nature is probably similar to what Indigenous peoples experienced because they loved (or feared) and learned directly from animals, plants and trees. They respected animals, for example, for their unique qualities. Indigenous people never psychologized Nature the way westerners routinely do.

I rarely read books about Nature anymore because I am so troubled by this psychologizing. From my point of view psycho-babble is just another way of dismissing the reality of Nature as a living feeling, sensing, sentient Being.

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The Truth About Humans by Natalie Weaver

I have greatly enjoyed an odd little book I read over the summer.  It is Lucy Cooke’s The Truth About Animals (Basic Books, 2018). Cooke takes us through a journey of animal behavior, chronicling the curious narratives that naturalists, philosophers, theologians, and other high-thinking professionals impose on animals to render their behaviors meaningful, moral, and relevant.  Cooke shows us how tempting it has been historically for people to seek and discover confirmation of human values in all those other pairs so happily coupled on Noah’s Ark.

It has often been an important tool for feminists, as with other sets of thinkers, to make these connections as well.  And, as one familiar with the classical charges that women are more inherently corporeal than their spiritual-intellectual male counterparts, and that therefore women are more animal than the more accurately “human” form that their male counterparts represent, I understand the feminist investment in nature.  I appreciate that it involves a sort of ownership and redefinition of the slur; an acceptance of space and place as limited and essentially animal; an awareness of environmental sustainability; a deep sense of connection to the continuum of creaturely being that is the giant ecology of our planet.

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Rejecting TMT: Protecting and Protesting the Sacred for Mauna Kea and for all by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

AnjeanetteRoughly 3 ½ years ago my FAR post was about the struggle that the Hawaiian people were facing with the proposed building of a Thirty Meter Telescope on the most sacred mountain in the Hawaiian Islands, Mauna Kea. When that post was published, there was a large social media presence and protests that helped cease construction of the telescope and sent the issue to the Hawaiian Courts. I am writing this post because Mauna Kea is again under threat. The Courts ruled in the favor of the telescope and for the last two months, large scale protests have gone under way on the road up to Mauna Kea.

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Plant Trees, Trees, and More Trees by Carol P. Christ

I dream that all of us who are suffering burn-out because of national and world politics come together to plant and nurture trees. Scientists say that planting ONE TRILLION TREES would neutralize two-thirds of carbon emissions and reverse climate change. Yes, we need to march, to organize, and to vote. But it is also important to embody our commitment to life and the living. Putting our hands in the soil, tenderly teasing the roots of the trees we plant as we nestle them into the earth, we move from our heads to our bodies, re-membering the interdependence of life.

This has already begun to happen in India—a country where what Vandana Shiva named “maldevelopment” has produced massive deforestation. At the Paris climate change conference India pledged to “make India green again” by reforesting 235 million acres of land. The government allotted 6.2 billion dollars to support the plan. What was not expected was the overwhelming enthusiasm of those who volunteered to plant trees. Continue reading “Plant Trees, Trees, and More Trees by Carol P. Christ”

Grief, Have I Denied You? by Carol P. Christ

I have never had so much trouble trying to find a topic for blog and to begin writing it as I have this time. It is 6:58 am in Greece, three hours and two minutes before my blog is due to be posted, and I still do not have a topic. It is not that topics have not occurred to me. There is the rape allegation against Donald Trump by E. Jean Carroll. There is the fact that it was ignored by the press—as if it somehow does not matter that the President of the US is or might be a rapist. There is the declaration by Kamala Harris that if elected President she would move to immediately process hundreds of thousands of unprocessed rape kits. There are the new reports of the horrendous conditions in which children, women, and men are being kept in detention at the US border. And this morning there is the President’s racist rant against progressive congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts. Continue reading “Grief, Have I Denied You? by Carol P. Christ”

Trial by Fire, Healing by Water by Carol P. Christ

It wasn’t really fire. I came home to Lesbos from a soulful Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete and a discouraging emergency meeting of the Green Party Greece totally exhausted and wanting nothing more than to rest. It was the hottest June on record and my house with its many windows felt like a furnace. Due to a dispute with the installer, it took eleven days to get the air-conditioning fixed. My little dog who could see when I left for Crete, was blind when I returned. I wondered if I would have to put her down and could not bear the thought. I was so tired and so hot that I could not think straight. It was beyond my capacity to even consider moving to a hotel. I didn’t have the energy to unpack. And I didn’t have a car as the old one had been sold and the new one was still at the dealership in Crete. So I couldn’t escape. Instead I tried to hold back tears.

After the air-conditioning was finally fixed, I was able to unpack, wash my clothes, and repack for my return to Crete. The night before I was to leave, I jumped the St. John’s day (midsummer) fires. The locals say they jump the fires for fertility (jumping fires does warm the nether parts) and health. In the photo I am sitting at a table directly behind the first fire, but I soon got up and jumped all three of them, affirming the powers of birth, death, and regeneration.

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