The dead wombat has been there for a couple of days now. The stench tells the story, as do the flies. The painted stripe down its back is another thing – a sign to those who care, that this one has been checked. Its pouch is empty; no babies need to be rescued from its dead body. Drive on, like everybody else does. We’re in a rush, or going too fast, or we’ve just seen it so often it doesn’t register anymore.
Roadkill – it’s an everyday reality for those who drive, especially long distances on country roads. It’s the collateral damage of the road trip. And it’s a sign of the times, a symbol of how we live, the things we can’t change, the fast pace of modern life and the way we treat the rest of the world (aka nature). We cut straight lines across the land, just as we do across the seas and skies, in order to get from one place to the next as fast as humanly possible.* Because we have business to do, people to meet, more immediate concerns than caring for the land and the planet that is our home. More important stuff.
That’s how we got here – to the precipice of the ecological emergency, which afflicts the entire earth now, the cliff over which we are hurtling since the feedback loops started to kick in. We burn greenhouse gases and turn the plants and animals into agribusiness and treat them all like grist to the mill. Any cereal grain or docile beast unfortunate enough to be domesticated has been ‘farmed’ – or more accurately, industrially exploited – to the point of complete depersonalisation.
You couldn’t do to battery hens, pigs, or feedlot cattle what is routinely done on behalf of obscene profits if you actually had to face what these animals feel. We couldn’t decimate the insect population and pour countless trillions of litres of chemical run off, of pesticides and fertilisers, into the sea, creating desolate coastlines and Great Barren Reefs, if we cared about the rest of the earth’s population.
It’s all about the wheat, the rice, the cotton; not the birds, the bees, the native grasses or traditional remedies that used to grow here. Where? Anywhere.
This dead wombat is one of the dozens I see every week on my work commutes. Smashed to death by a metal bullet hurtling down the road at 100kmh, another human being at the wheel. Almost inevitably, we won’t stop to witness the passing of another life at the hands of modern society. It’s just what we do. Kill thoughtlessly, randomly, impersonally, as an inevitable side effect of our hustle and bustle. This is what we have done to our planet and home.
Roadkill is a symbol for our times.
For more on the mythology of straight lines, see the ecomythic doco “City Living, Nature Calling” here.
Initiation makes us into something we weren’t before. Successful ritual transforms our consciousness, expanding our minds beyond a little circle of desire and gratification, connecting us to the more-than-human world of nature all around us, the ecosystem we depend upon, the creatures who are our earthly kin, as well as connecting us to the spirit of life in the cosmos itself. This is what we used to get consistently in premodern society and what some people in more traditional societies, which are more resistant to the modern disease of disconnection, still get.
For those of us born into large-scale modernising cultures, religion tries to fill the gap, which is left as we turn away from this world of animistic life, but it gets so cold in those dusty halls and generally misses the meaty, gristly, blood-pumping point of the matter. That is, the living matter …
The best book I ever read on this subject was “Nature and Madness” by Paul Shepard. He pointed out what we had lost, how the turn towards technological domination of the planet came at such a great cost, as we allowed our initiation rituals to become severed from the word around us, and led by new types of elders, whose loyalties were to king and army rather than our fellow animals, our ancient homes in the forests and the mountains, the deserts and the seas. It’s a great book, but like my PhD on the meaning of light, it spends most of its time diagnosing the problem, leaving us to find solutions.
So I wrote this song, as a hint towards some things we could be doing to take our power back, as a signpost, a call to arms, an ecopoetic symbolic evocation of that world, as it calls us back to ourselves and to its living significance, within and without …
If we have finally hit the point where we have to admit that our esteemed leaders are not listening – to us, to climate science, to the voice of hope for a peaceful, healthy earth – then it is probably also a good time to let ourselves synch in to a new way of evolving. I’m going to try to outline this in under 300 words, by using dot points, to illustrate that we are still capable of profound possibilities in a digital age hurtling towards some very uncivilised outcomes.
We are here.
This means our ancestors survived and evolved successfully, across a myriad of different environments, and we can do the same. But to do this, we need to …
Adapt to reality.
Our planetary climate is heating up, drying out in many places and flooding more in others, making every micro-climate more challenging. But …
It’s business as usual at the top.
Business and politics are following the military/industrial complex model of colonisation, appealing to the lowest common denominator of our worst tendencies like greed and fear, and consolidating their power over divided peoples at the same time. So …
We have to do two things at once:
We have to get organised, hold the powers that be to account, demand action that combats climate change by taking care of our environment and treating all people (as well as animals, plants and places) with dignity and respect – all of which sounds very boring but necessary; and
We can get back in touch with our ‘deep time’ selves, as well as our fleeting sense of being alive in this very moment, right where we are, in this mind and body. This could be the fun thing that balances out the serious stuff with a blend of timelessness and existential awareness: that realisation that we are consciousness embodied, a deep time experiment in primate bodies, with the capacity for self-awareness, able to perceive complex problems and solve them with win/win solutions, social animals with personal identities and mystic abilities and the ABILITY TO SEE THE ENORMITY OF THE UNIVERSE THROUGH INSANELY POWERFUL TELESCOPES AND IMAGINE OUR PLACE IN ETERNITY ALL AT ONCE!
OK, i got a bit excited there, but watch this video and be reminded of how incredibly, unimaginably vast the universe is. And that’s just the physical one we can sense with our limited beings. Life is beyond words. Let’s party like there’s nowhere else to go*
*The universe may be very large but we can’t get anywhere else in it. The scales are too big. This is home.
NB: sorry i went over 300 words. But hey, get off the internet and read some Virgil or Shakespeare. That’ll test your attention span 🙂
PS i tried to talk about this video once during a public presentation in Hong Kong and CHOKED ON MY TEARS! Egad. I’ve performed better, but at least i found out how i really felt about the universe – cosmic!
We can’t all live in a green oasis – modern life separates us from our innate connection to nature all the time! So, what are the best ways to make sure we feel connected to nature every day?
When we spend time somewhere we love, it’s relatively easy to drop into a feeling of deep connection with nature; to breathe easier, feel the breeze on our faces, smell the roses (or native flowers!) and feel an intimate part of the universe and this planet filled with life.
But if we want to take that feeling into every day – and who doesn’t? – we need to practice some techniques and remember them while we drive, type, shop, get kids to school, and live in our modern world of buildings and cars, fridges and microwaves, and everything else that makes life easier but also distances us from the natural world we evolved in.
So, to help you keep that feeling you love, here are my Top 5 Tips! Please fee free to share the love, by adding to them in the Comments section below:
Breath: I start every meditation class with a focussed awareness on the breath. Wisdom traditions the world over assert the close relationship between breath and mind; both are seemingly immaterial (thought can fly anywhere at any time it would seem!), but both also have a dramatic, physical effect on the way we think and respond to the world. By practising breath awareness, we can make that effect one that reconnects us to the freedom, beauty and majesty of life in each moment.
Light: in just over 100 years of electric light, we have almost totally lost our deep connection to the cycles of sun, moon and stars, and the way we used to navigate our environment according to those daily cycles. How do we get back in touch with our primal connection to light? Start by getting up early enough to watch a sunrise, and take time to say thank you to that great golden orb that powers all life on earth! Then, in the evening before bed, why not try bowing to the moon (or howl, if the inspiration hits and the neighbours aren’t too close!), while reflecting upon the cycles of life that brought you to this moment. Finally, spend some time gazing into the night sky, remember how lucky we are to be here in the vastness of space, and don’t forget to wonder as you admire the stars.
Bodily movements: the way we move is an expression of our relationship to nature, both the inner nature of the way we feel in our bodies and the way we move through our environment, in terms of our spacial awareness. I found the combination of martial arts training and working in hospitality, where I had to be aware of who might be walking around the corner at any time with hot plates in their hands, drilled into me a consistent awareness of where I am in terms of what is around me. I practiced being ready for anything and sensing what might be coming next, in a physical way, and it feels good; like a hunter sensing prey in the wilderness.
Mindful eating and drinking: take time to focus on what you are consuming. Give thanks for it and don’t take it for granted. This is one of the traps of the modern world; things just appear in our shops and on our plates and we forget the chain of events that brought it to us, from farmers planting seeds to the sky magically allowing fresh water to fall onto fertile soil. Practice awareness of all that comes together to bring you that meal – including the technologies of production and delivery. (And try this free Nature Calling meditation)
Stories: we are all used to listening to the voice/s in our heads, as we daydream, talk about ourselves and others, judge and compare what we like and don’t like, remember the past with regret or longing, look forward to the future with expectation or dread, and so on … but what about listening to the ancient, archetypal patterns, the stories of our cultural DNA, the voices within that could lead us back to deeper connection with nature at all times? These voices can teach us to be attentive to our personal habits and predispositions, to evolve beyond our limits, to trust our intuition and be wary of danger when we sense it approaching, to treat the earth with love if not reverence, to take care of others as if we were all connected … in short, to be a better ecological citizen and a more balanced and centred individual in one.
I’ll extend each of these points out to more detail in forthcoming blog posts. In the meantime, please feel free to get in touch if you want to learn more about any of these options or more. There is a Nature Calling Online Course, if you would like to try some of these practices in more depth. Also, on my Ecoretreats, we also add simple but effective rituals to keep that connection alive, no matter else happens in our day. Check them out here and take that feeling of freedom and endless possibility back into your every day!
Mindfulness is a state of being, or at least it becomes one if you practice it. Being more aware of the moment, we feel more alive. The smells, the glint of a button in the sunlight, the sound of a bird chirping as we walk by … these are the sorts of things we notice if we get a chance to, just before we die. Don’t leave yourself open to too much regret; wake up to these beautiful passing phenomena right now.
As well as opening you up more consistently to the moment of here and now, a meditation practice can help you to become more aware of the patterns that constantly run through your mind and model the way you think, that speak as the voices and act as the judgements and assumptions that keep us limited by the way our personal history has shaped us. A meditation practice helps you to evolve in consciousness over time, if you stick at it; as well as open you up to surprising levels of awareness in no time at all.
This video doesn’t distill my teachings around the skills that can help you meditate better, but it gives the flavour, and so it might help you to set the mood for sitting in quiet contemplation. Sit in peace and walk with compassion.
Geoff Berry will present an experiential session of meditation to celebrate Mindfulness Day on Wednesday September the 12th at the Narooma Library from 10.30am. He also offers meditations skills and guidance via www.naturecalling.org
You couldn’t do to battery hens, pigs, or feedlot cattle what is routinely done on behalf of obscene profits if you actually had to face what these animals feel. We couldn’t decimate the insect population and pour countless trillions of litres of chemical run off, of pesticides and fertilisers, into the sea, creating desolate coastlines and Great Barren Reefs, if we cared about the rest of the earth’s population.
This dead wombat is one of the dozens I see every week on my work commutes. Smashed to death by a metal bullet hurtling down the road at 100kmh, another human being at the wheel. Almost inevitably, we won’t stop to witness the passing of another life at the hands of modern society. It’s just what we do. Kill thoughtlessly, randomly, impersonally, as an inevitable side effect of our hustle and bustle. This is what we have done to our planet and home.
