We packed the kids into the car at 4am, terribly nervous at driving into the face of unknown fire fronts, blocked roads, possibly a tortuous death, but prepared to risk it to make it to somewhere on the other side of this inferno. On New Year’s Eve we prepared to defend our home from ember attacks, with garden hoses and buckets of water. We had no power, no phone or internet service, and no idea of what was coming our way … we were in between Moruya and Batemans Bay:
This is what was coming towards Broulee, where i live. We were already in that thick smoke, so we couldn’t know there was much worse coming. Looking towards my home from the other direction.
We’ve been living with very heavy smoke for weeks, so low visibility had become the norm. I had digested the previous loss of some favoured forests and places, although i hadn’t properly grieved them yet. I still haven’t. When i return from my evacuation, i’m going to have to.
But in the meantime, i need to hear the voice of the muses, as they sing the song of the earth, as it cries. Hear something ecomythic, which matches the fear our kids are going to experience, as they awaken to the Australia – and the world – we have made for them. Something that gets beyond the sexiness of the flames:
… and integrates the death they leave behind them:
How my beloved local beach looks now: ashen.
But really, nothing can prepare them. I try to weave a fine line between informing my kids about the world they will inherit and making sure i don’t scare the living daylights out of them. I turned my ‘prepper/survivalist’ tendencies towards helping to build community resilience rather than retreating to a bush bunker/treehouse combo. In the same way, i turned my Zen monkishness away from dreams of a mountain hideaway to an active life in my community, leading meditation circles and integrating evolutionary adaptations into everyday life. I sing about the apocalyptic times we are hurtling towards as well as about the joy of being in the body, as a self-aware primate on a beautiful planet. I try to integrate what i know from my specific area of expertise – the symbolic life of human consciousness in the context of our relationship with nature – into modern life for anyone who will listen. It’s not very lucrative, but … here we go again.
The Apocalypse, in mythic terms, is both an end time and an experience of revelation; an awakening. For Christians, it involved a rapture in their God’s company. I’ve written before that the term apocalypse now should be seen as something more rational, an actual degradation of our earth in physical terms, an unfolding of the logic of capitalism; while the truly ‘mythic’ leap of faith today is taken by those who still believe in the profiteering dream of unending growth. For the ecological apocalypse we are now witnessing to carry its truest meaning, it must lead to an awakening of the human spirit to the true meaning and value of our beautiful, rare planetary jewel of a home.
And for this to occur, it’s the song of the Muses that has to come through now: those transcendent ladies of the night, whose voices embody earth spirit, whose intelligence is celestial in nature, who flow with the fractal dance of the cosmos even while they stand with those who fight injustice. What do they sing now?
I’ve been praying to hear their words ever since i moved to the coast. I felt their influence directly in every song i’ve composed since, starting with my ode to the salty spirits of the ocean. The Muses love with abandon, they embrace everything, and in their embrace the petty greeds, hatreds and ignorance of the human ego are melted away. The way of the future, they sing, is falling back in love with the earth.
Seek your way through the clutter of human confusion, they advise, to that place where the spirit of life courses through your veins, rises up your spine, emanates from your DNA and passes along the sacred path from generation to generation, from the ancestors to the children: be a part of the transmission as it is embodied in human consciousness.
The Muses sing: fight for the earth, nourish your home, tackle injustice, be the warrior who stands for what is right on the playing field of life. Demand better of those who are responsible for making decisions about how the purse of your nation is spent; make sure they care for the frail, the elderly, the children and our home. Hold them accountable if they don’t. And they don’t.
Calm the mind and focus your anger.
Love your kindred spirits, your families, your home, your breath. Hold onto whatever you hold sacred and dear but be prepared to let it all go. Face death with poise. Prepare your soul to transform into another dimension of loving embrace for life as you enter another plane. Appreciate the little drops of water as dew bedecks the grasses and rain runs along the leaves. Be in awe of the power of nature, the fury of fire, the stellar force of our sun behind and within it, the explosions of volcanoes, the surge of the tides, the subtle draw of lunar magnetism, your sense of your body rising and falling with every breath, the twitching of nerves, the relaxation following a good stretch, the way mist rises from tea in the morning.
Love aimlessly but fight with determination. Meditate upon what gifts have been bestowed upon you, take nothing for granted, but don’t let your thankfulness make you complacent with what can be transformed into something better. Glow from within. Remember your dreams. Stay in touch with friends and remain generous with colleagues. Inspire those around you. Connect with the spirit of life within and without. Walk in peace while you can. Be prepared for anything. Love.
*NB: Please consider Subscribing at the top right of this page, and follow Nature Calling – Deepening Connection to Nature on FB, as i’ll be posting updates on how to deal with the trauma, the depth psychology and ecomythic aspects of what is happening to Australia and the world right now; ie, how we recover, within and without.
The School Strike for Climate started by climate action heroine Greta Thunberg has spread to the adult world (as predicted here in March). So now we can throw ourselves into support of the movement without worrying about whether or not we’re supposed to wait for our children to lead. Salutary times!
In an attempt to get as many people across the world to join the strike, to normalise civil disobedience and turn the insane tide of self-destruction to a global mobilisation of climate action, i have drafted a letter. It’s designed to get our colleagues, bosses, clients, customers and everyone involved in our workplaces and households to join with us in support of planetary care, without risking harm to the vulnerable in our communities.
Please feel free to adapt to your workplace and share widely! Start with the CEO or top management, see if you can get organizational support, then share with everyone else. If we follow the protocols of our workplaces we might just help to transform ‘business as usual’ forever!
*NB: this letter is written for the allied health and caring professions. Contact me for help with adapting it to your industry or field! naturecallinggeoff@gmail.com
General Strike for Climate – Friday 20th of September – a call for support
We in the allied health, mental health, social work and community development spheres do important work. We help people: to heal and find wellness, to grow as individuals and together, to make a better world. Through our work we show we care and because of this simple fact, our work is important, to us and to those we help. In our fields, we also have to take time to take care of ourselves, to avoid burnout or compassion fatigue. How we find that balance between self-care and helping work is a matter of personal import, which can be helped or hindered depending on our workplace and its culture.
Beyond this personal level of helping and healing work, staff and carers in these fields may also find alignment with a position that critiques the structural inequalities that make magnify the damage we encounter daily. The ‘facts of life’ that create inequality in the first place; the systems that marginalise those who don’t fit mainstream ideals, or leave behind those who aren’t on the side of the ‘winners’ in a competitive society, that let them slip through the cracks when someone else can’t be there to hold them together. There are historically traceable reasons why so many members of modern society are simply left behind by impersonal forces of ‘progress’ and development. We can choose whether or not we want to be more informed about these factors, just as we can choose to side with inner faith and our resolute determination to help regardless of the history that out us here.
But there is one situation growing more deadly by the day that none of us can afford to ignore anymore. This is anthropogenic climate change – the way the planet is heating up, due to the enormous amount of greenhouse gases being burnt by modern society, and the devastating impacts this is already having on people, on the environment and on the animals and plants that are becoming extinct in frightening numbers and with increasing rapidity. We are involved today in a struggle that is no longer ideological (about beliefs or ideas), or historical, but scientifically validated as an existential threat to living species on this planet right now. This is the most important moment to be alive in the history of humanity. No longer do our actions only matter to our local communities – although they still do. We must now give in to the call to “Think Globally and Act Locally”, for this emerging crisis affects us all, including our environment, our atmosphere, and the living world of plants, animals and other lifeforms that make up our beautiful jewel of a planet.
In the areas of allied health and social work, we already focus on the immediate needs of those around us. We work with love, compassion and kindness to alleviate suffering and promote healing and growth. On Friday the 20th of September, we are being asked – by leaders in the environmental movement, by school students who can see their very future crumbling before them, by climate scientists and communicators the world over – to strike for climate action. I call upon you now to
• commit to this action and to make your commitment public;
• talk with your colleagues about how to keep everybody safe (rostering skeleton staff who are prepared to stay on at work to ensure public safety while others strike);
• make a statement of support for the general strike’s aims, which are to call upon world leaders in politics and industry to support serious and immediate climate action such as complete transformation of energy to a carbon neutral world; and to
• enable your organisation, department or corporation to professionally and compassionately manage this day in support of climate action, as meaningful participants in the most important movement of our times, in ways that promote the transformation of our own work practices in alignment with a carbon neutral global society.
Yours in civil disobedience, Geoff Berry
*NB: Please feel free to use this form and sign off with your own name, to adapt in any way you see fit as long as you don’t edit out the environmentally activist intent, and share as widely and freely as you can.
In Anima, Thom Yorke follows a trail that was set out for his soul when his European ancestors crossed paths in the great forest.
For this new audiovisual feast from Paul Thomas Anderson is fairy tale, folks, mark my words. And as a writer who has long explored the deep trails made across our psyches by the play of light and darkness since time immemorial, the idea of ancient tales with modern significance is something dear to my heart. This isn’t myth as falsehood, but myth as powerful storytelling, opening doors to our secret longings, our hidden hopes, our romantic selves.
So how does this modern mythmaking work? Well, where once wise old crones shared secrets beneath the wild spreading branches of an oak or elm, or curious children allowed themselves to become enchanted by the thrilling call of a songbird until they were lost in the forest, Yorke is drawn along this heartfelt tale by similar instincts. His character in this romance is on the scent of the chase, following a girl of his dreams, yearning to return her lunch case, which is as precious to him as any other form of lost treasure could be. By the time he has woken up on his crowded train, dodged countless commuters on crammed escalators, and faced other barriers to his distant love interest, Yorke is following the golden imperative of the mythic journey: the hero is inspired to set things right, by returning the case and maybe meeting someone to care about in the deal. The foes and barriers, the challenges to his path, the obstacles that threaten to derail the fruition of his dream … these are all inevitable in the hunt, or life is not being lived. The thorns cross the path, the villain stands in the way, the mountain must be climbed. Our goal may seem just out of reach, but it is in such a quest that we are reminded of our power, as Joseph Campbell so often reminded us.
But while the chase is timeless, the imagery of Anima reflects our new ‘natural environment’: the city. The opening, submerged in the subway, enfolds us within a train shooting along a tunnel, like a probe into our everyday underworld. We don’t want to over-analyze the film – as Martin Shaw wrote, the best stories remain dark around the edges, they leave us in mystery, grappling with our own inner truths and conflicts, unsure rather than overly confident in our self-knowledge. But the nodding of the commuters, Yorke included, seems to stand as the inevitable process of socialization, a dance we all join in order to get by, a way of being that lets us be in the world. Turning it into dance is the magic that art, in this case film, allows us – to settle into the truths of our lives while also making them part of a greater whole. We play the game, we know we play the game, but we know we are also more than this, that we come from a place of unlimited potential and ultimately we belong in that place, as much as we do here, in our world of limit and dissolution.
In this world, Yorke and Anderson play with the familiar while feeling out its edges. As soon as Yorke glimpses his Anima – a Jungian term for the feminine within – his otherwise tired character is opened out into new worlds of excitement, with the possibility that everyday life might not leave us flattened but invigorated; that something might change for the better, after all. The chase includes a classic flying dream sequence, as well as epic scenery, and Yorke’s character responds with passing episodes of passive acceptance, fleeting anger, playful exploration and hopeless resignation in turns. All of these human responses are bound within another mythic signalling: towards the wonder of awe. Can it be true? Is it real? The dream of Anima speaks of these gentle inner experiences, which we all know and hold dear but too often let slide along the rigmarole of modern life.
The eventual meeting, the reuniting of two lost souls who complement each other in the endless dance of being around being, rolling along a laneway wall, is a testament to the hope of our unquenchable longing. Anima draws us down and reminds us where we come from and where we belong. This is Home, a place we have sometimes forgotten is also a planet with limits, forests and lakes, seas and other creatures that need protecting.
Whatever parts of us face the world – our Persona to society, family and each other – find relief in the depths of Anima. Psyche, or mind; self, the individual, you person, the mind/body, your vehicle for getting by … that person seeks their dance partner beneath the surface, where she lives and breathes and waits for us to remember. Take the trip, again …
Geoff Berry wrote his PhD on the symbol of light, his MA on dreams and myths, and sings along similar themes with Melbourne post-punk band SEVERINS.
Not all Severins songs are about cosmic power, depth psychology, ecosoirituality, animism and the like. Some are about plumbing. The unrelenting pressures of parenthood, including showing loving kindness to children even when they are unravelling our patience faster than a kitten works over a ball of wool, only not so cute. The need to clean up after ourselves and take care of water. The desire to just get the job done, as best we can, and then put up our feet. You know, the everyday stuff we can all relate to (with a subtle message of the cosmic psyche business woven throughout – I can’t help myself 🙂
The big gig where we play this psychedelic post-punk indie art rock for the world, the album launch for the Severins vinyl record “Reconnect”, is coming soon.
Friday the 28th of June at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne, Australia. If you’re there, be thrilled by a cosmic wondershow, a passionate call to arms for the ecospiritual rebellion, and a laugh, to be sure. Listen to all Severins songs and check out some film clips, including a new one and some archival footage of our sonic madness, here.
The Plug – lyrics
I wanna hold this water, Do I gotta? Yeah I oughta
But I got a screaming daughter, I gotta get my house in order
We used up all this water, Now it’s dirty and it’s sordid
The toys yeah they’re my daughter’s, I gotta sort this bricks and mortar
Coz it’s in and it’s out and it’s up and it’s down
It’s all over the shop and i’ve gone out and bought the wrong part
Now it’s swirling around, if I slide the blade under
I can take out the broken bit and then I can get some relief, yeah, and put up my feet
If I cut it too short then I’ve really mucked up
But if I leave it too long I’ll be doing this over again, yeah, all over again
Coz it’s in and it’s out and it’s up and it’s down
It’s all over the shop and i’ve gone out and bought the wrong part, again,
When we think about the lack of action on climate change, as well as the ongoing rush to strip the planet of ‘resources’ and thus continue the devastation of the environment regardless of our obvious need to take care of the earth, we can easily slip into despair. Seeing as world politics including Australian ‘leadership’ seems to be going in the wrong direction, blind hope is not going to help us. So what do we do?
Aside from turning to the good things that are happening in our communities – and there are plenty of them! – we can return to the breath. Leave the societal realm behind and breathe into the body. This gets us back to the experience of awareness, of the one state we can definitely change for the better – our own body and mind. Deep breath awareness not only relaxes the mind and thereby reduces stress, it can also lower our heart rate and create space so that we are not merely reacting to the world at the moment, but exploring a space of freedom and creativity as well. We can also give some air to feelings that have compounded around the issue that has wound us up; we may feel sadness and grief, frustration and anger … this is a good opportunity to can allow ourselves to be human, to have the feeling and then to let it go (don’t rush!).
In the body, when we have breathed through our tension or anxiety, we can find comfort; we can recognise whatever needs to be changed, what it takes to be in our power, to be ready for action, to stand for what’s right, to be poised as an animate being capable of self-awareness … and when we have reignited these potentials, we can go further, breathe into the depths of the mind/body beyond the personal self, to the core truth of being human, which is that we are also more than this; we are interdependent beings, open to the elements through breath and ingestion, made up of DNA shared by plants and other animals and mitochondria and clay and water and salts …
Through breath we can find psychological freedom and return to the intertwined mystery of human being: we are consciousness embodied in self-aware primate form, both completely dependent on nature for our lives and also capable of experiencing ourselves beyond the limits of time and space. This is the paradox of being human; we are only here and now and also always more than this. Just like light and consciousness, metaphors for each other … but that’s another story, for another time.
For right now, return to breath, rebalance the self and remember the more-than-self, and return to the world ready to fight the good fight for another day. Beyond all else …
