It’s 2020 and Covid-19 has sucked the life out of so much.
We can’t go out and play together.
Everything has become a challenge worthy of a strategic planning meeting: work, school, shopping, home.
But let’s not forget that this is just the start, as far as climate science has been telling us for decades.
This is the carbon we released in the 90s. Spiking towards the sky, swirling up the stormclouds, breeding new diseases, creating the conditions for the worst bushfires in Australian history. Even the original peoples, here for tens of thousands of years, don’t have a story for that kind of damage. And if they don’t have a story for it – the people that were here when you could walk across Bass Strait from the mainland to what we now call Tasmania, who hunted across the plains of what is now Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne before the last great deluge – then it is truly unprecedented.
Now that we’re beginning to see what anthropogenic climate change looks like, we might as well get used to it, as we have to prepare to be lashed by the 30 years’ worth of carbon that has been discharged since this greenhouse began getting pumped full of hot gas.
The storms that lashed the Buddha, as he faced his final spiritual battle before the complete and irreversible awakening that would be the apotheosis of a lifetime of meditative practice, can be seen as metaphorical. Whether they were psychic entities tormenting him towards his great overcoming, or real elements of malevolence, the earth continued to live and breathe beyond the scene. Our reality is the ecological version – real storms and the breakdown of the physical world – but maybe it’s time to treat them as a spiritual challenge too.
To prepare best for the worst, stop thinking things are going to get better. That optimism will leave you victim to reality, shocked with every new assault upon your vision of the good life, unprepared for the horrors to come. 2019 was the best year you are ever going to remember – at least on a planetary scale. You may have better ones personally, but we’re on the downward slide now kids. Get used to it. Breathe deeply and find calm in the midst of the storm. Lean into it. Awaken the Warrior of Peace and Spirit.
While it’s also not enough to find solace in being protected by a great serpent, like the Buddha was, when the storms become truly threatening, it’s certainly one of the things we could be doing with our time, while we still have it. Keep agitating for change but balance that out with some concentration on spiritual liberation. This is your one wild life.
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Whatever we think we know about the immediate future of humanity and our increasingly beleaguered planet, one thing is for sure: in the face of ecosystem breakdown, new viral threats, and the myriad of other crises that continue to mount, our expectations about life will be continuously tested from this point on. And there’s one experience that inevitably follows all the others we are set to face – the trail of panic, anger, shock and awe at each mounting catastrophe, from unprecedented bushfires to devious new infections like the Coronavirus – and that is grief.
We were shocked at the
extent and ferocity of Australia’s fires this southern summer and we are now
showing signs of outright panic in the face of Coronavirus and its resistance
to containment. Given the lack of political will for climate action, we can
expect more communities to be torn apart, both by supercharged climate chaos
and by less dramatic but just as shocking events such as empty supermarket
shelves (wait until the crop failures start to kick in!).
Now is the time to begin to face this new reality. We are at the end of one era and the start of another. As climate scientists proclaimed, the halcyon days of the Holocene are over; welcome to the Anthropocene, wherein humanity has become so technologically powerful and prolific that we threaten the very viability of our planet’s atmosphere. This is a time to demand leadership that cares about our future; but it also a time that cries out for tears, as we relearn how to process our grief at what is happening to us, to our loved ones and our world.
Members of the community were invited to come together and participate in a grief ritual to assist healing after the bushfires. Held at Rosedale, a badly burnt suburb of Batemans Bay on the far south coast of NSW the event was facilitated by Geoff Berry, an ecotherapist and organiser of the local branch of Extinction Rebellion. “People need the chance to really feel and express their grief after crisis, loss or trauma of any kind. Modern society doesn’t do this very well and we need to fill that gap.” said Geoff. People were invited to bring something that they held sacred, or that connected them with whatever mixture of feelings the fires had brought. The ceremony offered a safe space to share feelings and featured some of the classic elements of grief rituals the world over – giving thanks, connecting with the spirit of place, singing together and a water element for cleansing. Pictured: Ecotherapist Geoff Berry leads the group at Rosedale beach. All photos generously taken by Gillianne Tedder.
In the south east of Australia, the fires are finally out. There are even full dams on some farms, bringing welcome relief to farmers and animals on the land. But even as bushfire is replaced by Coronavirus in the 24/7 news cycle, the more mundane, long work begins: of clean up, rebuild, the counting of losses, and the healing, which will be ongoing now for months, years, even generations in some cases. The loss of small businesses in regional areas affected by the fires is already a steady trickle and with it, increased unemployment and heightened risk of mental health issues. This won’t make headlines, unless it adds up to a big enough number to create some fear and trembling about lost GDP.
Pictured: the devastation at Rosedale.
But as we Australians drag ourselves out of astonishment at the fact that we just joined our Pacific Island neighbours at the coalface of the climate crisis, some of us have decided to do something about it. In Batemans Bay, a small town known as the starting point of endless south coast holidays over the years, a small but dedicated local group of the Extinction Rebellion recently held a grief ritual against a stark backdrop of blackened trees and ocean vistas. As with the international group, they protest the lack of political will to act on the climate crisis that is exacerbating it daily. But enacting a grief ritual is also a time-honoured, even ancestral tradition, which is designed to help people affected by loss and trauma.
Pictured: group participation in the grief ritual.
Grief is a natural human
response to tragedy, so it’s strange that it’s not a more prominent part of
current discussions about how we learn to live with our dangerous new world.
Modern westerners are better at getting on with business, reacting and moving
on, than we are at dealing with deep feelings of loss. But no matter where we
stand on anthropogenic climate change, we will be undone, at some stage, by
grief – and this is not all a bad thing.
Grieving allows us to feel what is happening to us in a way that opens up the possibility of something new, as we displace the power of our loss. Since time immemorial, grief has been ritualised, given time and space so that it can be processed as fully as possible. This doesn’t need to be complicated; all that is necessary for grief to be more fully experienced is that it is given breathing space and a supportive environment. When we do this collectively, we confirm each other as well. But we don’t only need to do this for ourselves and for each other: if we want to become adequate ecological citizens, we also need to explore grief for Country, as the Australian Aboriginal peoples call the lands, the animals, the trees, the rivers and even the soils we live on and with. This is something we modern westerners definitely haven’t been very good at acknowledging. Now is the time to admit that blind spot.
Pictured: This can also be done without close interpersonal contact; the grief ritual was performed before the Covid-19 reality and could easily be adapted this new scenario.
Enacting a grief ritual on
Country after the monumental losses suffered this summer is touching material.
The rites follow an ancient pattern, of joining in a circle, speaking
truthfully about our deepest feelings and fears, singing a song of grief, and
allowing tears of deep sadness and rage to spill freely upon the sand. Participants
are invited to bring along an item that connects them to Country and a bowl of
water is used to add a timeless ceremonial element.
We commemorate our losses in
a way that is timeless yet timely, ancestral yet relevant, personal and
collective. Maybe even in a way that will help us to reconcile our relationship
with the first peoples of this Country – and with the earth itself.
We will not be afraid to talk about the climate crisis that fuelled this fire season, as the atmosphere of the earth is warmed by over a degree already, resulting in the extensive and damaging changes we are seeing today. We will face the truth as courageously as possible.
Pictured Geoff Berry, Trish and Jesse on Rosedale Beach
Because the truth may be bitter medicine, unwelcome in an era when corporate-owned media wants to divert our attention from the most dire threat to our planet we have ever faced. But, as the old saying goes, the truth will set us free. Free to act on climate, to build community, to be as resilient and self-sufficient as possible, because our governments have failed us, beholden as they are to vested corporate interests.
We must continue to demand better from politics and business, but we must also take time to grieve for what we have lost, to clear the way for active hope and regeneration, to be refreshed by the beauty of our love for the earth and the life it supports.
Dr Geoffrey Berry is the Australian Representative to the International Ecopsychology Society, an Extinction Rebellion leader, and CEO of the South Coast NSW Aboriginal Elders Association. His day job is in building a trauma-informed caring community. **Please feel free to Share and Subscribe!**
