Love and Reciprocity
There is so much despair and grief in our world right now. As I have been cultivating a deepening of my connection with earth, water and sky, I am realizing how we care only for what we love.
The effect of trauma is that we disconnect as a way to avoid being overwhelmed. Many people are so profoundly disconnected that they have slipped into a feeling of hopelessness. It hurts too much to care. It’s too much to let in.
“Suppression of our natural responses to disaster is part of the disease of our time. The refusal to acknowledge these responses causes a dangerous splitting. It divorces our mental calculations from our intuitive, emotional, and biological embeddedness in the matrix of life.” R.J. Clifton, psychologist
For inspiration, we can look to people who have found ways to be engaged and steady in this challenging world. When we’re held in thrall to videos of pain and disaster, that is something we can change.
Stop watching video footage because it alarms our nervous system and convinces us there is no hope. Get your news through print.
Look for what you love and care about then do something to make a change.
18 year old Boyan Slat invented a technology for the Ocean CleanUp.
Some people run for local office and some form groups to lobby for change.
Millions of volunteers around the world are cleaning up local rivers and beaches
People are planting flowers in their yards for butterfly corridors
If you work for a company, ask them to get involved
If you knew for sure that your action would make a difference, what action would you take?
What do you care about? Who would you gather to work together?
There is something for everyone. It might be donating money or volunteering at the local food bank. Not everyone has the stomach for local politics but we can support those who do by voting.
On the environmental front, there are millions of people engaged in cleaning up our world, inventing and investing in technologies to lessen some of the damage. Here are a few examples.
LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants, building “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth and down into the aquifers. They captured enough water in the recent atmospheric river for 106,000 households for a year.
We can honor the wisdom and commitment of Indigenous people and learn about their relationship with the earth, generosity, and reciprocity.
“I offer a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world. This braid is woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most.
It is an intertwining of science, spirit and story that allow us to imagine a different relationship in which people and land are good medicine for each other.
What good is knowledge unless it is coupled with caring?
Science is often an enemy of ecological compassion.
I dream of a world guided by a lens of stories rooted in the revelations of science and framed with an indigenous worldview where matter and spirit are both given voice.
Resources fundamental to our well-being, like water and land and forests, are commonly held rather than commodified. Earth exists not as private property but as a common resource, to be tended with respect and reciprocity for all.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass.
Somatic mindfulness can open a pathway to open hearted courage and commitment.
My disconnection from myself, other people, and from a reciprocal relationship with the living earth feels like …
“Each of us comes from a people who were once indigenous. We can reclaim our membership in the cultures of gratitude that formed our old relationships with the living earth.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
I am connected with the living earth …
I belong on the earth …
I belong with people of the earth …
Where do you belong? What do you love enough to believe it is worth taking action?
Join us Sunday to explore together. Details here.