Yesterday I attended a grief ritual. I went without a particular something to grieve, just interested in exploring what it is to grieve in community. And what came up for me surprised me - my grief that day was for the earth. And it was deep, and strong, and longing to be expressed. It's a feeling I know well, yet a well I had not touched so deeply for a long time.
This morning, I opened a note in my inbox about the global climate march yesterday - the biggest climate march in history. 675,000 people strong around the world. I had totally forgotten about it. Yet clearly, I was participating in my own way, in my own small gathering of a tribe of 100 or so strangers grieving together, supporting each other in our very individual and very shared releasing of pain.
Reflecting on the march was somewhat nostalgic - this kind of action used to be core to "my work", and sometimes I feel far from the environmental movement these days. But yesterday I felt my heart's call still so connected with it, and remembered how my work is still so woven into the same healing tapestry. The way I do the work now is more focused on the spiritual root of the environmental crisis - the creation of earth - of anything really - as other.
As if anything and anyone could ever not be self, and home, and family. But this we believe, and for this we feel pain.
For decades, maybe centuries, there has been a grieving for the time before we created Earth as Other. Maybe this was the time of the ancestors. Maybe it was 'before the fall'. Maybe this was before the development of the pre-frontal cortex. Maybe it was a time before time. Whatever we call that unnamable reference point, I know I have lived with this grief my whole life. I have felt how we have created the capacity for violence and rape and destruction without seeing the truth of it as self-mutilation, self-destruction, self-violation. I have felt my complicitness. I have felt shame, confusion, judgement, guilt, and hopelessness.
In the grief ceremony I worked with these feelings. I wrote them on leaves, I sealed them with spit, I threw them into the collective pile to be grieved, and released, and burned. And with the help of the collective expression, I touched that ancient grief in myself. I grieved with a wail that recalled a kinship with coyote and moon. And I grieved, most of all, for all the moments I have lost access to compassion - to the truth of our interconnection.
There were three altars in the ceremony. One of course was for our grief. The second was for the ancestors. Our griefs and sorrows were, we were told, their food. To release them was to honor the ancestors.
The third was the altar of forgiveness. It was here where I learned the most. It was here I felt the possibility of peace. Forgiveness is most potent when it begins within. Self-forgiveness is true transformation. Forgiving 'others' through forgiving self can be a path to dissolving false boundaries. A meditation. A mantra. A map back home.
Ultimately, what I let go of in the grief ceremony was the illusion of separation. This at least is my heart's earnest prayer. Today I stand committed to seeing and feeling from the truth of the heart, as a way forward. Seeing from and moving toward that place where there is no other.
I have always believed that this time of globalization has both gift and wound in it - yes, we are colonizing and pillaging and destroying the earth and indigenous ways still, to this day, in this time. There is much pain. But we are connecting across the world in new ways too, weaving a web through the ethers of internet connection and facile communication. We are rising up in ways like yesterday's event, part of what Paul Hawken calls humanity's immune response to our ecological crisis. And through climate change I believe we are finally coming to terms with the truth of the depth of our interconnection, and our interdependence. We are getting honest. We are re-attuning to ourselves.
And so when I see these photos of the demonstrators around the world gathering in both celebration and protest, I cry. Joy, gratitude, grief. All of it.
We are weaving a remembrance of the already woven.
I celebrate with my tears.
This morning, I opened a note in my inbox about the global climate march yesterday - the biggest climate march in history. 675,000 people strong around the world. I had totally forgotten about it. Yet clearly, I was participating in my own way, in my own small gathering of a tribe of 100 or so strangers grieving together, supporting each other in our very individual and very shared releasing of pain.
Reflecting on the march was somewhat nostalgic - this kind of action used to be core to "my work", and sometimes I feel far from the environmental movement these days. But yesterday I felt my heart's call still so connected with it, and remembered how my work is still so woven into the same healing tapestry. The way I do the work now is more focused on the spiritual root of the environmental crisis - the creation of earth - of anything really - as other.
As if anything and anyone could ever not be self, and home, and family. But this we believe, and for this we feel pain.
For decades, maybe centuries, there has been a grieving for the time before we created Earth as Other. Maybe this was the time of the ancestors. Maybe it was 'before the fall'. Maybe this was before the development of the pre-frontal cortex. Maybe it was a time before time. Whatever we call that unnamable reference point, I know I have lived with this grief my whole life. I have felt how we have created the capacity for violence and rape and destruction without seeing the truth of it as self-mutilation, self-destruction, self-violation. I have felt my complicitness. I have felt shame, confusion, judgement, guilt, and hopelessness.
In the grief ceremony I worked with these feelings. I wrote them on leaves, I sealed them with spit, I threw them into the collective pile to be grieved, and released, and burned. And with the help of the collective expression, I touched that ancient grief in myself. I grieved with a wail that recalled a kinship with coyote and moon. And I grieved, most of all, for all the moments I have lost access to compassion - to the truth of our interconnection.
There were three altars in the ceremony. One of course was for our grief. The second was for the ancestors. Our griefs and sorrows were, we were told, their food. To release them was to honor the ancestors.
The third was the altar of forgiveness. It was here where I learned the most. It was here I felt the possibility of peace. Forgiveness is most potent when it begins within. Self-forgiveness is true transformation. Forgiving 'others' through forgiving self can be a path to dissolving false boundaries. A meditation. A mantra. A map back home.
Ultimately, what I let go of in the grief ceremony was the illusion of separation. This at least is my heart's earnest prayer. Today I stand committed to seeing and feeling from the truth of the heart, as a way forward. Seeing from and moving toward that place where there is no other.
I have always believed that this time of globalization has both gift and wound in it - yes, we are colonizing and pillaging and destroying the earth and indigenous ways still, to this day, in this time. There is much pain. But we are connecting across the world in new ways too, weaving a web through the ethers of internet connection and facile communication. We are rising up in ways like yesterday's event, part of what Paul Hawken calls humanity's immune response to our ecological crisis. And through climate change I believe we are finally coming to terms with the truth of the depth of our interconnection, and our interdependence. We are getting honest. We are re-attuning to ourselves.
And so when I see these photos of the demonstrators around the world gathering in both celebration and protest, I cry. Joy, gratitude, grief. All of it.
We are weaving a remembrance of the already woven.
I celebrate with my tears.
