this world...and what we must save...

Been thinking a lot these days on life and love and the big why's of it all.

Being a dreamer has not always been a dream these past fifty years...only a million and one times of being told I was wrong to believe that things can change for the better, told that the world is a harsh and unforgiving place that will not ever change so just get used to it...and yet, here I am turning fifty this week and still dreaming of a brighter tomorrow where suffering of the masses is eased and the goodness, beauty and rights of nature are honoured by humans the world over.

Author of a neat book I read during the pandemic, visionary Jeremy Lent, imagined the character "Uncle Bob" as the person we all know who nay-says the dreamers of a better world:

’Let’s face it', Uncle Bob declares to the group, ‘it’s a dog eat dog world out there. Every man for himself. For all your ideas about making the world a better place, when it comes down to it, everyone’s just interested in their own skin. It’s a rat race. That’s the way all of nature works. That’s how we’ve been programmed. The survival of the fittest.’

Jeremy Lent The Web of Meaning

Pollyanna-ish or not, I continue to step into each new day with a heart filled with gratitude and wonder at the goodness and beauty of this world all the while acknowledging the difficult truths we are collectively living in the here and now.

So what is it that sustains this dreamer's heart?

One thing that helps is knowing that there are other dreamers out there who are doing the honourable work of bearing witness to new and brighter ways forward than the life sucking darkness of this era that threatens to swallow us whole.

At our current trajectory, humanity is headed for catastrophe. But it doesn't have to be that way. If we want to steer our civilization on another course, though, it's not enough to make a few incremental changes here and there. We need to take a long, hard look at the faulty ideas that have brought us to this place and reimagine them. We need a new worldview--one that is based on sturdy foundations.

Jeremy Lent The Web of Meaning

That this Island I live on is filled with beautiful seers who proclaim the quiet beauty here and others who take action to protect and care for this place helps sustain me. This and the beauty of the dream itself: nature being better understood as a complex, living being that we are part of, not a resource to be exploited as it is under capitalism sustains me...I am sustained on a daily basis by the kindness and compassion my family and I receive and that I wish to have softly land on every doorstep...people able to meet their basic needs with dignity...land-back...

These dream gifts I see as inherently doable and already dwelling in the realm of possibility awaiting our courage to create or reveal them...this is what sustains me...

This...

and the ever- nourishing, great beauty of nature...a beauty that does not even ask for our noticing...only that we grant space for its existence. Habitat protection, biodiversity flourishing...degrowth...sharing and caring via commoning.

How beautiful it can all be! And it is all within the realm of what is possible. A doable dream.

There are many fantastic living templates for all the good changes...and when we lean in with trusting hearts and soften to the mystery as participants rather than puppets we become one with what is created and we create more oneness via our inclusion.

We are not separate from nature...we are one.

Beauty...beauty...beauty...and the wonder available to us when we begin with "what is"...the incredible gifts of being present to the "what is-ness" of the world...mindfulness, belly breaths, pinching of herbs, drinking tea...the thirty second hug, washing dishes while washing dishes...mindfulness is an interesting and powerfully sustaining anchor for this dreaming mind of mine.

This...and the poignant pondering that if we are not working for love what are we working for?

Out on a nature walk the other afternoon I was stopped short by the great beauty of the wildflowers lining the red clay road at Waterside by Pownal Bay. I quite literally found myself falling under the buzz and hum of summertime bees and wildflower blossoms' spell. Delicate heads of Queen Anne's Lace in various stages of openness nodding seaside reminding me that there is a season for all manner of openness; red creeping tendrils of Silverweed trailing their way onto the road speaking to the power of quietly putting yourself out there; smoky blues of late blooming Chicory telling of the bittersweet truths we have to live and that it is possible to do so with grace and dignity.

It seems that in mid life, the only truth I feel confident naming as truth in my heart is that there is great value in falling in love with the natural world over and over again. And that being in a state of love makes me want to protect that which I love all the more...

Doing what I love, believing that there is always room for increased goodness and kindness, holding space for positive outcomes, dwelling in possibility...all raison d'etre for me.

Seeing acres of trees in my small town cut down in recent weeks for a new core development project along the Trans Canada Hwy makes me ache each time I pass by all my fallen brothers and sisters. Hearing of circling nesting birds hovering above where their homes once were hurts. Knowing that in a time of climate crisis not just the goodness and beauty of habitat for wildlife has been lost in my small town, but valuable carbon sinks, greenspace that acted as a mitigation against pavement and building caused heat domes, as filtration for increased volume of rainwater in a town full of waterways that are already highly degraded by endless growth mantra of development...how visionary is this vision of development?

While part of my dream for a brighter tomorrow is seeing implementation of a Basic Income Guarantee, always, always my heart desires to see a degrowth strategy implemented as part of transition to a new way forward. Development which honours biodiversity, living soil and waterways and breathable air is possible though the scale would be dramatically reduced from what we've come to think of as "normal"... The endless growth paradigm which we have all lived under for so long that we've normalized pavement smothering living earth and waterways that are repeatedly destroyed in the name of progress, bigger and more under neoliberalism.

In an era of perpetually burning wildfires, droughts and floods..."what we must save from it, all the time, is love." -TW

What love song does your heart still sing the world?

What does your brighter tomorrow look like?

...Love, Life, Land...xoxo

A great resource on commoning when you have a minute or two...

And a wonderful video called We the Power: The Future of Power is Community Owned. if you have a few minutes beyond that (38 mins).

Thanks for reading...

Be well friend...

Jill