It's All Related

There has been a post simmering and bubbling beneath the surface for some time now. I've been searching for how I want to say what I have been feeling and thinking about. I saw David Suzuki speak here in Vernon at the Performing Arts Centre June 14. He is such a powerful and passionate speaker I was so moved by his presentation.

Sometimes it can be overwhelming - very overwhelming - to see where we are, and where we are heading as a species and as a planet. It is overwhelming to see what we have done to this incredibly beautiful and amazing planet. Do you know about the ocean of plastic? Please check out this article. You won't be the same after you read it - at least I know I am not. And very overwhelming to find out how long we have been heading that way - how long we have known what the chemicals we are surrounded by are doing to us. I think I have been grieving with the things that I have learned lately - the Humanure Handbook with all its studies performed in the SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES!!! and hearing David Suzuki and the book about the effects of pesticides on the food chain that changed his life written in 1962!!! and what I have been learning about permaculture and this article about what plastic is doing to our environment and then looking around and seeing how I am surrounded by plastic from my microwave oven to the shoes I wear to all the packaging on everything, to Kaetlyn's diabetic supplies, to this keyboard I am typing on, to our window washing equipment, to the toys my children have been playing with for 20 years.... and on and on - take a look - plastic is EVERYWHERE! It has become completely ubiquitous.

It can be so easy to judge myself and to judge others. It can be easy to feel so overwhelmed with where we are to where we need to be, that it feels like way to much to ever accomplish that we don't even try. It can be inviting to believe in God's magic wand that will 'poof' fix the planet and return it to its 'paradisaical glory' without us having to do it. Well what if that happened? We would just destroy the earth again with the way that we are living. How would we survive in such a paradise? We wouldn't know how because the way we live right now is creating a hell of this heaven we have been given to live upon. I think of the prophets of the Old Testament and it seems to me that David Suzuki is a lot more like that than old men handing out edicts about how many piercings a girl is allowed to have...

But I digress. As I was saying, it is so easy to go to judgement; it can be so easy to live in fear and terror. Yet this is the energy that has brought us to the point we are at. You see? It's all related. It's all about love. We have got to this point of disrespect with the earth because it reflects the disrespect we have for ourselves. We cannot love and honour the earth if we do not love and honour ourselves. Real change only comes from love. Only.

Let me expand on that. One of the ways we have got to where we are as a species, is by looking outside of ourselves for validation, approval, happiness. Consumerism has totally tapped into this. We are bombarded everyday by commercials and advertisements that flaunt our less-than-perfectness to get us to buy their product so that we can be whole. Buy this orange juice/cereal/breakfast bar to have this loving family having friendly banter over breakfast. Buy this car, buy this deodorant, buy this shampoo, buy, buy, buy, whatever you do, buy but don't think you will be good enough because you will still need more stuff. As a nation we are carrying an incredible debt load in our efforts to buy, buy, buy but somehow we never get there. Its consumerism's treadmill. Round and round we go but we don't actually get anywhere. Unlike the treadmill, though we are actually doing something, we are getting ourselves deeper and deeper in debt and we are poisoning our own environment bit by bigger bit.

As David Suzuki said, we are the earth - we are made from the elements of the earth that our mother eats during pregnancy, we are made from the elements of the earth that we eat everyday. We are the air and we are the water. We cannot poison any of those things without poisoning ourselves. Yet we are pumping toxic waste into all of those with increasing speed everyday. To think there would be no consequence is sheer stupidity and lacks the sense that animals have who instinctively do what we don't - naturally live in harmony with their environment. And why are we doing this? In our crazed thirst for love and happiness outside of ourselves - in stuff. We work more to buy more we go into debt to buy more we work more to pay the debt with increasing stress heaped upon our heads, in our lives, in our relationships. What is happening in the environment is only a reflection of what is happening in our individual lives. What really can fulfill us - time to ourselves, relationships, all these are destroyed in the is crazy consumer lifestyle.

But I digress again. As I was saying, David Suzuki pointed out as his First Nation's friend's have taught him, we are the air, the water and the earth. So how do we heal what is happening? With love. We love the environment in direct relation to how we love ourselves. Heal yourself and you heal the earth. Heal yourself, get off the destructive treadmill and love. Love yourself, love the land around you. Love and honour your own passions, dreams and abilities - truly honour and love those around you. It is amazing what can happen with a little bit of real love. The world is dying for a little bit of real love.

And this is why I am involved in the Inner World School. We create the Outer World with our Inner World and we have created this crisis in the Outer World with our collective Inner Worlds. I believe real change only comes from understanding, loving and healing our Inner Worlds. Only then are we really capable of understanding, loving and healing our Outer World. It may just be a very small thing reaching a very few children, adults and families in Vernon right now but it is what I can offer from my love. It is what drives me to continue and to offer this small piece of my heart. Because although love can be small, it is never insignificant. It is everything. It is God and the power of the Universe. And if my love touches only one child (and even it if it is my own child) then my efforts are not wasted. And this is what I believe salvation is - not the machinations of any religion or the observance of any outward ritual (although those can help) but what is in our own hearts - it is the love we have for ourselves and for each other that can save us.

This is a very long post. It has been brewing for awhile and came gushing out of me this morning. Congratulations if you managed to read this far!

I promise.... I'll be back to talking about chickens tomorrow...