over the head with a bang

Activists, scientists, and politicians tread a fine line between the need to alarm and the need to inspire the public.  Exclusive and relentless gloom and doom messages cause us to cower in fear and overwhelm.  But at one point it’s also time to get our heads out of the sand and decide what future we want to create for our children and grandchildren.

Climate change is no longer drowning the far away Seychelles, it is now violently banging us over the head in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and Middle Europe.  Will we get the message in time to avoid our own demise?

Perhaps we have been asking the wrong questions all along because we have been approaching climate change from the perspective of our culture of lack.  It is not so much a question of what we need to less of or what we should deprive ourselves of. Rather, the issue has to do with reverence, appreciation, respect and cooperation.  We must relearn to appreciate nature for our living environment, we must thank nature for the beautiful foods we are able to grow in cooperation with it, we need to redirect our gaze to its majesty and beauty, we have to recognize the abundance nature is showing us all around.  Only when we come from a place of reverence and gratitude, of wanting to work together with nature, not against it, will the answers reveal themselves easily.

Recently this beautifully inspiring short film that attempts to dislodge us from our collective climate change action inertia popped up in my social media feed.  Perhaps it’ll inspire you, to shift from lack to abundance, from inertia to urgency and action.  

food thrills for our times

Some people look for race car driving, roller coaster rides, or bungee jumping for thrills. I look to food for an adventure that stimulates and excites my senses.  I am simply curious how things taste in hopes it’ll be pleasant and delicious, novel and delectable, or perhaps foreign and unexpected.

Many traditional exotic foods are no longer acceptable fare because they’re animal based, their harvesting is unsustainable, or they are cruelly made, and we are starting to know better, think foie gras or shark fin soup.   Hence, we need to look to the plant world for new food excitement.  

Already, I have fallen in love with Chicken of the Woods, a foraged early summer tree mushroom with a surprising meaty texture that is very satisfying.  Puffball mushrooms pop up from one day to the next in meadows a bit later in the season.   Their creamy and dense texture is a surprise and a delight.  The big thick gooey tapioca pearls that have made bubble tea a worldwide phenomenon, are fun to catch through a thick straw while sipping the beverage.  Smooth and slightly sweetened cashew cream has been a delectable revelation to me, and then of course there is color.  Animal products just don’t cut it when it comes to aesthetic appeal.  But cut a watermelon radish open, and surprise!  While a sliced starfruit will put a smile on anyone’s face.

Watermelon Radish

All these sensations delight me, excite me, make me want to discover new tastes, textures, consistencies, combinations, and possibilities.  Let me know if you have made any thrilling vegetarian discoveries.

as abundant as nature

We have been gifted so many plants from friends over the years, by splitting root  (lily of the valley, hosta, hydrangea) or rizome clumps (tiger lilies, irises), separating shoots (lilacs, raspberries) and transplanting runners (strawberries, strawberry begonia), as well as accepting seeds (hollyhocks) and whole seed heads (echinacea).  Many of these plants have grown big enough that we can now share and provide a never ending supply of joy to others.  And we know how quickly animals can multiply, the smaller the faster.  One mouse pair could theoretically produce about 5000 mice in a year.

Nature is just so amazingly abundant that I’m not quite sure how we humans ever came up with this idea of lack and not enough which so permeates our culture (“not enough time,” “not enough money,” “only 2 left,” or “get it while it lasts”).  Perhaps we are so disassociated from nature that we no longer understand its principals. Nature gives so freely, it doesn’t hold on.  It sends its seeds so liberally into the wind by the gazillions.  Abandoned farmland reforests all by itself over the years.  A garden rewilds and overgrows so fast if you don’t constantly pull the weeds and mow the lawn.

The difference between nature and our human behavior is our lack of generosity.  We hold on, tight and tighter.  We stash our money away and get rewarded for it with interest.  During the pandemic we horded toilet paper and meat and created actual shortage.  No wonder then that we live in a culture of stinginess, lack, and miserliness.  Instead of living and modeling abundance, we live and model lack.  Perhaps things would be different if we got rewarded for giving our stuff and money away

To experience abundance, we need to emulate nature’s generosity of giving.  Be like nature.  The more generous you are, the more generous the world around you becomes.

let's make a little room

We just learned that zoo baby births increased by 25% over the past pandemic year because the lack of human visitors put the animals more at ease.  

Good things happen when we humans get out of the way.  When our impact lessens everything else – the air, the water, the animals, the environment in general – recuperates and flourishes, as we saw so immediately last April.

We need to shift our thinking from I to We and consider the bigger picture, the benefit of the many versus the personal benefit to just one person, then we all profit.  Let’s make a little room for the rest of Nature so we can all thrive!

ode to the mother

For several thousand years we have lived in yang cultures, more warrior than nurturer, more taking than giving, which shows in how we have treated Mother Earth. She has been used and abused and is tired.  We have taken from her more than we have given back.   

Becoming a mother is the ultimate act of creation, making a new human being out of love and thin air, at least sort of.  A mother gives of her body and soul to create, grow, birth, nurture and nourish a new human being in an act of procreative self-sacrifice that requires putting other before self.  In an instinctual effort to protect a young and fragile life, mothering brings forth ultimate, even fierce, unconditional love. As mothers we pour into these little beings everything we have – milk from our own body, food, love, advice, protection, healing energy, soothing lullabies, and words of encouragement.

It’s time for us, whether man or woman, mother or not, to remember that we have all experienced being mothered and nurtured, what that feels like, and how healing that is.  Dear fellow women and mothers, we must now show the way of the nurturing yin to rebalance our lopsided relationship with the earth, our ultimate Mother who gives us everything that brings forth our existence.  I see you becoming stronger, rising to the occasion, and bringing your creative nurturing spirit to heal our Mother Earth.  

Happy Mother’s Day!

giving back, and then some

A system is considered sustainable when outputs are offset with at least as many inputs.  As a culture, we are entitled and used to taking.  In the long-term, however, that doesn’t work, not with people, who burn out, nor with nature, which deteriorates. 

Every year for the past three years we have planted hundreds of native conifers, deciduous trees, and shrubs we’ve obtained from the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation to restore the havoc the construction of our house caused.  We feel compelled to replenish and heal this little spot on earth that we are now stewards of. Trees and shrubs were removed where the driveway was cut in and the foundation was poured.  Wildlife habitat was disrupted and destroyed.  Now, however, free lay stone walls we built all around the property over the past years have created new habitats for lizards and snakes.  The new shrubs we planted everywhere are creating new places for birds to hide, and their roots ameliorate the poor clay soil as they expand underground to a wide web, while the flowers we add to the garden each year attract bees and other insects.  Each year we see more wildlife as we give back, make the soil better, add and diversify the plantings.

Healing means balancing by adding back what has been removed or is missing.  Elsewhere I wrote that you ask in German “Was fehlt Dir?” or “What do you lack?” when someone is sick or out of balance.  We knew what we took from the land and what was missing, and we are putting it back and then some.  Try this exercise with anything or anyone that’s out of balance.  Just ask “What’s missing?”  Then you can give back, and then some.

moon and tides did it

Technology alone was unable to dislodge her. “The crews working to dig out the ship were largely dependent on forces beyond their control: the moon and the tides,” the New York Times wrote about the all-out effort to free the Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships that was stuck sideways in the sandy banks of the Suez Canal for almost a week,  holding up hundreds of other cargo ships with billions of dollars worth of goods and livestock from pursuing their journeys through the canal to their destinations to keep global markets humming.

The message is a crucial one, one we seem to need to hear over and over and over again.  Whether we’re talking about climate change, growing food, protecting ourselves from viruses, or lifestyle improvements in general, technology applied in a vacuum has often far reaching negative side effects which we seem unable to predict.  Only in cooperation and harmony with nature can science and technology achieve true heights, as the crews freeing the Ever Given realized.  

We must finally integrate science, technology and nature into a holistic, sacred and mutually inclusive whole to evolve into a better incarnation of ourselves and assure the survival of our species.

the need to nurture

What we do is an expression of who we are.  A sporty person explores the relationship between their body and its physical expression in terms of flexiblity or endurance, muscle development or movement; an artsy person establishes a relationship between their creativity and a particular medium, perhaps stone or flowers; a scientific researcher might explore the relationship between her keen intellect, her ability to see out-of-the-box connections, and a particular biological subject.

With diminished human connection and in-person interaction during the pandemic, many have had to satisfy their need to nurture and connect in a different way.  Pet adoption skyrocketed during the pandemic, and there is a boom in house plant hobbyists who collect exotic species, propagate plants, or simply enjoy a green and living thing at home that’s less emotionally involved than a pet.  Both, however, are rewarding for the reciprocal result of unconditional love when we nurture them. 

Just as a dog or cat takes half a year to acclimate to a new household, it takes a new plant as long to settle in when I bring it home.  Being a nurturing person - many women are, but men are getting there too - and needing to express that in what I do, I love to experiment together with my plants to find the perfect spot with the perfect light conditions, the perfect watering and fertilization ratio, the perfect soil medium, and the perfect pot for its size.   I am always awed anew at discovering tiny leaves emerge, grow and unfold, watching them slowly morph from light green to dark green, losing some yellow or browned leaves, discovering new air roots emerge, being disappointed when some plants sputter and die, and being happy when they eventually thrive.  

During my weekly weekend watering and care ritual which can take a few hours I commune and check in with my plants.  It’s meditative, intuitive, rewarding, and nurturing, a perfect antidote for surviving in an unsettled world.

imagine!

Last year we began a new ritual in our Thanksgiving proceedings, taking turns reading the Native American Six Nations’, or Haudenosaunee, Thanksgiving address.  The address is an ode to the natural world that sustains us, and without which we literally would not and could not exist, a fact that often disappears under the layers of our material machinations and self-absorption.

Even though Thanksgiving is over, the message is more relevant than ever and will haunt us until we grasp the true underlying cause of climate change, our disconnection from the natural world. My social media stream was full of pronouncements of gratefulness over the past week, mostly for family, friends and the community at large.

But the bigger picture is even more important.  We need to respect, no revere, Nature again, the way indigenous people always have.  Because Nature has lost its sacredness in our mind it’s become a commodity we can exploit.  The soil that grows everything we eat, the air we breathe to sustain us, the water we consume, the sunshine that grows our plants and trees and warms our planet, are all so valuable and life givingly essential.  We’re literally dead without them.  Or when Nature deteriorates due to our doing, we become sick.  However, when Nature thrives in abundance and balance, we thrive in turn.  

Clean air and water, rich soil, enough rain, although not too much, enough sunshine, although not too much, and thoughtful and sustainable human activity make for a balanced ecosystem.  Let’s be grateful and reverend for our planet earth we are so intricately embedded in and not take it for granted.  Thankfulness must extend beyond Thanksgiving, and Nature must become sacred again in our minds in order to counter and reverse climate change.   Imagine, it all starts in the mind.

valuing our resources

Trash and waste, whether in the form of pollution or garbage, are leftovers in an open linear system, a system which is unsustainable in the long run and no longer viable.

When we honor and respect our resources and acknowledge that all raw materials ultimately come from the earth and are finite one way or the other, we become more vested in how we use them.  Shifting to sustainable and circular systems leaves less waste, preferably little or none at all (here an earlier post on zero waste).  This is where recycling with its Reduce-Reuse-Recycle tenet comes in, and the various ways in which we can apply those principles.

One of our most essential resources is water because the total water amount on earth is finite, while our population and water needs have grown exponentially.  In a linear system wastewater is considered waste.  But in a circular system it is reused after having been cleaned and purified.  Israel, a desert country, has put regulatory government mechanisms in place over the past 70 years that have made it water independent with surplus (!), and an agricultural force to contend with.  Israel’s agriculture shifted to water conserving drip irrigation, the country desalinates sea water for drinking, cleanse its wastewater for reuse in agriculture, puts a price tag on water by charging for its consumption, and swiftly detects and repairs over 90% of its water leaks to prevent waste, as described in Seth’s Siegel’s Let There Be Water.   Israel is a shining example and pioneer on how to value and manage resources responsibly, something all other countries must learn to do swiftly. 

On a related note, we are just starting to come around to managing better the trash from the stuff of our material culture (here an earlier related post).  This is how the Repair Café and Fixit Revolution, thoroughly researched and entertainingly narrated in Repair Revolution: How Fixers are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, arose in the past two decades, a counter movement to the post war effort of ramping up production and consumption via built-in obsolescence.  Buying it cheap and throwing it away when it no longer works, and products such as single-use plastic bags and containers, have left us with enough trash to drown in.  Besides reducing, reusing, and recycling, we now need to add repairing to our Rs in becoming more conscientious and responsible consumers.  Repair that lamp, replace that zipper, bring the shoes to the cobbler.  Just fix it!

In our shift to a more sustainable culture with more sustainable consumption patterns let’s keep our beautiful planet earth in mind that provides us with everything we need to exist as long as we care for it.  Our earth is all we have.  We must nurture, not trash it, so it can be beautiful and healthy for us, so we can be beautiful and healthy.