Blooming Cacti in Arid Land
We lay down the ancient reflex to dominate what we do not understand.
We lift instead the older instinct – to witness. The Agreement Beneath All Names
Sitting in the morning quiet this blog day, reflecting on the week behind and the days ahead, I found myself present to having witnessed three generations of ‘the three Rs’. As a kiddo way back in the 1950s my education was focused on learning the three Rs: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic. In the 70s as environmental awareness rose, a new generation of Rs emerged: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. That generation is still engaged today and its legacy lives on as a new generation of Rs emerges and inspires: Renew, Restore, Regenerate – Renewal, Restoration, Regeneration.
We of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ generation have the opportunity AND the responsibility to nurture this new generation of Rs that invites us to transcend and include the best of our generation’s environmental consciousness. It is time to renew, restore, and regenerate our deeper knowing that domination is a product of the false notion of separation. One way we do so is to witness. To observe ourselves, our language, our choices with a commitment to the new three Rs.
This can feel a daunting, even prickly like cacti, task as we are steeped in systems that even today dismiss ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ and instead favor the ways of domination, control, and power over. So, we bring it home, to the spot we occupy, to our local community and trust that our efforts will ripple beyond. As we shift our consciousness, we shift our choices, our ways of being. And this is an invitation to others.
As I speak The Agreement Beneath All Names as part of my daily practice, it deepens in me and I see it in a much larger context than being only about human relationships. The Agreement is about All Life. For, after all, don’t we ‘name’ every Thing?
Giving ‘things’ a name is how we humans communicate. What and how we name things influences how we (be)hold them. The Earth, a sacred, living, breathing Being became ‘earth’, ‘land’, ‘property’. Capital ‘N’ Nature became nature, reducing the essence of life to an object. Our naming reinforced separation. The ancient ones with their deep connection to Mother Earth and to all Beings would not understand our folly.
I shine this little beam of light down this rabbit hole as I reflect on the weekend workshop I engaged in that focused on ‘watershed restoration in our micro-bioregion’, looking at how, individually and collectively we can ‘restore’ the hydrological cycle here by engaging in choices and actions that ‘regenerate’ property, land, Mother Earth, and, most of all – Life.
As we dove into films, discussion, and field observation of both creeks and areas dry and eroding, I thought how in our naming and the choices we make within those names that we tend to pit opposites against one another – to dominate or eliminate that which we label as ‘bad’. We do so without recognizing its ‘good’. Water in the form of flood destroys. While a gentle rain nourishes the Earth. Oceans and rivers provide habitat for many forms of life. All a part of the greater cycles of Life.
In the separation that follows such labeling, we tend to pit Earth’s elements against one another, to dominate what our names and labels separate us from understanding and from what we’ve forgotten about the cycles of Life.
For example, our primary approach to fire danger is preventative mitigation and fighting actual fire with water and chemicals. But what if we worked with fire as Indigenous wisdom did. What if we became tenders of the Earth using fire in appropriate areas and ways to create conditions less favorable to combustion and massive fire? What if we worked with Nature, with Mother Earth, with Life to renew, restore, and regenerate life-giving, life-enhancing, life-thriving conditions?
This is the new generation of Rs bringing forward new ways grounded in ancient wisdom. Let us renew, restore, regenerate the deep knowing in each of us that recognizes we are One with All Life so that we can witness and co-create from that sacred place.
We will each embark on the journey with different paths and approaches. Here briefly is the path I’m engaging:
Daily practice of gratitude and remembering that all life is connected in the web of Life – I speak The Agreement Beneath All Names and I express thanks at every meal for ‘the plants, the animals, the soil, the water, the sun, the earth, the air, and all the hands that brought this food to my table’.
I’m immersed in learning about regeneration and bioregional approaches - exploring who is involved, what their perspective is and what they are up to, and observing where I feel called to engage. Exploring globally to discover what can be applied locally.
I endeavor to bring awareness to each choice as I make it – especially spending choices – asking ‘how is this choice a vote aligned with my values for renewal, restoration, regeneration? For Life?
Daunting, yes. And the antidote to what is breaking down and to the poison of separation is to build the new, not from the consciousness that created it, but from the ancient wisdom that we are all One. Find your local tribe of the Renew, Restore, Regenerate generation and join the heartbeat of co-creation with Life! Raven invites us to this transformation!
Raven Cawing for Transformation