Hope Beyond the Smoke
Finding Balance in a Challenged World
My heart was heavy as I sat down to write this piece. Eyes were burning from the smoke-filled skies, and perhaps suppressed tears. The air-quality-index (AQI) in my home town had been in the unhealthy to hazardous range for many days running. A few years ago, I didn’t know what AQI was; now, it’s standard procedure to look it up before planning outdoor activities.
A couple friends and I had been planning to go camping for a few days at magical Hosmer Lake in the Cascade Lakes wilderness but fires had just forced a level one evacuation notice in the area. Even if an evacuation wasn’t issued I didn’t want to become another obstacle fire crews had to deal with, so I cancelled our trip. Hot Shots teams and fire crews and all the trucks, helicopters and equipment that goes with them are another common feature of the new normal.
That morning, the eco-grief, sadness and anger about what we’re doing to this precious planet got the better of me. The new normal felt like a much-diminished world. I couldn’t focus on writing or other work so I closed the computer, loaded up the dogs, and headed east across Oregon hoping to find clearer air and a clearer head. Recognizing I was burning fossil fuel to escape fossil fuel-related damage only deepened the sadness. Navigating the paradox of trying to change systems while being a part of those very systems is another aspect of the new normal.
An hour out the air was much cleaner. I parked near a creek in the Ochoco forest and the dogs and I took off running and climbing up and down hillsides. Getting my heart rate pumping and clean air into my lungs was instant medicine. Along the way, I thanked the trees for being and breathing, placed my hands in the little stream and thanked the water for all it provides, sent out prayers for rain and for healing of the insanity of humanity so that all of Creation can heal. Nature has always been my church and I did find comfort, and renewed hope and resolve, in the forest temple that day.
In this lifetime I have developed a deep well of resilience, which is a mighty useful resource for people who care deeply about Earth and all the beings she supports. I thought I’d share some tips that help me get recentered when grief and anger surges in hopes that it might help some of you who also care enough to hurt sometimes.
Tips for Keeping on Keeping on (and finding hope and joy in the process)
1) Get out into nature on a regular basis. I find the wilder the place the better the medicine but even pockets of nature in a city help. Whenever you can experience and appreciate nature.
2) Co-create with nature right where you live. I have a modest little house in an urban neighborhood. My yard has become my artistic outlet. Over the years I’ve taken out all lawn, and redesigned everything, right down to the type of fencing I use, to serve as habitat for birds, squirrels, insects. Recently golden mantled ground squirrels have taken a shine to the place. My yard isn’t perfectly groomed, but while surrounding yards are quiet, mine is always alive with bird song and squirrel chatter. The big, old trees are messy and have turned my driveway into a gauntlet of lumps but they are more than worth the sacrifice. When I am at a low-ebb the aliveness of the place always lifts me.
If you’re lucky enough to have a yard you can do so much by working with nature to create habitat. Even house plants and beautiful stones and natural materials inside the house help elevate mood and feed our connection with Earth.
3) Serious exercise. Exercise usually isn’t what I most want when my heart is hurting and I’m on a low-joy ebb but every single time I push through the resistance the outcome is worth the effort. Of course, a whole lot of research backs the link between exercise, mood, health, etc.
4) Intentionally notice evidence of nature’s amazing healing capacity. Many of us now live in areas with burn scars from wildfire. As heartbreaking as the new vistas may be, nature actually immediately begins to regrow. Noticing the green in previously blackened places reminds that life is always moving toward more life.
5) Find a hobby that lights you up and adds joy to your life. Staying in joy isn’t just distraction, it’s an investment in well-being and resilience and it sharpens us for our work and actions toward making our world a better place.
Back at home, as I was nearing completion of this piece, it started to rain, the first in many, many days. I went outside and stood in it, grateful. Then, with lungs cleared and mood lightened, I got back to work.
Here’s to staying strong and resilient as we hospice out the old systems and insanity and midwife in a new and better way of being in our world.
People Power is Succeeding – Ecuadorians Shut Down Big Oil in the Amazon
After 50 years of expanding oil operations in the Amazonian region of their nation, Ecuadorian voters voted to shut down and dismantle three crude oil fields located inside Yasuni National Park. The area is home to tremendous biodiversity and many species that are found nowhere else, as well as endangered species such as jaguar, pink dolphins and giant otter. It is also home to several Indigenous communities including some of the world’s last uncontacted peoples. Members of one grassroots community, the Baihuaeri of Bameno, announced that they are convening meetings with neighboring groups to expand the protections and defend other parts of Yasuní, which are currently under threat from oil operations. Oil operations in the park have been responsible for large-scale deforestation and over 1,500 oil spills. Now, the people of Ecuador, Indigenous and otherwise, are saying enough.
Here is an excellent in-depth piece, by Katie Surma, of Inside Climate News, about these developments in Ecuador and the history of this region, including how the oil industry provided resources to missionaries to help them clear out the indigenous people who lived there.
P.S. Related to the piece above, another way to increase resilience is to tune in to positive news and developments in our world.
Reminder -- Online Course in Miracles Group Starting September 13th.
As I’ve noted before, A Course in Miracles has genuinely transformed my life because it gave me power tools for transforming my thinking and redesigning my default reactions to events, circumstances, and interactions. I have learned/ am learning a far more empowered and peaceful way to move through life.
I’ve been leading Course in Miracles study groups for many years because I find it so useful to dialogue and explore together. So, I have decided to start offering an online Miracles group each second and fourth Wednesday, 5:30 to 7pm Pacific Time, beginning Sept, 13th.
To give you a little heads-up I approach the Course a little differently than most in that I intentionally make the language gender-neutral. I believe God/Source/Creator is way beyond gender and I find the Course resonates even more when the Divine and all of us aren’t labelled “He” (not that I’ve got anything at all against those of you who do go by “he!).
Here is a link to zoom for the first session.
Hope you’ll join and in the meantime, may the Force and/or the Course be with you!
Much Love,
Cylvia
Thank you for the summary Cylvia! It is a helpful toolkit when you're feeling low. Every one of the strategies you mention brings one back! Following on to your description of the joys of your garden, I wonder if you've had a chance to read entomologist Doug Tallamy's book Nature's Best Hope.
His important and fascinating research can cause one to totally drink the kool-aid and try to become an insect farmer in one's yard and on public restoration projects. His message includes the concept that the importance of host plants, i.e. those that the insects can lay their eggs on and which the larvae can eat, is usually undervalued even by restoration teams and urban foresters. Plants and insects co-evolve in an arms race. Ergo, plants imported even from a state away may create a food desert for local insects and therefore birds, since these plants don't host the local insects. The exotic plants don't bring their own insect pests with them. This is a problem, considering the amount of land in private ownership and agriculture and the number of larvae and caterpillars that a typical chickadee nest, as an example, burns though in one day, about a thousand! Desires to import plants from elsewhere in the hope that they will survive climate change is an understandable goal, but Tallamy urges that we exhaust all possibilities of what is truly local. Right plant, right place! Holes in the leaves of our native plants are good news! In this way, we can pay nature back for what has been stolen from her with what she needs, which is hyperlocal native plants where ever they will still thrive in a warming climate, to provide plants for co-evolved insects larvae to eat, not only plants for the adults to drink nectar, since they are not the same plants. The Native Plant finder at National Wildlife Federation is a rudimentary guide to insect hosting, a good start. It has occurred to me that paying back nature for theft is embodies some similarities to contributing to the "Real Rent" program of the Duwamish Tribe, based on stolen culture and land! Thank you for the message and opportunity to share.
Lovely prescription for a world that, quite often, seems too scary to handle. As you point out, even within the small confines of your home and garden, it is amazing how the whole ecology seems to applaud your efforts. We have 2 gardens, all quite small, but the birds and other fauna seem to abound in this space. No change is too small. We have to work together if we are to pull our magical world back from the brink we have driven it to. Thanks for sharing this post, Cylvia.