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sudden_serenityIt's true to say that the world is in uproar. We have devastating flooding events in Germany and Belgium. We have wildfires across Greece and wide swathes of the Pacific facing USA. The experts say that we cannot assert that one weather event is caused by climate change but they all agree that a trend towards more extreme events happening more frequently is exactly what we are seeing. The magic 1.5 degree rise in global temperature is only a handful of years away and still our governments argue and debate and lie about the effect that the human race is having on the world. And that we MUST stop it.
We have grown complacent in the west with our want it/have it society. We waste Earth's resources at a rate that is sickening and unimaginable to those living more sustainably in other parts of the globe, and an impossibility to our own great grandparents. No one is saying it will be easy to change that culture, no one is saying it will not come without hardships and a huge mental shift in our outlook but the scientists are saying we MUST - if we want to survive, if we want to have a planet to hand on to the next generation and the one after that, we MUST change and adapt and work together to reverse the damage we have already done.
It's not political. It's survival.
Honouring the wheel of the year is something I have done unconsciously for many many years and consciously for maybe five or six years. And even in that time I have noticed how much further from the essence of those celebrations we have come. Harvest comes sooner with our newer crops, Yule isn't the coldest part of the year, the lambs are born whether it is warm and grassy or not and Ostara can be under snow or 20 degrees. It is a struggle sometimes to see that nature is is as it should be, and in many ways it is not. But it is tenacious and it gets there in its time.
Our wheat is short this year - we had a long cold spring and it didn't begin to warm up until well after Beltane. Instead of being to my waist, it had grown to my thigh, but it HAS grown and it has ripened. In East Anglia where I live, Ash die-back is an everyday sight - pale skeletal branches which were once lush with mid green - we have one in our garden which is still healthy and strong, but only a mile to the south there is a road where these dead Ash stand like waymarkers along its length. It will not be long then before my beautiful tree will sicken for a few years and then die too. Like the Elm did in the 1970s. Ash and Elm, two of our most iconic trees; without them our land is changed and lessened. Our bees are threatened, our wild flower meadows all but gone, birds that were common when I was a child are infrequent sights, even here in rural East Anglia. It seems impossible that it can all go and no one is screaming that is happening.
We have a chance to save ourselves. We need to do it now. It's not nature we are saving - nature will find ways - it has the benefit of time and places we don't ruin. It is us who will become endangered, extinct if we don't listen to the planet and hear her pleas and her warnings.
We have grown complacent in the west with our want it/have it society. We waste Earth's resources at a rate that is sickening and unimaginable to those living more sustainably in other parts of the globe, and an impossibility to our own great grandparents. No one is saying it will be easy to change that culture, no one is saying it will not come without hardships and a huge mental shift in our outlook but the scientists are saying we MUST - if we want to survive, if we want to have a planet to hand on to the next generation and the one after that, we MUST change and adapt and work together to reverse the damage we have already done.
It's not political. It's survival.
Honouring the wheel of the year is something I have done unconsciously for many many years and consciously for maybe five or six years. And even in that time I have noticed how much further from the essence of those celebrations we have come. Harvest comes sooner with our newer crops, Yule isn't the coldest part of the year, the lambs are born whether it is warm and grassy or not and Ostara can be under snow or 20 degrees. It is a struggle sometimes to see that nature is is as it should be, and in many ways it is not. But it is tenacious and it gets there in its time.
Our wheat is short this year - we had a long cold spring and it didn't begin to warm up until well after Beltane. Instead of being to my waist, it had grown to my thigh, but it HAS grown and it has ripened. In East Anglia where I live, Ash die-back is an everyday sight - pale skeletal branches which were once lush with mid green - we have one in our garden which is still healthy and strong, but only a mile to the south there is a road where these dead Ash stand like waymarkers along its length. It will not be long then before my beautiful tree will sicken for a few years and then die too. Like the Elm did in the 1970s. Ash and Elm, two of our most iconic trees; without them our land is changed and lessened. Our bees are threatened, our wild flower meadows all but gone, birds that were common when I was a child are infrequent sights, even here in rural East Anglia. It seems impossible that it can all go and no one is screaming that is happening.
We have a chance to save ourselves. We need to do it now. It's not nature we are saving - nature will find ways - it has the benefit of time and places we don't ruin. It is us who will become endangered, extinct if we don't listen to the planet and hear her pleas and her warnings.
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