Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [102]
I used to act for political change out of anger, with a sense of long-suffering sacrifice. Underneath that anger was a fear—a pernicious skepticism—that nothing would ever actually change. Now, I act from my heart, with renewed faith and a profound belief in miracles. I continue to make my personal life political. Post- “conventional doctoring,” I am learning about herbal healing in a program that nourishes my intuitive skills while also honoring my intellect. I appreciate the importance of “knowing the herbs in my own backyard,” literally and figuratively. I work in my local co-op as a clerk. My knowledge of dietary supplements, vitamins, and homeopathy grows as I witness customers waking up to Ecological Reality. I support their choices—simple ones, such as buying products marked with bright labeling “local heroes” (produced, raised, or grown right here in Western Massachusetts); these products used less gasoline and therefore emitted less carbon dioxide in their production. And there are more convoluted choices leading many of us to work together on building and sustaining community.
While I live now with less trust in my government, I find that I have more faith in my neighbors and my community. I am excited by our Five Rivers Council. This council (aspects inspired by Starhawk’s book The Fifth Sacred Thing) is committed to creating a sustainable model of living for our small corner of New England, one that is reproducible in other communities. We educate our neighbors on a variety of issues: each person’s impact on our local environment, emergency preparedness for New England’s likely “eco-logical consequences” of global warming (floods, blizzards, and “microbursts”), helping local farmers stay viable and “go organic,” awareness of biodiesel plusses and minuses, awareness of solar and wind possibilities for local energy sources, eating locally and seasonally, and working to shut down our nearest nuclear power plant (one of the oldest in the nation).
I appreciate what is here now. I count the blessings of a life being lived well.
What must die is the dominator culture. The one we have created, that is so very clearly unhealthy for us all. And it is dying. We humans can die along with it, or we can change. The Five Rivers Council in my county helps others wake up as I have awakened. While the hope is that the awakening can be less dramatic than mine was, maintaining the status quo is no longer an option.
My spirituality and faith in humanity (despite rationally deduced reasoning that suggests otherwise) sustains me. I release myself from a Judeo-Christian mythology that has eye-for-an-eye credos, a justification of suffering, and original sin at its center. I invite the possibility that a gentle Universe awaits humanity’s transition from adolescence to adulthood, as we accept stewardship of our planet and empathic connection with one another.
My small “w” world as I knew it is dead. I look beyond my own story of personal catastrophe and see global warming, here and now. Some call it ecological catastrophe. My big “W” World as I know it is dying. A great transition is here. We humans will come into “full catastrophe living”—Jon Kabat-Zinn’s phrase for the kind of moment-to-moment mindfulness that is necessary to a sane and centered life—from our hearts, or we will not.
How do we greet this great transition? That is what we are discovering, as we live, as we breathe, as we dance each moment.
I choose to feel power in the earth as it responds and reacts to humanity’s actions. I choose to take my fear and breathe it into excitement. The earth, older than I can even imagine, is reshaping itself. The earth is not dying; the earth will survive. I am optimistic and hopeful that human beings will survive, too.
Opeyemi Parham is now a “feral” (once domesticated, now returned to the wild) physician. She works as a clerk in a local health foods store, in her home community of Greenfield, in Western Massachusetts. Opeyemi continues to pursue her vocation of medicine woman, using natural herbs, health education, and ceremony,