Seeds for Thought: an Ecopsychology Blog

Beowulf

In the recent movie “Beowulf and Grendel” the director includes a character that does not appear in the original epic. A beautiful “wild woman” lives on the margins of the old king’s domain collecting herbs, eggs and berries. She roams the landscape on her own terms and enchants Beowulf with her beauty and ability to read the future. The old English epic is rich in the classic archetypes of heroism – monsters, comrades, kings and queens. It also contains a clownish Irish priest to comment on the folly of the pagan warriors. Like Homer’s Illiad this epic transcribes an oral tradition into written words and captures the flavor of that earlier style of story telling.

wild winter

Pacific storms caused widespread pollution  in the Vancouver area this month with residents told to boil all water. And then snow storms caused power outages.  Apparently the landslides into the reservoirs would not have happened had the slopes not been logged.

There is bottled water, gas stoves. But all a stopgap, reminding us how easily we lose the services we take for granted and forget how to do without.  And to talk of climate chaos instead of global warming.

John Muir apparently used to tie himself to trees to experience the power of storms. Luckily not one of the ones that fell.  I notice if I go out in the cold hunched together and shivery I feel cold. If I square my shoulders and breathe into it my metabolism steps up to meet it. How far can we go in experiencing weather as exhilarating?

rainbow threads

I have mentioned this song before, but Amy's post Earth based Internet makes me think of it. If when I could get round to recording it I would dedicate it to Amy and all the rest of us web spinners and word spinners, those who distil our complex meanderings, those who take a simple idea and spiral out into wild imaginings. Those who gather and those who winnow.  Let's weave our tapestries with beauty inseparable from the function of interconnecting.

I have a rainbow outside my window now and storms threatened.

Oh, had I a golden Thread And needle so fine
I've weave a magic strand Of rainbow design (Of rainbow design)

In it I'd weave the bravery Of women giving birth,
In it I would weave the innocence  Of children over all the earth,

Show my brothers and sisters My rainbow design,
Bind up this sorry world With hand and heart and mind,

Far over the waters I'd reach my magic band
To every human being So they would understand,

Words and music by Pete Seeger (1958)
(c) 1959 by Stormking Music Inc.

Artemis and Actaeon

The image of the moon goddess Artemis (Diana to Romans) who hunted with nymphs and dryads in the ancient woodlands of the Mediterranean remains powerful even though those forests have long since disappeared into fields of agriculture and the pastures of grazing animals. Her cool virginity and shadowy reclusiveness add to her allure as a huntress with the unattainable beauty of the lunar feminine. The poor mortal Actaeon discovered in his voyeuristic intrusion on her bath that there is no small price to pay for that vision. He is transformed into a stag and then devoured by his dogs. The rumour is that he died content. The story drips with psychological resonance.

Mount Tamalpais

I'm visiting Mill Valley today, in the foothills of the sacred Mount Tamalpais.  This is the mountain that holds the redwood elders and the creeks of Muir Woods, and this is the mountain that inspired one of my favorite artists, Tom Killion, to such prolific creativity that he published a handmade book featuring twenty-eight of these exquisite 'views' of Mount Tam.

Admiring the ecopsychological cabbage

Up to now, I've never considered the cabbage to be anything but humble (although last weekend, my nephew's girlfriend reminded me how versatile that humble vegetable was).  So humble, that I even considered it to be "dumb", and therefore not worthy of interest.  I've a way to go before I can be happy with my relationship with the universe, I think.

What has triggered this new interest in the basic green cabbage?  Marc Giraud, French biologist and communicator, has written a book called "Le Kama-sutra des demoiselles", demoiselles here being dragonflies.  The title is a bit of a marketing trick but the content of the book delightful -- short bits of narrative which can be enjoyed daily.  Essentially, Giraud writes about how our more-than-human world communicates.  He focuses on the plants and animals we find in our entourage instead of looking at the distant, the exotic.

Earth-Based Internet

I’ve been thinking a lot about a new way of ‘being’ on the internet, and have started to write about it in the Beauty Dialogues...

I’m envisioning an internet that, rather than being the disembodied addictive wasteland that many pundits describe, is a vibrant, sensory-filled vehicle to share our own experiences of the part of the world in which we live with others all the way across the globe. A new way that honors the earth, and our bodily experience of it, while reaching out to connect with others in a deep and soulful way.

People wiser than I have said that you can no longer hurt what you truly love, and the first step to loving someone or someplace is getting to know it, exploring its beauty and mystery. That is what is happening now through the internet, in conversations of all kinds in all sorts of contexts, within &  between cultures. I can't help but feel there will be a real difference in the basic tenor of these conversations if we are are each meeting each other from a truly nature-connected place.

I read the statistics for this blog, so I know that there are people reading it from all over – what do you think about my hypothesis? How do you share your nature-connected perspective in your own online conversations? What is YOUR vision for what can happen between us online?

Nature Writing

A juxtaposition of theology and nature writing is helpful. Sallie McFague can describe the nuance of panENtheism with logic and clarity yet Trevor Herriot takes the idea out onto the Saskatchewan prairie and animates it with song birds and the spring chinooks (warm winds that melt the snow.) David Duncan describes the trout streams in Montana with the eye of a painter and the voice of a poet and, sometimes, a prophet. Life is a river and we don’t often treat real rivers well. The landscape of the heart is damned and contaminated when the rivers are “resourced” for the marketplace. Norman Maclean sees the river as a father absorbing the spirit of a child to make it wise as an old trout. The fathers are dieing and we are no longer children.

money and hate

A while back now I heard an oil expert interviewed on radio, something like this:

Will the price of oil go above £1?
Oil supplies are running out
But will it cost more than £1?
There isn't going to be any oil left.
So do you think prices will go above £1?

with the furore the Stern report has caused I now realise he should have rolled his eyes to heaven, taken a deep breath and said YES it will rise above £5!!!!. Then they would have taken notice.

You're all going to die (shrug)
and it will cost you! (oh no!)

false hope revisited

This makes me angry... exasperated...

The UK government commissioned a report on the economics of climate change. It was released on Monday.

The headlines were as such:

Climate change fight 'can't wait'

Warming 'may cause economic chaos'

British Report Warns Global Warming Could Cripple World Economy

£3.68 trillion: The price of failing to act on climate change

Inaction spells a world of floods, drought and economic disaster

This last one makes my point...