Climate Change Conference, Findhorn, 2019
It would be remiss of me to pass up this celestial opportunity to make observation, comment and withold judgement on the voices, personalities, businesses, globe trotters, devout green strangers who descended into my life this week.
A chance meeting last weekend brought me to a tall man looked like a tree crossed with a first nation’s person. No tree would be insulted by that remark. He was hovering over the boot of a car consulting a paper in his hand when I first saw him, and, from the onset, I could not take my eyes off him. He greeted the village with a mumbled ‘am here to suppurt the transition to a life affirming society’. I took him home and fed him and listened to him for 24 hours. I listened to him, challenged him, listened, learned, until my brain hurt.
He took time to show me how we need to overcome any barrier to love and joy.He had made cards with the simplest framework for the conversation we all need to start having about Climate Change. He had wrestled long and hard with his conscience to take the journey from The Blue Mountains to Findhorn on the Moray Coast. He had to bring his own brain-picked wisdom of a plan for love, to Findhorn, to my home first.
I was suitably overwhelmed but remained nurturing, welcoming and cynical.
Beginning the huge, real conversation on the state we are in vis-a-vis climate change is a terrifying subject for a parent to have to discuss with their children. It is all our fault. We were told thirty years ago, by the elders from Greenland, and we did not listen. It is our fault. We should have halted oil production completely thirty years ago in order to be with a chance of halting this alteration in our world’s biosphere.
As the days progressed and I met with and chatted with more and more of these strangers from other worlds as they descended into every bloody place around me. One arrived off a train into the middle of Edinburgh’s Extinction Rebellion. Others had taken road trips. Some hadn’t been on a plane for a decade. One or two were cool globe trotting social butterfly type activists. I saw a few floaty fairy girls and several older huge headed men chat with each other in respect and grace. I heard girls call the song of ancient herders. I saw from afar, and then I met the womyn from the other side of our world with oldest world wisdom tales and the courage to speak loud.
All the chats about food or sun or sauna or beach or such faded away. Discussions on action plans for solar panels disappeared. Instead the truth of grow up, wake up, spread only love and joy before we die became the only reason to speak. And how do we tell our families? How do we tell our children? Now that we know how bad it all really is, and what a mess we have made of every thing, how do we communicate this with others? They won’t believe us.
The brightest rainbow tribe of earth warriors are here. They took planes or trains or drove or live-linked in. Some feel guilty about their flights or the way they live their lives but are newly bestowed with the burden of knowing it’s too late for that worry. We are passed the time of halting passenger flights. All oil production and use must stop immediately. All drilling for oil must cease tomorrow. All cars, lorries, trucks, trains and vans must stop, now. All potential voters must only vote for those who will stop CO2, vote only for those who will wake their neighbours’ into the need now to heed the advice of the elders of our Earth.
The only way forward from here is Love. The only way to bring more love is to release hurts. The advice from our elders is to create ways to only offer love to yourself and each other. Create beautiful art, dance, sing, write, and enjoy the gorgeousness of life.
We did this. It is our fault. Our small deeds were not enough. Our civilisation is about to change. The society that emerges will be a life-affirming respectful peoples. The people who are healthy of mind, heart and body will live and may even thrive in the times ahead. We come together in love to listen to each other and we have deep talks about how Earth will alter and what we must prepare for.
The half-tree-half-Spock man came with a plan for now. It is also a plan for how to understand, how to say the words, how to begin to comprehend what we actually have to do.
Now we transition to a life affirming society. Now. We remove all the blockages in us that halt love in any moment. Love, joy, compassion are your aims in every second of every day and it is your duty now to remove any obstacle to the creation,observation and healing of love. As humans, we need to grow up and start loving ourselves first.
We stop livestock maunfacturing tomorrow. We all eat a plant based diet. Plastic production stops all over the world. Permaculture gardens must grow everywhere. War must end.
The burden of all this weighs on the huge heads and I have seen men sigh deep, tear up, shake and stutter with the enormity of their task. I have seen young men try to rise to their challenges of reporting to the media. I have seen the womyn from the other side of the world speak and I wish they and all their friends would set up base in Findhorn.
There is no action plan. There is no Planet B. There is only love.
There is support for this in development. The how to of how to be as healthy as you need to be to survive this change will be made avialable as a result of this Climate Change Conference. There will be ways to read, hear, or interact with the plan the tree-man made. There will be ways to hear the womyn representing elders’ wisdoms. The scientists and lifelong activists will make their learnings public. The wealthy may buy all the rights to all the videos taken at this conference and make them free for public access.
Whatever it is going to take to get the fearful sceptic to see the harm caused and agree to change their minds, hearts and ways.
No more war planes. No more guns.
There will be flooding. Fires will be more common. Lands will become unuseable. Extreme storms will increase. Peoples will flee countries looking for shelter. Species extinction will increase. The elite will have the best land. The sick will die. The air may be toxic.
The old men who came to the eco-village up the road from far flung places sat with youth filled colleagues fired from hearts of gold to call to all of us to find ways to heal ourselves from within – and this – this is the plan, the way forward, the main hope, because we all know the money makers behind oil, plastic, war and trafficking don’t want to admit the harm they have done.
We did it. It is our fault. We let them buy us. We did not listen.
There is no point in wasting time attempting to troll me with name calling or accusations of scare-mongering. Bother me not with your radical disbelief of the situation, the only things I am capable of are writing and praying, instead, let me direct you to some useful waking up, growing up, learning about what we did and what we really need to do now links, people and tools, for our onward journey, possibly together.
https://patriciaanselldodds.wordpress.com
Orla Broderick is Council House Publishing 