EARTH & US: Winter Solstice 2021
As the days grow ever shorter and cooler, I’m wishing you a joyous Winter Solstice and Returning of the Light!
The stars
The astrology for this Winter Solstice highlights maturity and responsibility. With Venus in retrograde, it’s also a time for reflection on the relationships most important to us, and artistic expression and creativity. From December 24 into 2022, there are themes of unexpected opportunities, alignment with life purpose, inspiration, rebirth, transcendence, redemption, and awakening! I’m game, are you?
Reflection time
Since the post-Thanksgiving fall that fractured my left kneecap, I’ve had a LOT of time for reflection. Getting down to the bones, I call it. At this time of year when I’m usually rushing around to social gatherings, making and/or buying gifts, I have the unexpected luxury of abundant time. In my 75th year, I am coming to terms with aging, and the slowing that goes with it, at last. It’s as if my knee said to me, “You’re grounded! No more running around for a while!” Being grounded is not a bad thing — in fact, with my airy butterfly Libra ways, I am often too un-grounded. And this year in particular has given me a lot to reflect upon and digest, as I sit on the back deck enjoying these mild North Carolina December days, leg propped up.
Gratitude!
I am endlessly grateful for all of my friends who have come forward with everything I could need: crutches, walkers, bedside commode, knee-icing pads, toilet seat raiser, shower bench, a comfy bed pad and deluxe sheets. They organized a “meal train” of lovingly cooked vegetarian meals, rides to medical appointments, even a ride to see the movie Encanta! (Disney 3D animation about a Colombian family.) And I’m grateful to my unsuspecting housemates, Rebecca and Jerry, who graciously pivoted to become a caring family, helping me with laundry, hair-washing, carrying stuff, mailing things for me, books to read, and a thousand acts of kindness.
Barichara beckons
From the start of my summer visit, I was in awe at how right it felt to be there. Joe Brewer, the founder of Earth Regenerators, my inspiration for the journey, with his brilliant vision of restoring land and building bioregional economies, spent time with me almost daily. Watching Joe, I learned a lot about parenting and community organizing, too. I tagged after him, playing grandmother to his amazing four-year-old, Elise, pulling invasive grasses, tending and watering young plants, planting baby trees, placing rocks across gullies, helping build a roof over cisterns for rainwater catchment. I got involved with a restaurant waste composting project, and undertook a fundraiser for a biogas digester for a collective of farmers. I very much look forward to returning, with $1000 US (changed to Colombian pesos) to support this purchase, with big thanks to all who contributed!
A previous volunteer with Earth Regenerators warned me, “You won’t want to leave! You just might find your niche.” And indeed, that was my experience. Also luring me back to Barichara are the warm and wonderful people — Margarita, who has assured me that I can stay in her hostel as long as I want to; Rafa, my “hermanito” (little brother), who calls and leaves voice messages telling me how much he loves and misses me; Rafa’s girlfriend Shona, a yoga teacher, who helped me so much with her bilingual skills; Emerson, my skillful and fun-loving Spanish teacher; Jose, eager to learn composting; Paul, excited about the biodigester; iAnku, soul brother, my inspiration about biodigesters, sacred geometry and water crystals.
In Barichara, I can walk or take a bus or tuk-tuk (motorcycle taxi) almost anywhere. I’ll feel rich with my social security check because the cost of living is low. The climate is so ideal, there’s no need for heating, air conditioning, or even fans…an effortless way to lower my fossil fuel consumption!
I decided to return there for a year or longer, to make it my new home. I’m in the process of applying for a “pensionado” (retiree) visa, which enables a stay of up to three years with option for renewal. Though I had originally planned to return in late January, now I’ve got my sights set on March, when my knee will hopefully be completely healed.
Learning Journeys with Earth Regenerators
Reflecting back on the various “learning journeys” (as Joe calls the online courses he teaches), here are a few key take-aways.
Joe asserts that “unsustainable cultures will become compost” as our species moves deeper into overshoot and collapse. Out of the nine planetary boundaries established by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (crossing even ONE of which could lead to a collapse of the global economy), we have now crossed six. It is the nature of all empires to collapse. The root cause: globalized wealth extraction, leading to destruction of ecosystems. Consumerism is termed “Wetiko” by some Native American traditions. The Wetiko monster is insatiable and even devours its own mother, just as consumer culture consumes our mother, the Earth.
The built infrastructure has entrenched our use of fossil fuels. We must find and align with people who have a shared understanding, design our own social niches and create support structures for one another. Following Elinor Ostrom’s eight Core Design Principles identified in the book Prosocial can help us design for collective intelligence and effective teams. Among these principles are shared identity and purpose, inclusive decision making, fast and fair conflict resolution, graduated consequences, and equitable sharing. Using the ACT Matrix (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), we notice how we react when we are stressed, and what values we want to move toward; we identify role models whose behaviors we can practice emulating on inner and outer levels. Thus we learn to regulate our own emotions and behavior, cultivating psychological flexibility.
We must re-create the conditions for living locally, which means production of the food, clothing, shelter, and all things we need, either locally or via a linked network of regenerative bioregions. Building relationships is key. We need to scale up to the level of ecosystems and bioregions. Joe believes that bioregional learning centers can be wisdom holders, as were monasteries during the Dark Ages. This idea was initially proposed by Donella Meadows.
Landowners can begin to collaborate around water management within a watershed. In India, small-scale interventions by large numbers of people to help infiltrate water, transformed the land and provided a water supply for twenty villages within just five years. In ten years, a hydrological cycle can be repaired, and a forest can regrow in twenty years. Collective dreams can manifest, like the restoration of the Loess Plateau in China, an area the size of Vermont. “Dreams are seedlings of reality,” says Joe. Instead of dystopias, which can generate despair, “trans-topias” demonstrate the incremental steps necessary to shift a system. Make it fun, build teams, and people will want to join!
The only sustainable cultures in history have been indigenous. In the indigenous worldview, time is nonlinear, a repeating cycle. Rather than seeing the natural world as resources to extract and exploit for material gain, they view all beings as relatives to be treated with respect and gratitude. They cultivated polycultural food forests instead of cutting down huge swaths of trees and planting single crops. There is much we can learn as we seek to “re-indigenize.” We must decolonize our own minds, awaken in the dream, and find our way out of the cultural stories of the consumer economy. Together, we can become Gaia consciousness in service to life, regenerate earth, start rebuilding soil, plant native seeds.
May humanity awaken in the nick of time. May this be our Great Turning, the transformation of consciousness, to love each other and our only home, and all beings who share it. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”