Resilience. If there is one word that has come out a lot from my prayers and ceremonies, it is resilience. When the pandemic started back in March, as I was just back from Australia, I could feel something deeper was at play than just a pandemic. The pandemic was adding additional pressure on a system that was already struggling on so many levels: Strong divide between people, scarcity-based mentality, environmental collapse, fear-war based western systems, racial divides, weaken communities, impoverish soil & lands, polluted oceans, rivers, and bodies, unhealed genocides and trauma, an epidemic of opioids, etc. The list is long and daunting once we start to honestly look at how we have treated each other, the Earth, and all its living forms in the past centuries. A while back a renowned environmentalist gave me this analogy. He said we are like in a plane. And every species that disappear, every river that is polluted, every land that is destroyed, every pollutant that is sent into the atmosphere is like one screw that is removed from the plane. Planes are designed with lots of redundancy to improve their resilience. So one screw might seem not a big issue when lost (even if that screw is on one of the engines). Also because there are millions of screws in an airplane we might not even notice the screw was lost. But as time goes by, and as we keep flying without caring, the plane structure is weakening. And then the loss of one screw can create a major incident or bring us to a turning point where no real return or safety is possible. In our modern world, we have elders, wisdom keepers, land caretaker, water protector, wildlife conservationist, scientists and educators, healers and medicine people, community leaders and activist, whose roles are to alert us on the "status" of our plane (the Earth) and who knows how to avoid losing more screws. Their roles are also to educate and invite the passengers of the plane to take an active role in maintaining and enhancing life on Earth as we know it. In those past months, after over 7 months of deeply increasing my offering and support to the people connected to the community of The Sanctuary I have witnessed more and more of those essential workers, resilient leaders, and powerful healers to start being stretched to a place of discomfort and pain. I also experienced it. That is why I decided to slow down, reduce my offering for a while and take those 6 weeks off to restore, nurture, re-connect, and be inspired by this opportunity of the great turning as our elders are calling it. It became evident that this pandemic, and all the other issues we are facing, were not temporary. Not something a quick fix, a new law, or any amount of bailout money will fix. What we needed/need is a profound change in every aspect of our collective ways of living and relating. In fact, the medicine kept telling me "this is just a taste of what is coming, and so here is the time to stop and assess what really needs to be done to become resilient". Words starting coming into my prayers and dreams. Resilience. Community. Restoring. De-colonization. Listening. Grounding. Nurturing. If this is going to go for a long time (and I am not talking about the pandemic here), all of those involved in works of service (either being to Nature, community, two-legged or one-legged friends, etc) will have to be like athletes that went from running a few sprints to learn how to run a marathon or maybe even many triathlons! Every aspect of my life needed to come under review. I would not keep closing my eyes on any part of it that felt unaligned with that deeper calling. I had to take more than ever seriously the consequences of my words & actions on the next 7 generations. I had to assess how I will keep strengthening my body, regulating my nervous system, embracing wider emotional ranges, healing my western-colonial mind & ways, deepening my connection to the land and the plant world, and supporting the preservation of ancient knowledge (from my elders & teachers) in a way that is authentic and empowering for all. So I needed to learn to be held so I could do all this. Learn to shift from giving to receiving more often. And not let shame or feeling of not doing enough take over my heart or mind. It is feeling quite evident right now that this was a collective experience of many of the people I value as teachers and healers. We needed to balance the giving with the receiving, the being held with the holding, the loving with being loved, the fight with being fought for. Lands, trees, rocks, rivers, skies, all elders, grandmothers, and grandfathers who have held us for so long and still doing it, however badly we treat them. She will feed us. He will give you oxygen. She will grow a berry. He will give you water. Now is the time to turn towards them and hold them so they can rest and regenerate. So they can restore their resilience. So in my slowing down, in my nurturing time, I started to connect more deeply and more honestly (because it was more embodied) to the deep need of support of the support systems that hold me. It is becoming clear that yes there are no others. It is becoming clear that yes this life was never about us. It is becoming clear that the Anthropocene is failing unless it understands the necessity to work in partnership or even better in kinship with the Planthropocene, the Zoocene, and all the ancient traditions and elders who knew/know how to make this happen. More than ever the urgency has never been more clear or loud. We would be doomed to think that more technology, more mind, or more anthropo-controling ways are going to get us back in a way that will create true long term healing. One quality required here is a deep humbleness towards the living systems around us. Humbleness towards the sun worshippers (the plants) who know how to convert the sunlight into the soil, something our technologies is so far away to reproduce or even fully understand. Humbleness towards powerful natural cycles who know how to balance every ecosystem over millions of years. That ancient wisdom is there. Around us. And within us. We can hear it and allow it to pierce the veil of the sick mind, so we can be held again into this Earth paradise. Held all together. With all our relations. In the great peace that the Creator keep whispering into our tender hearts. Let's hold each other in that space. With Love, Angell
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