There can be little doubt that we are in an evolutionary change. The choice between taking the green path or continuing the scorched earth path has never been more obvious. The systems we have employed to make life better have failed as poverty, homelessness and addictions rise. Extraction of resources, human or other, have been given a green light. Yet amid this chaos there is a growing conviction to choose another way.
Twenty young people of the Sunrise Movement were arrested this week as they protested at the Capital. “Step up or step aside” was their request to Senators who have not yet signed the Green New Deal. And the rail system in Canada has been shut down as indigenous people act to save their land and way of life. The inconvenience of truth telling reverberates wherever usury and greed meet up with those incapable of living lives of self-destruction and harm to the earth.
There is a massive movement towards sustainable living that is emerging. It may be political and take aim at the powerful, or it can be found in the upsurge of community activism, cooperative living and the efforts towards food sovereignty. Reduced consumption; local energy production; the refusal to use plastic and to drive cars are all fueling new ways of thinking and new ways of being.
Young and old are finding one another as they “make a way out of no way”*. Whether due to governmental calamities, or because the natural world is no longer playing nice, the good news is there is a wave of “can do” that is sweeping through us. From refugees in encampments learning to grow food in place to colleges and universities divesting from oil, we are all being invited to this revival.
The earth can heal and so can we. The time is now.
*”Make a way out of no way” has been attributed to James Boggs.
photo from wikipedia commons: Banner for a Green New Deal. Chicago Sunrise Movement rallies for a Green New Deal, in Chicago (Illinois), 27 February 2019.
let kindness win 