The size of the networks of solidarity expressing and providing support to Ukrainian refugees is another sign of the capacity of human populations to come together to share their feelings and act upon them. When we open our hearts to the other, individual or collective, human or more-than-human, we are apparently able to reverse years of injustice.
Let us take good note, as Gaia teaches us how to come together. Whilst we fight opinion wars around the scary viruses and the dark oils she produces from her bowels, we are coming together through networking. We are developing the capacity to respond en masse to disaster. We are developing resilience as we slowly come to realise that we need to drop what we are doing to run helter-skelter to the bedside of our sick Mother.
Aaah, here you are, she smiles. I Knew you would come! So you took me for granted, did you?, she cries. As Mother squeezes black oil out of her body, she moans, Can you not see me crying!?
Although our planet shows signs of illness daily with unbalanced ecosystems, biodiversity loss and climate change, she is widely ignored. So, she sent a message for all to receive, from the tyrants of the Kremlin to the humblest Amazonian tribesmen, one that at the core of our ego, one that can threaten our life if we ignore it. This hyper-sophisticated virus carries varying ethos-changing messages for all, whether awoken by fear of suffering, or toppled into passionate love for life, no-one has been left unshaken. Have we heard her plea now? Can we decrypt and put to good use the information we received as individuals, who are also part of the human collective and part and parcel of the Earth? As first world refugees are in the spotlight, do we remember the hunger-stuck refugees who have been huddling in tents in the desert for years? As we breathe through plastic ventilators or clad our beautiful faces with plastic masks, do we remember how our bodies deserve to be fed and cared for, the bodies that our Mother gave us?
Our collective Pain for the World is breaking free now so that we can prioritise and get our response armies trained and organised… Yet, can we feel the urgency in the ecological unravelling that we still perceive as intangible? Surely, yes! If we are able to feel pangs of solidarity in response to these recent crises, even at a distance, our fingers brushing our screens, we must be reviving the muscles of our natural response to danger, we must be noting that it is all connected. And when our fingers brush the leaves, our eyes sweep the horizon, our hearts will open to the realisation that we Knew, we always Knew, that this is why we are here. Close to eight billion individuals have a role to play, with two hundred thousand newcomers daily. We have been called to be a part of the Great Turning.
Let us pick up our weapons of compassion now.
©Artwork by Amanda Vela
Gaia Speaking 