Friendship and Memory

I woke up this beautiful morning thinking of the words in Ecclesiastes 11:7

Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eye to behold the sun.

These words set me off on a good track for the day. Lately, I’ve sometimes felt depressed and discouraged but, really, I should not. There are so many good things in my life. So many reasons to feel grateful. Simple pleasures. I have enough food, a warm home, good neighbours, running water, a roof over my head. These things are worth celebrating every day.

A friend of mine spoke to me about the deep satisfaction she feels after having had a leaky roof for some time to know that her roof is now solid and won’t let the rain in. The repair was coordinated by some of her dear friends, which was another reason for her to feel grateful. Friendship. 

Lately I too have had several occasions to deeply appreciate what it means to have good friends. Connections with friends are more important than ever these days and they often offer a different way of looking at things. A long-time friend of mine who is a frequent traveler keeps a lively blog of her various journeys, including reports of her many artistic pursuits, sewing, reading, fashionable outfits, knitting, gourmet cooking, domestic and family activities, and so forth. It’s an impressive read and worth checking out:

https://www.materfamiliaswrites.com/

In a recent blog she wrote: We’re going back to Portugal! Grab your appetite and your curiosity, but you won’t need a passport or a suitcase, nor even a credit card. She’s still hoping to get to Portugal soon but, in the meantime, she’s used her blog to share photos and experiences of her past trips. She writes about the idiosyncrasies of some of the people and places she has encountered, the villages, the meals, the unforgettable sardines. It’s entertaining for readers to share those experiences and it must be wonderful for my friend to re-live her experiences at a time when she can’t travel. (Note In order to accompany her on her armchair trip to Portugal, you may have to scroll down to the bottom of the blog post and enter "More Armchair Travel" under the Search line.)

We can all enjoy travel without getting on a plane. Memories offer a kind of time travel and I find them heartening. As Penelope Lively wrote more than once, the past is real and the re-living of it can be important. Recently, someone on Twitter tweeted that his six-year-old daughter had asked, “What happens to time that has passed?” A good question, I thought. A physicist responded, proposing that it stays where it is, in space time, while we have moved past it. He compared this to walking down a road but being unable to go back to where we came from.

Even though we can't re-inhabit the past, there's a way in which we can re-live it and perhaps re-member it -- put it back together -- from a later perspective. That can be instructive and often healing.

Today, among the many things for which I'm grateful, I'm celebrating both memory and friendship. They often go together. Talking with long-time friends about the past is one of the pleasures of old age. And with our deepest friendships, absence never lessens the connection. When we meet again, it is as though time hasn't passed.

Not all memories are happy, but our friendships have the capacity to help us heal old wounds. And that makes me recall Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past.

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my last post I ranted about the need for us all to write letters, speak up and do whatever we could to get governments and corporations to pay attention to the recommendations of the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chance (IPCC). https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/

I’m ranting again now but the post after this will be about joy which is still present in the midst of all the chaos.

A few weeks ago there was an article in the Guardian about a different kind of climate change denier, the people who hear the alarm bells ringing but shrug their shoulders and carry on as usual.  Life is not usual at this time on our planet.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/13/denial-anti-vaxxers-climate-sceptics

In her convocation address, delivered in blank verse, at Simon Fraser University in 1991, Canadian poet P.K.Page reminded us that imagination is our star and

                      though we are

Trapped in the body of an animal

We’re half angel and our angel ear,

Which hears the music of the sphere, can hear

The planet’s message, dark, admonishing, as the archaic torso of Apollo

Admonished Rilke, ‘You must change your life.’

 Art and the planet tell us. Change your life.

Of course, one person can’t change the world singlehandedly, but everything each of us does makes a difference. Even small actions have a ripple effect, and one person taking action can inspire others to do the same. You can change your life by

·         Writing letters to government, corporations, the newspapers

·         Signing petitions

·         Consuming less

·         Growing food

·         Cutting back on car and plane travel

·         Eating a plant-based diet

·         Educating oneself and talking to others about the need for action.

David Suzuki has a good list of things that help: https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/top-10-ways-can-stop-climate-change/

My brother sent me a link that proposed to offer short works of literature that is meant to inspire one to work on climate change.  I must warn readers that I found them to be depressing as much as they may be inspiring, especially the one written by a Nigerian teenager describing a future Lagos that could come true if we don’t do something. She imagines how life might be different:

https://apple.news/AIwTH0tkIRk2hQmUYcdGz3w

It’s easy to become depressed when one reads about the state of the planet, but I remind myself of the motto of my old friend Dr. Margaret Fulton who said, “We cannot afford the luxury of despair."  We must do what we can. Everything matters.

But it’s also important to take the time to feel gratitude and joy about our good fortune here at this moment. 

It’s a beautiful day, and I’m going out to meet a friend for lunch. These things matter too.

Note: I wrote this yesterday but found I couldn't get into my blog so it didn't go out in a timely way. Fortunately, my excellent nerd assistant, Jason Seale, got it sorted out today. So here it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smoke and fire

Like everyone I know, I’ve found this summer’s fires and the current heat wave to be deeply troubling, not to mention uncomfortable.  Many of us have read the summary of the 2021 Assessment Report from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and have been disturbed by the report’s comment that these findings represent “a Code Red for humanity”: https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/

It’s shocking to read UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ statement that many of these changes are becoming irreversible.

There might be slight encouragement in the words of Eddy Perez, an International Climate Diplomacy Manager, who states that limiting global warming to 1.5C is not negotiable and still possible: “We need to fight to restore our broken relationship with nature and with ourselves; we need to fight back against any delays to urgent climate action,” he says, and “There is no substitute for phasing out fossil fuels and cutting emissions in half this decade.”

Many very concerned, aware and intelligent people say that individual action will not make any difference, and it’s true that individuals making changes in their carbon consumption – renouncing airplane flights, unnecessary car travel, red meat, and practicing voluntary simplicity, etc. – will not be enough.

However, I believe significant change in institutions, societies and belief systems has always started from individual action. People create change by putting real pressure on politicians and policymakers in governments and corporations. We can do so by using our votes and our voices effectively. And our purchasing power. We have done it before and we can do it again. We can. We must!

I’ve just now written letters – real letters, not emails, so that they can’t be so easily dismissed – to my MLA and MP stating that the climate crisis has to be at the top of all government agendas and we need them to take strong action and follow the recommendations of the IPCC report. I’m also going to check out what investments are in my pension plan and other holdings and try to argue for environmentally ethical choices. And I urge others to write similar letters. There’s an election coming. Let’s speak up for the environment.

 If our governments do implement the report’s recommendations, it will make things very uncomfortable for us for the next few decades. If they don’t do this, the next few summers, years and decades will quickly become much more uncomfortable, perhaps catastrophic.

 I find myself thinking of PK Page’s dystopic novella, Unless the Eye Catch Fire. How prescient she was! How inattentive we have been.

Knowing Trees

For the last several weeks, forest fires have raged around our province: people have been evacuated, lost their homes, and endured high levels of smoke. We watch the news and worry about the environment, the people, the animals and, more than ever before, the trees themselves.

Professor Suzanne Simard’s recent book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest has many of us thinking differently about trees. https://forestry.ubc.ca/faculty-profile/suzanne-simard/ For over 30 years, Dr. Simard has researched tree connections and has written about the communication between trees and what we have to learn from them. We are realizing that trees are sentient and have relationships. They talk to each other. From this research, we're beginning to see that we are all connected, something which Indigenous people have known for centuries.

When I was about eight years old, my father, on returning home from a business trip to Ottawa, brought me a little book titled The Children’s Book of Trees, written by Leonard L. Knott and published in 1949 by the Canadian Forestry Association. My father was a kind man who loved his family and the outdoors, and he knew I’d be pleased with a little book with pictures of cheerful trees smiling at happy children.  The book contained a guide to the various trees that live in Canadian Forests and it urged children to learn their names so that they could recognize an individual tree “and be able to say, “Hello, Mr. Spruce’ or ‘How do you do, Mrs. Maple.’”

How different our country might have been if the colonizers who first came to Canada approached the indigenous people whose land it was in a similarly respectful way, maybe even asking for permission to enter the country, as visiting Indigenous people do when entering onto another nation’s territory. The settlers might have asked questions about the plants, animals and trees that they were encountering for the first time.

Instead, according to The Children’s Book of Trees, the white men assumed that the Indigenous Peoples had nothing to teach them: “The Indian was as simple and as primitive as the trees themselves.” The book states that “the Indians knew very little about wood and discovered only a few of its many mysteries,” and celebrates the fact that, “unlike the Indians,” the white man made “great use” of the trees and “chopped down the best of them” to make logs for their cabins and masts for their navies. I wonder how many of these white men stopped to ask questions and really learn from the people who had lived on the land for thousands of years.

My friend Dr. Nancy Turner is a distinguished professor and world-renowned ethnobotanist who refers to herself as an ethnoecologist, reflecting the awareness that we are all embedded in the complex world and the broader context of the environment. She has spent decades learning from many Indigenous teachers who, with kindness and patience, showed her ways of being and looking at plants and nature. https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/environmental/people/faculty/emeritus/turnernancy.php

Dr. Turner has authored, co-authored and edited over 30 books, many in collaboration with her Indigenous teachers and colleagues, about the traditional knowledge systems and traditional land and resource management systems of First Nations peoples, returning royalties that come with some publications to help support Indigenous students and community programs. Her books illustrate how Indigenous Peoples of our region cultivated, managed, used and cared for the trees and other plants, including estuarine root gardens, berry gardens, forests and marine habitats, throughout our region. Contrary to knowing “very little about wood,” they were the experts, says Dr. Turner. 

We newcomers have always had much to learn from Indigenous Peoples, but it’s only recently that we’ve started to do so. Thankfully, although the early white settlers in this country may not have recognized the wisdom of the people who had lived so long on this land, things are changing. We’re beginning to look, listen, respect and pay attention to new ideas and ancient wisdom. We’re starting to replace our assumptions with curiosity.

We're learning that trees have much to teach us. As Herman Hesse said in a much-quoted essay, Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.

 

 

Reaching Out

 

 

 

Recently, I’ve had an increasing number of emails and texts that invite me to “reach out” if I would like more information. Businesses and other organizations claim to be reaching out and inviting others to reach out in return. I have an image of a great many arms that are wanting things.

Most dictionaries define “reaching out” as referring to an effort to help someone or to ask for help. It's an expression that was often used by churches or charitable organizations to encourage us to assist those in need. Now it just means making contact with someone. It simply means texting, phoning, emailing for whatever reason.

I guess that’s OK. Language changes, becomes inflated or dumbed down. Words disappear. There is, now, in fact, an emoji with an expressionless face and an extended, grasping hand that apparently means “reaching out.”

I remember feeling moved when someone asked me to reach out to a family in need. And feeling grateful when someone I didn’t know actually reached out to me because I was having a hard time. Just now a friend texted and invited me to visit her at her farm. She didn’t use the expression “reaching out,” she just did it. I felt it.

Words come and go. People no longer call, ask, request, inquire, implore, entreat, beg, write, or otherwise contact. They reach out. The supermarket, my insurance company, the car salesman, and a great many other people keep reaching out to me. And they invite me to reach out to them.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with this. But the image of so many hands and arms reaching out with no meaningful purpose concerns me.  

I hope we aren't losing the sense of what "reaching out" used to mean.

Where to start?

 

“We’ve gone straight from pandemic to apocalypse,” my niece says.

“When will the locusts arrive?” asks my daughter.

It’s not a joke. Last year the locusts swarmed in record numbers in parts of Africa and South Asia, destroying huge hectares of pasture land and causing increased food shortages in countries already challenged by Covid-19. People in those countries used to eat locusts which are high in protein and other nutrients but recently, despite these people desperately needing access to food, governments have advised them not to eat the locusts because the chemicals in the insecticides that are used to control the insects make them toxic.

These days, every crisis seems to occur within or alongside other crises. I live in a pretty comfortable part of the world, one that some people refer to as Lotus Land. But now, aside from the pandemic and the record-breaking heat from the “heat dome” which created temperatures 15 to 20 years above normal, we’re having to face the fact that where we live is far from idyllic for a great many people for many reasons.

What remains at the forefront of my thinking is the shameful treatment of the indigenous people on whose lands we live. But so much needs to be acknowledged and addressed, and it feels difficult within the current environment of concurrent crises. I can’t get my head around it.

So much all at once. Covid. Heat waves. Forest fires. The town of Lytton destroyed by fires. Statues torn down. Totem poles set alight alongside racist graffiti. An ocean on fire from pipeline damage in the Gulf of Mexico. Anti-Asian racism. Islamaphobic attacks. The Delta variant. The anti-vaxxers. Homelessness. Poverty.Anger. Hatred. Cynicism. Despair. 

Where does it end?

More important, where can we start to deal with all this? I was encouraged as I viewed the first of the 8-session webinar series called Bringing Our Children Home: https://reconciliationcanada.ca/bringing-our-children/  These webinars are well worth watching and the next one is on Tuesday, July 6^th. Candy Palmater, host of the Candy Show, moderates the discussions with a panel of experts including Reconciliation Canada Ambassador Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, and CEO Karen Joseph and others..

I found the wisdom, stories and thoughtful approaches of the speakers to be grounding and inspiring. For me, they offered a place from which to start.

Praise

 

Lately there has been so much disturbing news, here and afar, that sometimes I find it  hard to know what to say about anything. Instead I'm trying to focus on happy memories and the small pleasures that are close at hand. Yesterday. I drove out to Living Soils Farm in Yellow Point and, as I drove along Quennell Road, I was cheered to see the masses of daisies and buttercups at the edges of the road and the peaceful views of birds on the lake. Further along I admired the cathedral-like canopy of cedars, maples and pine trees that form an arch over the road. Our planet is in bad shape for many reasons, but there is still beauty all around us.

As I drove home, now bearing bags of fresh peas, strawberries, salad greens and a very handsome cauliflower, I admired the light over the lake and was reminded of a message my dear friend Marilyn sent recently which included a poem written by Polish writer Adan Zagajewski, who died earlier this year:

                  Try to Praise the Mutilated World

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees going nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

                     Translated by Clare Cavanaugh. 

Nature is healing, and a return to memories can often offer joy.. Despite the troubling news, there is yet so much to praise.