Farmed salmon are killing the wild runs of fish on our coast. Sea lice infestations now threaten almost all of the existing pink stocks that swim through the Broughton Archipelago. With the loss of wild salmon comes the loss of so much more, including the health of First Nations people on the coast. In the past 5 years a number of studies have been done showing that the diabetes epidemic that plagues First Nations communties can be managed by eliminating non-indigenous carbohydrates and relying more on wild foods. To allow salmon farming which is bringing wild salmon stocks to their knees is tantamount to denying First Nations communities access to their own health.
Time to decolonize the oceans and decolonize our bodies.
Photo by aikijuanma
Here is a lovely story of youth adding beauty to the world by setting up a poetry stand and giving away instantly crafted poems to anyone who asked for them.
A few months ago as I was walking in Government Street in Victoria I met a woman standing beneath a tree outside Munro’s Books. The tree had small pieces of paper attached to them and when I looked closer I saw that they were poems, hanging on a “poet tree.” The poet turned out to be Yvonne Blomer and she asked me if she could read me a poem. When I said, with delight, “of course!” she asked whether I preferred any particular subject. I replied that I wished her to read me a poem about the territory of the open heart. She looked at me for a second and then reached into a file folder and pulled out this one:
To watch over the vineyards
O carrion crow, pulpy skull of scarecrow
going soft in your black bill,
in this fetish-orange field lies worship:
the sweep of glossed plumage over glistening
membrane; lies the sweet blood of purple skinned grape
cut on your sharp edged tomia,
shimmering there; sun-light on wet earth.
You too sweet to ripe; you black in the shadows, calling when you’re calling – –
the herds fly in dust gone crow, gone scare,
gone trill in clicks and shouts of krrrkrrr.
I applauded and remarked at how appropriate the poem was in many ways, especially in the resonance of the last sound, which approximated the French word for heart: coeur. She signed the card upon which the poem was written, handed it to me, and wished me a good day.
There is nothing bad that can come from poetry offered freely in the street.
From my friend Ria, who advanced a little in her inquiry on holding space:
When I am holding space, I connect in my body with the unmanifest potential of this person, this group or this place. It asks for an emptiness and a deep stillness inside to be able to carry this potential. Maybe it is better to say to be a container for it, and I mean it in a very physical way. I open my body to be this container in service of something that wants or can become manifest.
I have a wonderful family. They put up with this graph all the time, but they don’t ask the question.
I have just had a full week at home, my first since September. Off to Victoria next week for a week of meetings with VIATT and then home for Christmas and then a two week shutdown of all Harvest Moon Consultants activity.
Blogging will be light as I reacquaint myself with my home.
From last year’s gathering at Rivendell here on Bowen Island, Finn Voldtofte on four good life practices:
- Stay in inquiry, or stay in the ambition to stay in inquiry
- Stretch beyond what you know
- Do what you do for the sake of the whole
- Speak what you see and feel and allow yourself to be corrected by the field
As I reflect on the results of that gathering, including the committment I made to be in inquiry around conscious evolution, I realize that Finn’s words have deeply informed my approach to hosting, to leading from within the field. I was on a conference call with some people in Saskatchewan today about some work I might do there, and I had a strong sense that the decision I had to make was “do I join this field, and become a community member for three days in January or not?” Once I said yes to that, we flowed into some design and inquiry about possibility. From that place, and only from that place, can I offer what I authentically sense and feel, willing to be corrected so that together the field might shift and sway towards its next level.
It was about a year ago that Finn died. We were so lucky to have recorded these pearls from him and to have these ideas live in practice. Thanks to Thomas and Ashley for such sensitive harvesting.