2016- and moving forward

Happy New Year!

It is now over a year since I posted anything on this blog, but that’s fine. I created this space to explore calling and vocation, and sometimes that is what a pause is about too. Coming back is a gift, for as I reread my last post, back on October of 2014, it ties in perfectly with where I am now, a year and three months later.

Last year, 2015, was strange, exciting and boundary-pushing. My pause in blogging coincides with taking on the task of standing for the Greens in the New South Wales State election. It was not comfortable or easy for me doing something like that, but the opportunity arose and it felt meaningful to stand in that gap and represent the green-minded people in an area that is very conservative and capitalist.

I had the opportunity to go to Townsville and grade in my school of Japanese swordsmanship, Nakamura Ryu Battodo, so finally have my sho dan (black belt).

In May, after the State Elections, I needed to retreat back into my comfort zone, but I was also left feeling “what now-ish” after all the energy spent trying to engage with people and get my message out to the community. How was I to build on that experience? I found myself struggling with the rage and grief around our failure to work meaningfully to end our dependence on fossil fuels, but recognised that despair is not a solution.

So, I made a list of all the things that mattered most to me and found pictures, and ended up creating a vision board for myself. It focussed on the best kind of future for our planet that I could wish for. I worked out an acronym using EARTH – Envisioning Abundant Renewable Transforming Healing….and added “for our planet”, and created a Facebook page, EARTH Thriving – where I could post all the good news: every article and interest story and meme telling us about people doing the right things to move towards sustainability and healing.

Over the next few months I found myself returning again and again to the same theme: how to shift our relationship with the planet – psychologically. On the 21^st of October 2015, I have a journal entry where I grilled myself about my nebulous sea of “what” – this human/planetary/environmental nexus that I didn’t know what to do with, but has me so entranced. I was looking for the “base thing” that could be a launch point, as suggested by a dear friend, Janette Dalgliesh. That date is intriguingly noteworthy. I decided there must be something that connected ecology and psychology so googled “eco-psychology” to see if it existed. Bingo! The 23^rd of October 2015 marks the date in my journaling where I acknowledged I’d found my “One Thing”

Yes, I would love to study and get an appropriate qualification, however that might not be possible – yet – so I am reading and educating myself. More books are ordered, websites bookmarked, and I’ve started a blog especially for this: EarthThriving.org – still in its infancy as I feel my way forward with baby steps.

Now, at the age of fifty, I finally know my life’s purpose. It is all about connection – ours to Gaia – our planetary environment, our interdependence on and relationship with the exquisite network of life, which is what ties in so perfectly with my last blog entry exactly a year before: Connected.

~ by Dragonwyst on January 2, 2016.