Processing the Violence of Silence
Wilder spaces for connection, processing, witnessing and becoming
Last week I was witnessed by a river.
Seen for the grief I was carrying.
Tears poured out of me.
Something about the dark pools and the flowing water and just being still, alone and present with that.
I also received some sage advice from a gnarly old Oak about sitting with the broken-ness of these times.
I was held lovingly in the cold fog by a Crab Apple tree.
And had my heart filled by a Hawthorn at sunrise.
There are openings, spilling overs and filling ups that the living land can bring forth, a profound kinship that can be nurtured through connection, attention, reciprocity and intention.
Through practice.
I needed to grieve for the suffering and overwhelm I’m witnessing and carrying and the land and all its beings sensed that and did their magic.
That’s how I experienced it.
When I returned home I noticed the absurdity that half a million amazing people marching on the streets of London against the genocide in Palestine don’t even make the news or headlines anymore.
‘If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’
George Orwell
(on a wall outside the BBC)
I’m thinking this should be deeply concerning to anyone working towards regenerative futures, climate action, sustainability, ESG whatever you call it.
How can we be working towards renewal, towards life-sustaining cultures while violent massacre of (some) life is intensifying largely in silence.
Empathy, compassion, solidarity, liberty.
How can we be entangled with life, part of nature, but selective about which parts ?
Where does this lead us as a culture, if it continues ?
“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller
I’m often unsure how to talk around here these days.
Trying to navigate a path, as we all are, and find ‘relevance’ to sustain myself in this monetised enmeshment, where literally everything is now mediated by capital.
A constructed reality that makes very little sense to me anymore.
But here I am.
One antidote for me over the years has been learning to open up to the world we have not made, to all that is alive and to make consistent space to listen and un/learn in communities of practice.
To journey through discomfort, uncertainty, grief and not knowing as necessary teachers to connect with our heart wisdom, our unique gifts and how we can point them in service of the health of the whole at this time.
This is foundational to everything I work with now.
There is real sense to be discovered in those explorations.
And possibility, joy, creativity and mischief to be uncovered.
Way beyond the narrow impoverished confines of capitalist modernity.
Finding pathways to alternative ways of being which put life, care, community, connection and love at the centre.
If you’re looking for some space to process the unravelling madness, the violence of silence, to speak to it and allow it to flow through.
To connect with the living, animate, sentient landscapes and surface new and wilder intelligence and insights to inform your actions and ways of showing up.
I’m here to help.
We have a number of experiential offerings through Becoming Crew, and we’re trying to make them as accessible as possible.
A wilder day experience for teams
Wilder overnight space for crews of individuals
Or come and spend some wilder time with me on the land on your own
Take care and don’t be silent to the murmurings in your heart
Beautiful writing. Thanks.