What happened last week in Paris was so shocking it has taken a while for its wider implications to be articulated. But, if you are interested in considering different ways to think about the event, the following article is instructive, together with its links to other posts and articles. I’ll just quote a few lines and then the link can take you to the whole post:

‘The cartoonists now join the growing number of journalists killed ‘in the line of duty’. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that over 1100 journalists have been killed in the last twenty years (with 60 killed in 2014 alone). They include not simply the high-profile murders of reporters by Isil in Syria but also cases like the 16 Palestinian journalists killed by the Israeli army in Gaza together with the 16 reporters killed by US military fire in Iraq. Strangely enough, these latter killings do not seem to have generated the same claims from leading commentators that they constituted a ‘murderous attack on Western freedoms’. Yet the fact remains that it is an outrage – whatever the identity of the assailant or the victim – that a single journalist should have lost their life simply for covering or commenting on a conflict.’

‘Those commentators peddling the argument that the shootings were all about a ‘mediaeval’ determination to stifle free speech and undermine our free media have sought to marginalise the wider political context as if there are no consequences for the ‘West’ of interventions in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan let alone the situation in Palestine. In their obsession with the sanctity of freedom of expression, they seek to bury the notion that there might be ‘blowback’ as a result of Western occupation and intervention along the lines predicted by the former head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, when she talked about how ‘our involvement in Iraq radicalised a few among a generation of young people who saw [it] as an attack on Islam’. But of course it is far more convenient to adopt a ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis and to shunt aside uncomfortable geopolitical realities for the more soothing talk of free speech and absolutist speech rights.’

Read the full article here

Here are a couple of moving responses to the terrible events in Paris. The first is a short film of the residents and holiday makers in Valmeinier showing solidarity with the victims of the attack, and the second is a short film made by the Active Change Foundation showing British Muslims speaking out against ISIS and their actions.

In the light of the shocking attack on Charlie Hebdo yesterday, the message of Deep Ecology reminds us to embrace our interconnection with all life as a means of achieving not only environmental sustainability but also collective peace and social justice and equality…

From The New Scientist:19:00 12 June 2014 by Andy Coghlan

Talented photographer Beth Moon has produced some stunning images of trees in her book Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time. Here is an extract from her website about the project:

Beth Moon’s stunning images capture the power and mystery of the world’s remaining ancient trees. These hoary forest sentinels are among the oldest living things on the planet and it is desperately important that we do all in our power to ensure their survival. I want my grandchildren – and theirs – to know the wonder of such trees in life and not only from photograpshs of things long gone. Beth’s portraits will surely inspire many to help those working to save these magnificent trees.
Dr. Jane Goodall

A guest post from Maria Ede-Weaving…

I have never been a great fan of New Year or the idea of setting oneself resolutions. New Year’s Eve in the past has often left me feeling quite maudlin; the sense of enforced fun and frivolity only serving to intensify a strange sense of unfulfilled longing and regret in me. I couldn’t even specify what those longings and regrets might be, only to say that this collective moment of passing through the threshold between one year and the next stirs some uncomfortable feelings. I love Auld Lang Syne – Burns’ words and the melody move me greatly – so, when the midnight chimes ring, I have generally been found with a tear or two in my eye, experiencing an aching incongruity between all that fevered celebration around me and my own inner sadness.

I must confess that this year the thought of crossing over that threshold is incredibly appealing. It has been a difficult year of moving through the grief of losing my father; struggling to release many other things that are no longer present in my life; my divorce finalising and – as a backdrop to all of this –  finding myself menopausal. It has been a year of exhaustion and turmoil, both emotionally and physically, and so the thought of drawing some kind of psychological line in the sand has started to feel like something worth celebrating. I am not naive enough to think that all will be miraculously well when I wake up on January 1^st but having found myself uncomfortably suspended in this liminal place of the threshold for so long, I have decided to approach this New Year’s Eve with a more welcoming and positive attitude.

Moments that mark the end of one thing and the beginning of another offer us the opportunity to hold within us both the sadness of letting go and the joy of embracing the new. If we let it, this can be a potent alchemical blend that leads to a gratitude for life’s experiences, both the testing and joyful; it can allow us to sift and sort the wisdom gained, shedding the outmoded ways of being in order that we might truly move forward in healthy and productive ways. The truth is, this rather arbitrary point on the calendar potentially allows us to partake in a powerful collective piece of magic: all that energetic celebrating culminating in a moment when we release what has been to welcome and make space for what will be.  It may be that we have many opportunities to do this at any point in the year, but having a dedicated time when we all come together to ‘wave bye-bye and say hello’ enables us to honour our humanity and the common experiences we all share as we each wrestle with the changes.

We are creatures who move through time and our memories shape our perception of the hours and the days we have lived until now but we should never allow memories to become a prison or our personal or collective histories to calcify our ability to embrace change or feel hopeful for the future.

Tonight I am choosing to see the transition from the old year to the new as my chance to walk through a magic door, one that will take me to places and experiences yet to be known. I have with me a life-time of wisdom gained and I am shining a more positive light on my memories so that rather than them being a weighty burden that I carry, they are instead a comfort and a guide.

When the clocks strike midnight, remember this moment of transition is two-fold: it is both the sigh of a wistful out-breath, a nod of thanks to the past, followed by the hopeful intake of air that will fuel our first step into a new life. We are crossing that magic portal and anything can happen! Let’s walk through together…Happy New Year!! /|\

in love with the new sun
the cherry blossom forgets
the night’s frost

~ Ivan Granger

A guest post from JJ Middleway written on the Winter Solstice…

Last night as dusk fell, the sun was still headed imperceptibly south. By the morning it had turned and was just as imperceptibly heading back north again,where we in the northern hemisphere need it to be in order to get any sort of Summer.

So, in the middle of this longest, deepest, darkest night of the year – what the ancients called ‘Modre Nicht’, or Mother Night’, – the sun reached the end of its pendulum swing and after a brief standing still (Solstice = sun standing still) it turned, and began its return journey. Technically and scientifically, I gather this point was at 23.03, when the sun also moved astrologically from Sagittarius into Capricorn (my home sign!).

Mythologically, the child (called the ‘Mabon’ in native story) is born out of this deepest darkest night and the glimmer of a new-born sun (spelled ‘son’ in Christianity) appears. It is also a metaphor and teacher for what has happened to me in life: through experiencing the deepest, scariest, darkest places,(when I have had the nerve to stay with it ) eventually a new and delicate light has emerged from this blackness, to illuminate and enhance my life, in a way not available to me before. Sometimes this is expressed as “What doesn’t kill us , makes us stronger”.

It is a beautiful and wondrous time of transition:- for me this is the time of going into New Year, with the sun ‘reborn’ last night and then this very deep and still time – expressed perfectly for me in the hymn ‘Stille Nacht’ – Silent Night.

And now, here we are in a magical ‘between time’ because although the sun has turned, this isn’t yet evident to the naked eye for another three days – i.e. Christmas Eve. In that sense, solstice is a three-day ‘non happening’.

Christians apparently, in the early centuries AD, used to celebrate the birth of Jesus in February; but rural people (the word “pagan” means ‘of the countryside’ or ‘peasant’) still stuck with the old ways of celebrating the sun’s rebirth around 21st December, so the festival of Christ’s birth (‘if you can’t beat them , join them’ ) was moved to mid-winter.

So here we are now in this ‘three-day’ between time, waiting for the sun to “turn homewards”. I have a candle burning on my window ledge as I write this, which was lit last night and will stay alight until the night of Christmas. It is a sort of sympathetic magic, ‘calling back the sun’ kind of thing. It makes no sense scientifically – and probably very little non-scientifically, yet at some level it links me, as a poet, into the poem of this time of year. So that means a lot to this old fool.

Ironically, at what feels to me to be the perfect (and most appropriate) time to be serene, resting and still, our culture unconsciously marks this key point in the turning of the wheel, with a bout of frenetic, last-minute ‘run round like headless chickens’, buying spree.

It is estimated that something around £10 billion will be spent in this three day period in the UK alone. How strange and odd and divorced from nature have we become?. Surreal; bizarre; quasi-comical; comi-tragical.

Meanwhile, I am finding this to be the perfect contemplative time. There is a depth and peace and tranquility to be found in these deep dark nights which is unsurpassed in its quality and natural capacity to link me to the deepest, most evocative landscape of my soul.

Turn off all things electrical and simply sit by the light of a solitary candle for a couple of hours – ten minutes if you can’t manage that. It is quite possibly the best gift you will receive this Christmas.

Solstice Blessings, JJ

A very sweet version of the Christmas Story told by the children of St Paul’s Church, Auckland, New Zealand. The sheep and star costumes are a highlight!

HERONS IN WINTER IN THE FROZEN MARSH

by Mary Oliver

All winter
two blue herons
hunkered in the frozen marsh,
like two columns of blue smoke.

What they ate
I can’t imagine,
unless it was the small laces
of snow that settled

in the ruckus of the cattails,
or the glazed windows of ice
under the tired
pitchforks of their feet—

so the answer is
they ate nothing,
and nothing good could come of that.
They were mired in nature, and starving.

Still, every morning
they shrugged the rime from their shoulders,
and all day they
stood to attention

in the stubbled desolation.
I was filled with admiration,
sympathy,
and, of course, empathy.

It called for a miracle.
Finally the marsh softened,
and their wings cranked open
revealing the old blue light,

so that I thought: how could this possibly be
the blunt, dark finish?
First one, then the other, vanished
into the ditches and upheavals.

All spring, I watched the rising blue-green grass,
above its gleaming and substantial shadows,
toss in the breeze,
like wings.