The end of Hope

Today I was standing in a field between Abington and Hildersham. The freezing air held me on the frozen grass, and surrounding me, the black silhoutes of the trees reached their iced fingers upwards. Suddenly I realised that for years I had been trying to have a conversation with nature. I am of course, a climate change denier. Most of us are, it is the only way we can continue a normal life. But there in that field, the effort of holding back the evidence of my own senses collapsed and I realised that the conversation I had been trying to have, was “goodbye”. Goodbye to the birds, the flowers, the trees and all the myriad of insects that exist to create a profoundly lovely garden of delight that I had believed would always be there. Can I go back to believing it will be preserved? I wish I could but it is actually a relief…I have reached a personal tipping point where I have to admit that nothing is going to stop us reaching the global tipping point that the climate change scientists have been predicting will end a way of life that we have taken for granted. It is time for something else, and there is no training I can take, no degree, no MA or Phd that will equip me or my children for what is ahead. The grief I had been walking with put its arms around me and I stood on that footpath sobbing. I see that recycling, making environmentally wise shopping decisions, being a Green Party candidate, being vegan or vegetarian, none of this is going to be enough to avoid the onslaught of change that is coming. But there is still love and beauty. There is still compassion for all living beings and hard as it is to change, I will still make all the best decisions I can and I will not retreat in despair. My sons are arrows that are flying into the future and whatever that future holds, I want to walk with them into it, singing and praying and dancing and taking all the best that I can of human charity and goodness to fill a new world with a different hope, where value is measured in compassion and goodness instead of wealth and power and status, a world where a new consciousness will teach us to treat all life as sacred and connected to us in ways that we have only recently forgotten. This is my new hope. If we survive the coming onslaught, we will be remade with love and compassion. “The gods have not fled, they are not sulking, but they do want our full attention.” (Martin Shaw)

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