At a funeral last week, I celebrated the values of one person’s life, and the value of death as part of Earth’s natural cycle. This was the funeral of a nature lover, bush walker, teacher and dancer. At 81 she had accepted the fact of death calmly.
With a heightened sense of wonder at our connections with land, I read:
Nothing in nature grows forever, it goes in a cycle. Seeds germinate, grow tall, age, sensce [sic], die and decompose. Other seeds sprout in their compost. Yet our modern technological society (and more to the point the predominant ideology in our economic theory) believes that our economy must grow forever. Should economic growth slow we speak in fear of a recession. That means that mostly…our use of resources and energy must also grow. To do this we are quite simply trashing a world.
Haydn Washington, A Sense of Wonder, Pub. Ecosolution Consulting (Nullo Books), 2002 p. 38
I guess I’m a child of the 70s when these (values and economic) questions were being addressed by people like E.F. Schumacher:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/
Since ancient times holistic views of nature have been voiced. Questioning these view testifies to cultures separated from nature’s natural cycles. Rather than dissipate our energies in argument, we can find ways to give voice to land through art. Perhaps we can find ways that can be recognised by this generation.
You recognise something of our generation in the words of Haydn Washington. I can too. Perhaps it is the style of writing rather than the content that we recognise. The ideas expressed are hardly new, however, and remain valid.
Washington cites Ralph Waldo Emerson (2002; 26), reflecting in 1836, on the Greek philosophical view:
“Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that does separate us, all which philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE.”
And pointing to the values voiced by our most ancient human cultures, those of the Australian Aboriginal people, he shows us the words of Bill Neidjie (Washington 2002;17):
“Rock stays, earth stays. I die and put my bones in cave or earth. Soon my bones become earth…all the same. My spirit has gone back to my country…my mother.” (1985; pp.13,14,46,47,48,58)
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Horror at the pesticide build-up in the world’s ecosystems inspired Rachael Carson to write ‘Silent Spring’ (1966), which reveals her deep connection to land:
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after the night and spring after winter” (Rachael Carson, cited in Washington 2002;29)
Generations of artists and scientists observe refrains of nature, and as much as they can know, find ways to voice them.