I am sitting in bed writing; it is both a place of comfort and rest – a retreat from the world for a while. For the last 5 days we have been on high alert as this part of Australia burns. We have spoken of almost nothing else. We check our emergency App frequently and respond to every beep alerting us to nearby fires. Everything that has been created here in the valley at Riddells Creek could be lost if one of these fires comes this way. Or it may come later this summer or next year. It is in some ways inevitable. We live with bush across the road. The birds, animals and insects will suffer. We will all suffer. Australia is suffering. I cannot write of anything else and when I receive emails that let me know of events happening in the city I feel irritated. How banal, I want to ask them: ‘Who is your audience at these times’? We are in critical need of conversation and transformation. I know that the practice I offer supports this.
I wrote this on Sunday 8 December 2019 before the fires began in Victoria and NSW:
Living on the edge of a city in a place filled with bird life it is extraordinarily difficult and simultaneously painful to imagine what lurks surely close by as summer approaches and the world around us becomes drier and more flammable. It is a knives edge where the reality of the present sits in uneasy expectation of the future. The becalm is illusory and all those around me talk incessantly of the looming disaster and impending tragedy. Yet, I am tenderly touched by the beauty of everyday life here in the valley. The birds wake me, the sun comes up faithfully illuminating the colour of the leaves in their extravagant diverse greenery and I make tea in the sublime hope that today will be a ‘good day’ filled with human endeavour, kindness and satisfying conversation. I am hopeful for the day, for the planet, for our humanity. But I am very worried at our being distracted from what is painfully imminent. To overlook the state of the earth is suicide. It is so difficult to feel this crisis when the day by day evidence of life is strong. But it lurks all around us. In a city close to us there is fire and a sky full of smoke. How long until it reaches my world?