Barry Patterson, August 2007.
If you enjoy reading my work or find anything useful here, please make a donation.

It’s become a familiar plaint: "The city is depersonalising, depressing, dirty, dangerous & unnatural. As soon as I can I’m going to escape! I’m going to buy that place in the country or get a job in a smaller town."

There is an old prejudice about unnatural versus natural things. I was once giving a talk about spirituality & nature, bemoaning our lack of connection with the ground & with natural living forms when I was quite rightly taken to task by someone in the audience who pointed out what a wonderful old building we were in at the time & how human works are part of the whole picture. Of course this is true, I had to admit it. In fact I didn’t disagree in the slightest – our difference was a matter of emphasis more than anything else. But there is nevertheless a boundary.

For me, the practice of ecological living inhabits this boundary between human & not human in an almost shamanistic way. If it were to do this only by fence sitting or compromise then it would be a cliché that would never rise above a certain mediocrity of vision & inspiration would never come to us. In one sense, the challenge is to live with that ambivalence, to live right there, on that edge. In another sense the challenge is one of integration, to discover by whatever means we can, the bigger picture, the context to which both belong. I would say that to do so is in itself the whole point, because if we embrace the general then we can easily apply it to the specific situations & challenges that confront us in our lives. If we become too narrowly focused then we will miss the chance to find genuinely creative solutions to the challenges that face us.

All our attempts to be green are part of an historical process - the political, social & ecological process of a post modern society coming to terms with its own lack of sustainabilty. Becoming aware of its impact on the natural systems of which it is a part & upon which it depends. This is a major theme in the sweep of history in which we all participate. But we need to be careful how we pitch such a definition. Are we trying to protect nature? Is that possible? Is the conservation project down the road which is planting mixed decidous trees in a field by a stream itself natural at all? Is the preservation of an ancient, threatened landscape natural? Was that "landscape" (a relatively modern term) really all so primal in the first place?

Common sense says that these are worthy projects. It’s natural to protect one’s home & family, & many of us involved in conservation think of our heritage that way. We feel a sense of connection with the old Wishing Tree at the end of the road & when we find that the Council have come & cut it to pieces & taken away the timber & shredded the branches & leaves then we cry. We feel angry & we don’t want things like that to happen in our town. So we develop a sense of responsibilty for what’s going on in our local area – for what is being done in our name by our representatives & their officers. We keep an eye on the planning applications. We join or create campaign groups. Remember that we do make a difference. There are millions of us little, ordinary people. If we really engage with these issues we’re a force to be reckoned with!

But we need to ask ourselves deep questions in order to be clear about what it is we are doing, what it is that we want. Are we just protecting what we personally like about nature? Are we campaigning for our own selfish vision of what the city could be like? Is this a form of prejudice? Are we avoiding the bigger picture in some way? Are we being too human-centred for instance? Or are we doing the exact opposite - reacting against all human activity? Some do. Considering our population density in this country, we are always going to be disruptive of nature one way or another. How do we avoid these extremes? How do we avoid romaticising a situation? How do we avoid cynicism? It becomes a double bind. Assuming that we don’t accept the arguments of an economy & culture of convenience, which say that things just have to be this way: "Sorry about the tree, sorry about the sparrows…" how can we be sure that we aren’t contributing to the problem even in our attemopts at being green?

Do we take an ideological view of these issues? Is that ideology universally applicable? Can any technology, for instance, really be inherently bad? Can it be banned, as if it had never existed? Can the genie of nuclear power, or of GM really be stuffed back into its bottle?

When is a cliché not a cliché? A cliché is in the mind of the beholder. A cliché isn’t a cliché when it is fresh, inspired & inspiring. The Modern Druids call this Awen & work with methods to discover & use creative solutions. The same idea is at the heart of Permacuture. We solve the Catch 22 by refusing its terms of reference. We think outside the the box. To me, this means that we need methods to orientate ourselves rather than ideologies –new approaches that may be applied to any situation without distorting its uniqueness.

Going on retreat in the countryside may to help us develop some insight, though not necessarily. Neither will sitting in interminable meetings, though this might serve certain specific purposes. Creeds & dogmas are going to block it. Our own attachments & neuroses will weaken it. We need to find & develop lateral, creative responses to the challenges we face & there is one key factor in doing this, something of the utmost importance: a sense of place.

If we really have a sense of place then we also have a transformed sense of self. We have a context & we see how the inner & outer dimensions of experience mirror one another. We cannot have deep awareness of our place in the world without having deep self awareness. It’s a relationship that we work on & we make new discoveries through it all the time. A deepening sense of place sets us free of the contradiction of trying to hold true to the big picture while being focused on the specific details of the campaign to save the woods or promote greater appreciation of the environment in our community.

Place centred activism is a kind of balancing act & if we get it right Nature can answer our questions for us. She may not answer rationally – we might not have visions of flow charts or campaign strategies, but she will show us how to proceed from the inside out, from the deep places of the land & the heart. But this Nature, she is not just the nature of the green leaf, the song, the flashing wing, the wind. She is also the nature of the street, the school, the office - the car, the bike, the bus. She is the nature of the library, of the net, of society itself. She is the nature of pollution, of pain, of destruction, of horror. She always has been. When that tree fell in the Carboniferous forest, unwitnessed other than as an impression on what is now rock, she was there. She pushed it. Cries for mercy do not move her. She is nature in the common sense of the word but she is more. She is our true nature! Our deepest nature. The well spring of this world. We deny her & block her whenever we deny or block what we see around or within us. We run from her frantically, singing the refrain of the latest pop song or catchy advert. We refuse to accept so much about the world. We harden our hearts & lower our expectations – then we cheer ourselves up with some kind of golden age fantasy of how things used to be in the good old days or will become when we have saved the world & everyone is enlightened & living in harmony.

We need to ground ourselves & get real. We need to open to the spirit of our place. We need to open to it’s non-human dimensions: the topography, the rocks, the plants, the animals, the weather. We need to open to its human dimensions: the walls, concrete & tarmac, the gardens & parks, the cats & dogs & cockroaches, the culture, the people! The people, with all their desires, hatreds & dreams.

I’m talking about finding the basis for understanding what is really happening so that we can be artful in our actions. How can we persuade the politicians that there are limits to growth, that we can’t keep extending airports & motorways & car parks forever? That modern agriculture is not sustainable & that the foot & mouth crisis of 2001, as truly awful as it was, might just be an hint of what is to come? How can we do this without feeling overwhelmed? Or, ridden by our outrage & anger, becoming extremists & declaring a war of revolution?

I don’t mean that we should try to tell others what to do; we need to work on ourselves so that our own vision is clear & our honour intact. Then we need to find skillful ways of communicating with our fellows. It may seem that we are a tiny minority. That may not always be so - the world is always changing & our small, daily acts & insights are accumulating.

We all, to some extent, remember the ancient ways. The satisfaction of our hunter gatherer instinct makes us feel good, so we go comfort shopping. We still dream of forests & wild animals, of bows & arrows & spears, of cattle & fish & small boats tossed by waves. Reconnecting to our heritage, we discover that it has both natural & cultural sides to it & that it is hard to tease these two apart. So we sit by the urban stream. We contemplate its name & history as well as its song. It is what it is. If we think that the noise of the traffic is spoiling our idyll then we have the wrong idea. If we curse litter & litter bugs we just transmit our own tensions. We need to be here. The place needs us to acknowledge it as it is. We hear a wren. We sit still. We see ten species of birds in half an hour. Then we pick up the litter. We sense something greater than ourselves. We serve something greater than ourselves.

I like to visit certain trees. To be with them all year round, in all weather, day & night. Other people like my trees too. Two of them are very popular with children who like to climb them & build things in them – to me it often looks awful but they have as much right as me to enter into conversation with the tree. & they are doing so, oh yes! Some day, as adults, they will see some other tree & remember. Once my favourite tree died of old age & disease right before my eyes. It took weeks. It was a painful process for us both. Nature talks to us this way. She is Death too. Things won’t necessarily go the way we expect. Sometimes we may find ourselves grieving. Then let us grieve! Let us sing & dance our grief! A little girl & her mother told me the tale of the destruction of the Wishing Tree which I described earlier. I said: "I’m not going to tell you not to cry." The tale had us all in tears, "Every tear that you shed for your lovely tree makes this world a better place!" I believe that too. Perhaps the tree could have been saved if they had known what was planned? Too late. But something good may come from its demise. The removal of some old trees near Canley Ford in Coventry where I live was a scandal. But it lead to the formation of a grass roots "Friends of" group & now the area has Millenium Green Status. It could have been absorbed by the golf course, which has eight foot spiky fences.

Here in the UK most of us live in cities & many of us like to visit the countryside for walks & other recreation. We have precious little genuine wilderness. We have a huge population density. Those of us who are concerned about this must do what we can to protect our heritage but we must be honest about the way we go about it. At the heart of the problem is the simple fact of our very existence. It can seem hopeless sometimes, we could become nihilistic or cynical or we could be always looking over our shoulders & feeling guilty about our lifestyle choices. All this suggests to me that the problem is very much a psychological or a spiritual one. It can be addressed by spiriuality as effectively as by any other means, but we shy away from the idea, our current value system just isn’t attuned to thinking this way. People just aren’t as aware of these things because they tend to allow their immediate daily environment to become a space built from symbols, a virtual reality, rather than physical structures & patterns of relationship. They become alienated. For me that is the opposite of a spiritual feeling.

If we decide that we wish to serve the Land & its Spirit, then I would like to say that we need to connect ourselves with the reality of where we really are, right now. This is a sacred place. This is a special time. This is the time to act, now. If we do this honourably, deeply, the inspiration will come to us. We will find new, powerful ways to commune not only with non-human nature - which we must - but to return from that journey & communicate with people too. To banish cliché, apathy & alienation from this circle, from this cycle of the world. Otherwise we are merely brave, idealistic children poking as many fingers as we can into the rapidly multiplying holes in the environmental dike.

There is more biodiversity within the city limits of a place like Coventry, where I live, or Greater London than there is outside, in the green belt or agricultural hinterland. Many of our cities are very green. There are hills, valleys & hidden rivers beneath the streets. There are secret, quiet places that nobody notices. Let us find them, let us go there & let us enter into meaningful conversation with our deepest roots & work together with the spirit of the land for transformation.