De-Growth and Re-ligare

Most days are made of labour and wonder, boredom and anxieties, delights, communions, and questions.
Most days I pray, not in the form of penitences but in giving thanks, and praise.
Every day, I wake up with the knowledge of one world,
one planet, cast in a spiraling dance,
since hundreds of thousands of years,
and I, descendant of an exploding star
pondering
the feeling, of wind on my skin
this phenomenological presence
in the midst of an ''ecological crisis''

not only am I anthropocentric
I am also ego-centric
for I am trapped within the confines of my body
craving for an umbilical connection with All there is
an embrace
not as a hope that my thirst be quenched
but as a celebration, of the dance
pushing and pulling
sinking and soaring
between Mother Earth and Father Sky
a child, a navel and a star gazer
knowing myself, as the Self,
as one concentric being of possible becomings
amongst infinite networks, of centers also unfolding
amongst patterns, of a Life,
Self-organizing

Today I attended a conference that's taking place on the Concordia campus.  I hadn't planned on going.  It got decided over breakfast and freshly baked banana bread.

My roommate was looking at the program trying to decide which panels and activities to go to.  I had heard about she and A. signing up to volunteer and attend that De-growth conference, all week.  I was curious, but I also thought to myself: ''Well, here's another wonderful thing happening in Montreal and I won't get to be part of it... because it's expensive and overwhelming, for it's attracting all those wonderful people who are involved in the gardening movement... and blablabla... how come I can feel so close to this intellectually and yet not get more involved?  What's keeping me from getting my hands dirty?  blablabla...''

In short, I hadn't planned this day.
But there I was, 9 in the morning, biking down Rue Sherbrooke along with two of my friends.  Sunshine in and out.
How did it happen?  She said there was a film being presented this morning, and she wasn't sure she wanted to go because it was so nice outside.  I asked about the title of the movie, and she answered: ''Journey of... ''
'' ... of the Universe!?'' I interrupted with a big smile.
''Yeah''.
''Oh my God!  That's my professor!', I explained with overflowing enthusiasm.  ''I totally want to see that movie!''
''I bet you could just get in like that,'' she said, ''they don't really monitor.''

And so I walked into Concordia University's auditorium.  And there he was on big screen: Brian Swimme, one of my dear professors from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Invited for this projection were three imminent panelists: two professors from Yale - creators of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology - and the producers of the film: Marie-Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, whose names I have heard so much about during my time at CIIS, as well as William Rees,
professor of public policy at the University of British Columbia... and the originator of the ''ecological footprint'' idea and co-developper of the method.

Listening to Brian Swimme reiterate his wonder about the unique circumstances that made human consciousness possible in the Universe, hearing talk about that 14 billion years old journey to this new scientific narrative, witnessing his praise of play and wonder being communicated to people gathered right here, in the province of Québec... I personally experienced the bridging of what often comes off as two worlds...
San Francisco meets Montréal!  My mind: hyper stimulated, the way it gets when I attend those ''academic conferences''.
(''In my days'' while I worked both at UMaine and for CIIS Public Programs, I attended a hella those lectures and conferences, and I've been reflecting on that recently as I went through the résumé process.)

But it wasn't only CIIS and Montréal, it was my bachelors at UMaine also, the environmental and political philosophy papers, the thought process...
I was inundated with flashbacks from my trajectory, hearing my own personal worldview and conclusions being investigated.
Part of an important conversation.

So I guess that the International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas is right along the lines of my work.  I might not know exactly what this work is, I suspect it is going to play out in several aspects, but I cannot deny that I am strongly tied with this community of thinkers and ecologists.

I regularly get down on myself, for I find it difficult to see that even though my understanding points to the necessity of re-learning re-lating with the natural world, of re-incorporating and re-localizing the process of food production, even though I know and praise the importance of urban agriculture, I still haven't planted a seed this year!
I'm surrounded with people who do, though.
I tell myself it'll unfold in due time, when I have landed a bit more in my new reality (Is six months long enough?).  I tell myself that it's good I am surrounding myself with all these community and guerrilla gardeners while I'm attending to whatever needs to happen in my own life at the moment.  I am learning by osmosis, through conversations and observations mostly.  I am cultivating kefir.

I did dig up rocks in my friends' gardens last week, when I went to St-Élie-de-Caxton to spend a Monday afternoon with the ground, massaging the Earth's body, turning mama's soil and giving her oxygen so that seeds can grow.

Little by little... I am grounding into something... and that's something is changing, evolving, at a pace unprecedented.

I have physical theater plays flashing in my head, doctoral theses waiting to get delivered, and dance phrases burning to get drawn in space and time...

I have visions, and Professor Tucker said that's exactly what we need right now: visions to guide us.

I have visions.