Photo by Nick Scheerbart on Unsplash

Last week I had several unexpected sheer pleasures. Normally you start that kind of conversation and people are waiting for the sordid details; nope – no sex here to talk about. Save that for another post. I have not written for a while and there are several subjects to I want to share that deserve some time and depth. More posts to come. For this first one; three kinds of time. The first is of presence; in the eternal now. A second is urgency – demanding a response. The third contains the depths only known to Love. They interweave…

This might be a bit long. I am feeling my way here…

I started writing here about a family tragedy. I stopped myself. It is too close and too soon. This is not the place. Save it to say that there is Grief in the space. Lots of it. The quality of time needed is deep; holding, slow. Long waves. The soul speaks slowly in waters like these…

Which brings me to water. That pleasure I was talking about? Being back under Sail for the first time in way too long… Being on a Motorbike demands presence and has no time for the last few seconds before the current moment. Right now is all there is. It is quick and has bright intensity. Sailing is different, and similar. The speed is different for one. The consequences of getting it wrong are perhaps slower but no less significant, however there is a presence to the forces around you that call you into harmony with them. You can try to fight the wind. You will never win. The result I experience in myself is that I need to come into a place of awareness and stillness. Time dilates. Hours pass. The heart opens. I find the path.

I am looking forward to doing a whole lot more of that.

And – there is another quality of time I am present to. Urgency.

In BC we shattered heat records this summer. We lost at least 520 people to heat-related distresses now directly attributable to climate change. Wildfires have been fierce. Looking further afield it is clear that the Climate Crisis is here, and is unfolding in real time. Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK government has said that:

“What we do over the next three to four years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity. We are in a very very desperate situation.”

Sir David King – https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/forget-2050-experts-say-its-2030-or-bust-for-net-zero-emissions

Here in BC the current government is currently intransigent in the face of overwhelming public support for the protection of Old Growth from logging – in a recent survey 85% of people in BC said that it is important for the BC government to honour its promises to protect the last remaining old growth in BCs forests – where only some 3% remains. (source: Sierra Club BC – June 2021).

Old growth is far more efficient at sequestering Carbon from the atmosphere than less mature forests, as well as being the refuge for the vast biodiversity that BCs temperate rainforest once boasted. BC has more endangered species than any other province in Canada.

In the face of these – what is the quality of time? Urgency. It requires action. And in the face of entrenched and powerful concerns that have a lot of money on their side; money falling out of literal and figurative pipelines that they have no intention of stopping.

I do not want to hear another politician tell us that we are not ready for the bold action this situation needs. That is a myth they are telling themselves, projecting onto everyone else as they are scared too of breaking ranks and taking on the true task of leadership. Instead their fears are on loudspeaker, and they are wasting precious time. We are in a shit load of trouble – we need someone to lead and if the politicians won’t, then that gap will be filled. If it is not filled intentionally, we will get the consequences of automatic. Our current cultural automatic is not pretty. We have built a terrifying machine. Those on the front lines have been warning us about it, suffering and dying. It is now turning on all of us, everywhere.

We as a species of been turning a blind eye to what our machine does. It does not care about watt gets ripped apart. That is what it does. No compassion. No mercy. Unless we stop this machine it is about to turn around and eat us too. This machine was responsible for the Genocide perpetrated against the Indigenous peoples of so-called Canada as most recently evidenced by the horrific discoveries of children’s graves at residential school sites and ongoing as indigenous land and title are routinely ignored in the face of corporate agendas. It is the same Colonial machine.

This is fucking serious. From the Pandemic and recent extreme weather events – people are scared. And they are tired. They want normal back. However we are now in an age of consequences and the only relevant questions are how bad, and how soon. Unfortunately the answers are Bad, Soon.

So either we roll over and die (whilst avoiding holding our children’s gaze) or we do something. Upping our Leadership game has never been more important. There are more good people out there than the willfully deluded and ignorant that are driving this bus toward the cliff-edge. It is time to come together.

The time in which to act is short. Urgent. Time.

And I wish I knew how to make it happen as fast as we need. I know I am not the only one.

And as I figure that out I need time and all its qualities and textures. How else will I choose for what truly matters…