“To find ultimate security in an ultimate vulnerability, this is to be loved.”
-Howard Thurman
A profound quote, that holds truth on multiple levels, from the personal to the community to the planetary. Indestructible vulnerability is how I often term it –- the ability to face the stresses of an era of accelerating change -– some positive, some trivial, some downright terrifying. And yet, by keeping out hearts open, even in the face of crisis, the impossible sometimes becomes possible…
It’s a sunny spring day in San Francisco, and I am packing, getting ready to go to Bolivia, to attend the World Peoples Congress on Climate Change.
This is the beginning of a larger journey for me, one that will take me until 2012 to complete: I am starting to shoot a feature documentary, EVOLVE LOVE: Love in a Time of Climate Crisis, which is part three of a trio of films. The journey began in the year 2000 with SCAREDSACRED, my pilgrimage to the ground zero’s of the world, searching for stories of hope within the darkest moments of humanity. Part two was FIERCE LIGHT: When Spirit Meets Action, a timely film about positive (peaceful) change and the power of bringing spirituality and activism together. And now -- EVOLVE LOVE: Love in a Time of Climate Change, is about a search for Love in a time of global collapse, and asks the question: how could the climate crisis become the greatest love story one earth?
Few problems have loomed as large and challenging as the one we’re now facing as a human family. All the figures have proven to be wrong, all the predictions, and the talk about saving the planet “for our grandchildren” turns out to be overly optimistic. We need to get to work now to save the planet for our own selves. We are going to start feeling the effects of the crisis with greater and greater intensity, in the all too near future.
What can we do? How can we cope? How can we turn this situation around, and in fact, transform it into an opportunity? And what’s love got to do with it? I don’t know the answers yet, but at the upcoming conference in Bolivia, I will start asking the question. I’m hoping to get an interview with the indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, along with a myriad of visionary activists who will be gathering from around the world for the conference.
The story of Bolivia is quite remarkable – it is one of the first times that there has been true indigenous leadership -– practicing indigenous values –- of a modern day nation state. To my mind, it is one of the most promising, and exciting, social experiments on the planet today.
Last year, at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, Evo dared to say what the people know: the powerful nations and corporations are being shamefully negligent about climate change. In the wake of the failed talks, Morales called for a Peoples Summit on Climate Change. The powerful nations are welcome to attend, but they will be there to listen to the voice of the people of the world.
Evo is calling for a world referendum on climate change - a huge experiment in global democracy, with as many as 2 billion people putting their voice forward.
Anything is possible in the next few years. As Van Jones says in Fierce Light, "the whole human species is on trial right now. Either we will be a bumble bee species, or a locust species."
We'll either devour the planet, and each other, or awaken our hearts to the awe inspiring creation that we are born of, and put that amazing human brilliance to work in creative solutions. Paul Hawkens, in an interview for Evolve Love, talks about "humanity's immune response to a planet in crisis" -- a movement of movements that is spreading around the globe. To me, this is an expression of love, and I am hoping to find evidence of this at the World People's Congress on Climate Change, which I am now on my way to...
~Velcrow Ripper
Good to see that Velcrow Ripper has finally gotten the Indigenous fact and how important that fact is - way back when the traditional indigenous leadership of the Carmanah Walbran watershed, properly known as Qwa Ba Di Wa, were fighting for recognition of their land, their struggle found no place in Ripper's film 'The Road Stops Here'. Too bad because it might have helped instead of just the white tree huggers stories...better late then never I guess
Nobody devours the planet more than the likes of you who fly from place to place across the globe as if this whole planet is your own personal playground. And for what? To teach us all more lessons about how we are destroying our mother earth? What privilege excuses you from having to limit your own footprint on the planet, here and now? Are these special media credentials, I wonder?
Sorry if I sound pissed...but I am. This all comes back to a very serious matter that we all must face up to sooner or later: As the piggiest consumers on the planet, what are WE willing to sacrifice in the name of a saner, more ecologically sound future? Or do we go on acting and believing that we are not a (huge) part of the problem.
To quote Krishnamurti:
"We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us. And only when we realise, not intellectually but actually, as actually as we would recognise that we are hungry or in pain, that you and I are responsible for all this existing chaos, for all the misery throughout the entire world because we have contributed to it in our daily lives and are part of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its ugliness, brutality and greed--only then will we act."
BTW
Happy Earth Day.