I’ve always found it incredibly short-sighted of the human race how we go about both tearing up and carving out land. That land ownership is even considered a thing and that land custodianship is not that important to us as a species. Which is kind of remarkable given that we are almost entirely dependent on it as a species? That somehow it’s considered acceptable for humans not to have access to land.
I have look at churches and at malls and felt the negative impact that they have had on land. Why is it in our desire to worship god and even consume we seek to destroy the creation of nature? It’s a question that has pressed on me for quite sometime. I’ve struggled with the idea that as humans that we can engage in worship that and honouring that endorses nature destruction. Like so many other things these questions are easily dismissed as a ‘necessary evil’. People need a place to live. People need a place to shop. The work that we do is so important it somehow it’s ok to overide nature to perform it. It’s a bizarre kind of corrupt lie that we are all complicit in. That we can ‘operate’ detached and separate from nature. That our very existence is entirely connected to the honouring of land and the ecologies it hosts.
Beauty spots, Areas Of Outstanding Natural Beauty and even World Heritage Sites can be protected yet the unique and sacred relationship that humans have with land isn’t. This can be clearly demonstrated with the eviction of the San of Botswana from the lands that they had lived off of for millennia. This was in order for a newly classified nature reserve to be undisturbed by human interaction. Even though the San had been living there in harmony with nature for all of their history. That begs the question who gets to decide what happens with indigenous lands? I’m getting bored of Autocratic systems within my life and even the planet. Where one person holds the final decision on what is to happen with our land. A person who doesn’t live there, wasn’t born of it, yet through a corrupt capitalist or even well meaning benevolence believes that they own the right to what happens to land. We live in a system that seeks to displace the sacred human from his home environment. It is an issue that lies at the very core of what believe is an anti-human system.
Many of us now feel and embody this dis-harmony as we attempt to buy ourselves outside of this system by going off grid. However no matter how far we run or even how well we plan that consumption of land is chasing us. It is chasing us from the very land we stand on and even own.
There is so is a plethora of information out there about land conservation, management and now the idea of re-wilding. That also continues to be explored within the collective psyche of our species. Where we search for the wild spaces in which to heal both within and without ourselves. That seem to be forever seeking to be in harmony with one another. Once again the challenge with Land Healing much like the other forms of healing of which I write starts with us, where we are. The spaces we occupy and forces us to ask the questions in the most basic way. Where does my water come from? Where does my food come from? Do I have access to green space? Why are these things important to me? In or current society we know that we need to deeply engage with these question in order for our species to have a sustainable future. What is your relationship with land? Is it consumptive? How do you give back, conserve and even preserve your balance with nature? How has this balance been corrupted? Are my choices or lack thereof consensual?