The Turning of the Tide

Imagine if tomorrow everyone woke up remembering that our individual responsibility is not just for ourselves but for our whole community, and that our community and the way we live has an impact far beyond the reaches of our towns, cities an even our nation. What if we felt not only responsible for ourselves as a global community but that this responsibility extended to the environment knowing that we are a part of it and an intrinsic part at that.

This is the basic premise on which I wish to base my project that I have called PIPPA (People in Positive Politics Association). When I asked somebody if they might be interested in supporting me, they told me they weren’t really interested in politics, only in supporting their community. This shows me how much our system is broken; that the two have become so separate and our politics in such disarray, people don’t feel it has a place their community any more. 

Actually it cannot be separated, politics is how we organise our society, but party politics has forgotten that. I feel the ‘party’ is well and truly over. It is time to grow up and take stock. I am not saying that everyone in the party political system has lost their way, I am saying that the system is out of date and so the people trying to do good from within it, are being stifled by it. I believe it’s time to break free.

As information becomes ever more available to all we would do well to remember that although knowledge is vital, how we use it is key and that requires wisdom. I am not convinced our political system reflects this. 

There are people who have lived on our planet for eons sustainably and respectfully. They understand that the Earth has its own innate wisdom, greater and more complex than anything we can understand in our minds. We have not only forgotten the ethos these people uphold but have completely devalued them as a race at best and annihilated them at worst. 

I believe that now is the time to look to this wisdom and be prepared to learn from them. But I also believe that is still a wisdom we know. For some it has become clear again, but others may have to dig deep as it has become buried beneath what our society has pushed on us for centuries.

Every moment in our lives is the sum total of all that has been before it but never has this felt more poignant than now. As I sense the tide is finally beginning to turn, I know I am not alone when I say that I have been waiting for this for many years,

As events grew in intensity over the last month, the peaceful rebellion that descended on London, but also all around the world, marked a significant moment of change. Extinction Rebellion might have grown out of nowhere but the energy behind it has been building for years. With the tragic loss of the Ecocide warrior Polly Higgins the metaphorical baton seemed to be almost immediately passed to the young Greta Thunberg. She took this on, along with the political elite of the country, completely in her stride. She has set a new standard showing us how the everyman/woman can be politically engaged.

However, talk is cheap. How can we really start to turn our ship around, look the pollution of our waters, the devastation of our rainforests, the melting of our ice-caps squarely in the face and choose change?

This will not happen by simply passing a few laws, a few companies divesting from the use of fossil fuels and a few less plastic bags being thrown away. This runs deep. We have to reinvent ourselves and our relationship to our beautiful Earth.

Six years ago a young South American fourteen year old boy went to talk to the UN. The message he brought was not that we had to save the Earth but that we need to save ourselves. This sage would have to wait some years for his wisdom to be heard. 

Change can only come when enough energy has been generated and there is a critical mass, enough of a shift in people’s hearts, for it not to be met with resistance. When we truly understand our role here, find the humility needed, we will remember that we are a cog in a wheel of a mechanism that only works when it is in balance. 

I am the eternal optimist, ever confident that we will find our way, but how we get there, how we bridge the gap is the unknown, the challenging but interesting aspect of the journey. Awareness and respect for everyone, starting with oneself feels like a good starting point and my book of the month, Bergman’s Utopia For Realists, has been mind expanding for me. He talks of all the various studies on poverty that have already been carried out and almost implemented. Knowing that we could have been living in a completely different landscape, an alternative reality, had they been brought in, intrigues me.

It is clear that keeping people in wealth and good health costs far less than allowing people to slip into the terrible states that poverty creates. The costs to the state become huge in policing, hospitals and prisons. It is important to remember that the mental anguish is not limited purely to all those concerned here but to society as a whole. This is not only immeasurable in terms of the suffering felt and so beyond financial evaluation. Even more ironic is the fact that the rich suffer more emotionally too.

I can only ask, when are we going to realise that we don’t have to continue like this? When are we going to stop under valuing ourselves as a community and start thinking big, thinking collectively and open-heartedly?

Lighting the Spark

As it’s spring, I believe it’s time to begin. I have spent the last eight months building myself up to launch my project, but after all this time of talking about it I am still only ready to launch its conception not its birth. However, maybe it is important that the idea is born and gestated for a while before any action can begin.

I have called the project PIPPA - People in Positive Politics Association and its fundamental and main tenor is to take the ‘party’ out of politics and put the people back in. 

If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard people - young or old, completely indifferent or interested in the subject - say how our political system is broken and no longer serves us (as if at one point it did?!) I would have many pennies. It seems like the topic of the moment and it has picked me up and swept me on a new journey whether I am ready, like it or not.

My dream is to create a body of people who are willing to support this change and eventually I know this will involve everyone. It is likely, however, that it will draw politicians and people interested and already working in that sector first, but as I believe we will start to see the structure that we have upheld for generations crumble, we will also see that it is up to all of us to pick up the baton and create something new that works for all and engages everyone.

Obviously, not everyone will engage at first, but I hope that it will initially draw enough people from all walks of life to set it in motion. Diversity is the key to what makes this new method of working function in a sustainable way.

Even though I feel I am stepping into the unknown, I also feel that everything in our world, as well as my own, has brought us to this point where this is not only absolutely possible, but necessary and inevitable.

The shift in the relationship between the people that make up our society and those we have allowed to take control and power over us has changed beyond recognition. The arrival of the Internet to connect us and the knowledge that we have all played a part in the destruction of our ecosystem brings us to a pivotal point. I do not believe in blame or judgement here but I feel the key factor is that if we have played a part in damaging the planet then equally, we have the power to repair the damage done. However, it is important that we stand up and choose to take action now.

I want to create a political environment that puts life first, a system that works in connection with everyone and everything on this Earth. A system that is sustainable in all ways, that serves us and is served by us. This is not what we have at the moment; what we have is out-dated and no longer fit for purpose.

It is understood that humanity only changes when we find ourselves confronted with no alternative; a combination of complacency and extreme anxiety has prevented us from stepping forward until this moment of necessity. So although the majority of people are not in a position to act, I believe there are enough who are.

I want to play my part but although every birth is a personal experience I also know I can’t do this work alone. So over the next few months I will be putting this idea into a thing of substance while putting out a call for people to join me.

I wish to stress that what I am offering here is not something new. It’s happening all over the country and all over Europe and beyond and Citizen’s Assemblies lie at the heart of this new landscape. 

Frome is a leading light in many ways, having its own independent Town Council and acting as a beacon as many towns are starting to follow. So I feel perfectly placed to work alongside what is happening here to provide a hub, a link and a springboard for sustenance and growth.

I am intending to start locally first and then broaden my reach and join forces with other organisations already looking to make important changes for our future.

If you feel inclined, please get in touch.

A Gentle Evolution

Spring is approaching and all the hope that new growth brings is stirring in my heart. I can’t believe that after decades of cynicism and disenchantment that morphed into dreams of utopia and wild optimism, I finally feel like I've arrived in a place of quiet but realistic confidence.

I have no idea what the future will bring but I do feel change is on its way. Of course, it is not a widely held belief and the media will be the last to tell us, but I can see the small shoots of shifting paradigms sprouting up everywhere I look. You just have to search for them in places you may not have looked before.

I have been told that some of the huge ships that cross our oceans have rudders that have a small rudder set inside the main one. Before the ship can change direction the small one has to be aligned in the right direction first. This is true for any great change and if our society is going to achieve anything positive we have to set our internal rudders for the right course before we make any outward shifts. Although I believe this is happening on a global scale, it is only just visible on the small scale. This is how positive change succeeds.

People are beginning to wake up to the power we hold as individuals when we act as a community. The strength of the group is more than the sum of its parts.

We have remained in a state of believing we are separate from and in conflict with each other for centuries as governments and dictators have upheld the ‘divide and rule’ doctrine. This has kept fear and hatred alive in our hearts.

Now, everything is set for change to bring us all together. Science discovered the world of quantum mechanics and this has brought us a greater understanding of the hidden, mysterious workings of the universe. It has also given us the technology to create the Internet. Global communication, although many people believe it has brought us more shadow than light, has actually shown us how we have more in common than not. 

Those still clinging onto the fear are shouting louder than most as the wind is being removed from their sails, making it seem as though there are many more than there actually are. Those who are finding their way are quietly and gently going about their business. It is up to those who trust and believe in the power of the many to stay strong and keep walking forwards positively, united, and with love in their hearts. 

There are many ways in which this is happening but I am particularly interested in the shift in political power. I understood change would only come up from the grass roots. Our political establishment was formed many centuries ago from a society that was ruled by the old to keep control of its large, younger population. This has now shifted and the percentage of old people has grown so that the mean age of the rulers now matches the mean age of the populace. We are now in the position of being able to rule ourselves. 

Citizen’s Assemblies are proving that this is possible. Not only are they proving that they work, but they are proving that they work where our existing political structure is completely failing us.

On February the 14th Stella Creasy was asked to put her views on citizens’ assemblies to the panel of Andrew Neil’s television programme This Week. Unfortunately she was up against two, or three if you count Andrew Neil, patronising men very fixed in their belief of the necessity our party political structure. 

I believe, party politics has come to the end of its road and no longer serves anyone except those who have the money to exploit it or simply do well by it. As the system creates a huge divide between those who have and those who do not, the power and the money is put in the hands of fewer and fewer people, who become increasingly out of touch of the realities of day-to-day life for the many.

Creasy is trying to make changes from within the political structure, and I would normally say that this is always the best place to be. However, in this instance, Portillo just saw the whole subject as a ruse to play the Remain card against the Brexit. Of course, caught up in his narrow vision of two party politics he cannot see beyond the binary view he works within.

Citizen’s Assemblies come from a stance of no preset agendas or outcomes and certainly no investment gains to be made. It is made up of a group of people of completely diverse backgrounds, the more diversity the better, with experts on hand, and where everybody’s voice is heard. It does not ask for ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers but comes up with best solutions formulated over time with facilitated, calm discussion. This is grown-up politics, not the ridiculous theatrical farce we see on television from our House of Commons. 

Although, England’s politicians may be slow on the uptake, fearful of losing their position in society, Europe is picking up the baton and starting to run with it. A precedent was set in Ireland and now Belgium and Spain have put some assemblies in place as a permanent fixture alongside their councils.

Maybe there is a feeling that Britain is lagging behind but in 2015 Sheffield and Southampton both set up an assembly to look at constitutional change, asking the question ‘how should we be governed?” What has come from this? It feels like they were testing the water but no one has been bold enough to make it part of the political structure. The UK is certainly not short of assemblies being set up. A new group has formed in Bideford out of a concern that people are felt that are not being listened to and two London borough councils are going to run an assembly, but these are generally about asking the community what they think, not as an alternative to the way our politicians make decisions. Other than these toe-dipping exercises where are we going with this?

Although this might sound like impatience, I am actually quietly content that this is the best way forward; a slow but steady growth of political change that doesn’t upset any apple carts, no revolutions, just an easing into position of a new system that works so that when the old one crumbles we have something ready to take its place. No one really wants to run before they can walk!

For those still set on being right against anyone they consider to be wrong at any cost, there is a poem written by the Sufi mystic, Rumi, a thirteenth century Persian poet. 

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.” In searching for this quote i found another:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Sometimes it is wise to listen to and be guided by those from times past, before stepping into an unknown future. But I believe it’s time to find a new way forward rather than to keep relying on old methods that truly no longer serve us.

Let’s get creative together.

Creating Sustainable Ideals

Five weeks into the new year and already my mind is cluttered with over sensory bombardment. All of it, my doing, of course. Time to take a deep breath and address where I feel I need to be putting my energy this year. For Christmas, my partner bought me a book, The Choice by Edith Eger, a holocaust survivor. It is the most amazing testament to hope, strength and commitment to love and forgiveness I have read in a long time. I haven’t cried so much, over a book, in years. But they were tears of joy as much as for another person’s pain and journey to love. However, I had to finish it fast before my asthma, triggered by my empathetic feelings of grief, kept me awake yet another night! 

No sooner had I finished that book, my hand was drawn to another I had started a few years back but put down after thirty pages because I don’t do horror stories. It was Naomi Kline’s Shock and Awe, which filled me with more terror than Edith Eger’s powerful book.

What does our recent past tell us from stories such as these, whether they are personal or worldly tales?

It is clear that people only create change when forced or unhappy with their lot. This means that the desire for change always draws upon ideals, whether they are sociological, economic or political, propelled by a need to swing the pendulum, bound to ideas of revolution. So history shows how each new era seems to ping pong from one extreme to the next, driving the people, as mere pawns in all these leadership games, from one state of misery to another.

I feel a growing global demand for change, no more revolution, but evolution. In this age of information we, the general public, are becoming more aware of the twisting and rewriting of information we are offered as truth. Although it is probably the most confusing of times, with the Internet showing us as many untruths as truths, I live in hope that from the confusion will grow an understanding that we need to become discerning and more responsible. 

Past ideals have, from these continual revolutionary style changes, shown that nothing from our known history has worked, that anything that creates divisive and wholly opposite mindsets can, obviously, never serve the whole of humanity. Daniel Schmachtenberger offered a beautiful concept in his talk about emergence, when he said that if you are happy in the belief that you will go to heaven while there is also the possibility that others may go to hell, then you have the mindset of a ‘psychopath’. That sums up my whole vision of how our society is working at the moment and has worked for the past few thousand years. It’s time for change.

Everything we have created throughout known history, seems to be based on a binary perspective, that there can only be one way or the other. We have socialism or capitalism, communism or fascism, left wing or right wing, and on it goes. We are all aware of the horrors and the death tolls created by so many corrupted leaders throughout history, culminating in the last century with Hitler, Stalin and Mao (the latter two with the genocide of millions of their own people) but how much are we told about the sadistic ventures of post American reaction to Communism and Marxism. The man who gave us Capitalism, Milton Friedman’s belief that he’d created a beautiful idea inspired the Chicago school of economics that fuelled the Capitalism that lies at the heart of the US policy at home and abroad. I won’t go into the story of the many regimes that US governments removed and installed in South America leaving it stricken with communities split apart with so many problems, the most obvious being division of those living in extreme poverty and those with shameless wealth. But this corrupt construct can be seen across many corners of the world. Of course, I am not saying that America was the first, but this self-proclaimed ‘land of the free’, - created out of those fleeing from persecution of the ideals of other regimes, has fallen, once more into the pit of extremism - perhaps needs a strap line - ‘only for the 0.5 per cent’.

For years, to me, Capitalism has always been a dirty word, one that seems to herald consumption, consumerism, greed and opposition. It felt exploitative and unscrupulous, led by the few to keep the wealth to themselves while the rest can go hang. Then slowly I began to realise that the socialism I had clung to for so long wasn’t perfect either and that maybe one could cherry pick rather than stand at opposite sides of the bench and throw stones.

Then, my horizon expanded and I heard about positive Capitalism and I realised there was some hope on its way. I saw that, like so many other ideas given to us, only part of the story was initially available. I was reminded of the gospels and how many of them were hidden because they told a different story to the one the founders of christianity wanted us to hear, or Darwin’s theory of evolution where only his theories on ‘survival of the fittest’ are handed down to us, when actually that is only mentioned a few times and love is mentioned over and over. 

I learned that the Capitalism we have created, that only serves the shareholders and top echelons of the hierarchy, creates a system that is top heavy and unsustainable. I was to be presented, by a group called Conscious Business Initiative, a model that would transform my feelings and feel positive that there was a way forward without needing to rip up the program, create more devastation and rebuild (exactly how the Friedman Chicago Boys have worked for the past few decades).

Working with astrology, Gaia and now TreeSisters I have been learning for the last decade or so how nature is our mirror, our guide and our teacher. When we choose to remember that we are not separate from our environment it shows us the way. The torus is a mechanism or a model of the universe, now called the ring doughnut theory, that can be found throughout creation, from galaxies, to the Earth, to ourselves. I first heard about this in the movie Thrive. It is a universal geometric shape that generates a constant flow of energy. When we understand it metaphorically we can see how the Capitalism we have now, flies in the face of this universal lesson. Instead of a Torus we have created a pyramid, where the energy, money in this case, flows up to the few at the top and instead of naturally flowing back down to the many, it has stayed there, stuck in off shore accounts and other such accumulations of wealth. 

Sadly, when we work against this way of nature, (in the fluid way shown by trees or our weather systems etc.)  and stem the flow, more can be upset than the economies of a few counties. Now our whole ecology is at stake.

As we are now discovering, possibly too late, that all this is to our detriment, we need to find a way through this crisis. First, we need to accept that as an interwoven connected species we are all responsible for where we find ourselves. Portioning blame will not solve anything, it will simply add to the chaos and desire for retribution which will only fuel the fire of revolution. More than ever we need evolution, especially as we have to accept that it is not just ours, but the evolution  of the whole Earth.

We need to feed the vision of our future; that a sustainable world is possible and that the desire for competition, fear of scarcity and attachment to money can simply slip away. However, I do believe that the road to change starts within for each individual. While it is impossible to think we can all do this inner work, I believe that enough can begin to remember that we too exist as a torus; the embodiment of the life force, love in motion. I also believe in the one hundred monkeys theory: that once enough of us have learned how to step into the new way, as we are all connected, we all step up together. 

Creating the possibility for the pyramid to open up to the form of the torus, we can begin to heal and start to function as a society based on love and compassion. The vision of conscious capitalism works as a circle, where everyone connected to the business, be it the shareholders, the stakeholders the customers, the suppliers and anyone else involved, all need to be considered. Here everyone becomes part of the community, everyone is valued and brings their own diversity and uniqueness to the world. It is, of course, too simple for us humans who love to complicate everything with too many words and concepts. I am fully aware that I am part of that issue too!

We have to learn to trust and love and believe that we are all capable of working together in reverence for ourselves and the whole of our community.

Many years ago, when I was driving to Liverpool alone, I was guided to pick up a hitcher. (I would never have considered it without the inner guidance.) I retold the story to my friends explaining my delight when the young man who got into my car turned out to be just like me, a musician, a music teacher and a healer, almost my mirror. We had a very enjoyable encounter for just a few hours. I was chastised by some friends who told me it so easily could have gone the other way. I replied saying ‘yes it could but if everyone woke up one day and decided that everyone, including ourselves, was lovable and trustworthy the world could change over night’.

A New Year - A Gateway to our Future

Happy New Year! Hard to believe it’s 2019 but here we are and I’ve never felt so positive and excited about the prospects of the year to come, whilst feeling at the same time pretty anxious. The world is changing quicker than I could have imagined, but I am also feeling that now we can really start to make some important changes while keeping our heads and hearts open and centred. These changes might take many years to bring into place but as everything is moving so fast, and we have so few years left before a serious shift will occur, all we can to do is put as much as we can in place for the times ahead.

Every time I wake up to an idea for a way forward I am excited to realise that so many people are way ahead of me and that it’s already happening. This doesn’t mean I can just sit back and let others get on with it. These ideas are happening at the grass roots, on a local level and it up to all who feel moved to participate and get involved.

Last year brought a wonderful sequence of wake up calls for me from courses I took part in to   just simply opening my computer and seeing what it threw at me. As the year rolled on I was systematically carried on a path encouraging me to grow up and take responsibility for my own life and what I could be doing with it within the community. 

What was most exciting was realising that as I said, ’yes’ to each step I knew I was opening doors to completely unchartered territories and walking into an unknown. After years of being a musician I realised I had never taken on any more responsibility other than for my own life. Now, moment by moment I was being asked to broaden my horizons. 

5 years ago, I mentioned in a previous blog that I had envisioned a project that would bring together all those who wanted to bring into this world a new energy of positivity and love; lives based on cooperation, self-responsibility and community, in a restorative and harmonious relationship with the land. It was too big, too soon and I put it on hold so that I could get to know my new community - as I had just arrived in Frome - to learn about what was going on here and more about myself. 

What a gift, only looking back am I able to see how much I have benefitted from this. 

Last year it was a made clear to me that I had reached a place where I had experienced enough to start putting this project together. However, I was aware I still knew nothing about how to go about it other than to start talking to people and gather them in. This is what I have been doing and although I feel i am no clearer about how to take this project forward I have taken a few steps forward in engaging with my community. What I have particularly learned is that it is ok not to know. It is in this place of not needing to know that new ideas can come in, otherwise we restrict ourselves to the limiting answers that got us in this state in the first place. It was Einstein that said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. If you want to create something new you have to be completely open to letting go of being in control, and be open to the unknown path that can lead to a desired outcome.

This prospect truly excites me. It takes great faith and this is what I believe will get us through.

We humans have so much creative spirit, so much wisdom, new and old. If we can put our hearts together and look at the roads that brought us here and really understand what mistakes we have made then there is great hope.

We have created a world based on fear and separation, whilst still knowing what a world based on love and trust would look like. Yet we are too scared, en masse, to take that step. Our world as we know it is dying. However, it is my belief that enough people can be brave enough to step into that vulnerable state of complete open heartedness and imagine a new way of living. If we can believe and dream a big enough dream then we can break away from stories that no longer serve us and begin to shed our old skin and grow, creating the world we have always longed for, like the phoenix form the ashes. It is time to believe, for believing makes it so.

Life Is A Series Of Cycles

I have always known that life is a series of cycles, but have not till now truly felt its impact. My parents both lived through the Second World War and I always felt that those times impacted on those who lived through it more than any of us can imagine. Now we are in the middle of another conflict, a far subtler one than before and it starts within and is now showing itself in nearly every aspect of life. It divides us, as our hearts that only know love, have been taught to feel hate for so long we do not even see the issue here. This plays out in our families, with our neighbours, it has now divided our country and our nations.

We are in a state of crisis in every walk of life; ecologically, economically, politically and emotionally but we can  change all this if we choose to.

As Brexit looms ever closer and people take their sides and firm up the walls while pulling up the draw bridge, I try and stay calm. However, this becomes increasingly difficult as the prospects are not looking good on any front. However, for every cloud there is a silver lining and more proverbs than I could care to remember about such situations. What we would do well consider is that what has brought us to this juncture is mainly rhetoric, and no one truly knows what the future may hold.

A wider viewpoint is perhaps necessary here. The film Sliding Doors comes to mind. This brings in the idea that whatever our destiny is we will get there anyway but perhaps have a choice of the routes we take to get there.

I did feel at the beginning that if a new way was going to evolve, the emergence of a better world for all, then the old regime would need to fall away. If we wanted this to happen quickly (which I do not believe is helpful) then I did think that Brexit could be the answer. If we wanted our country to crash in a way not felt here before then leaving Europe and drawing up the bridge would isolate us and make us realise that we are just a small insignificant island after all. But that’s just politically and geographically, as an experiment to experience the emergence of the new world, this island has the chance to lead the way.

However, I feel it is important to understand a few things and to recognise how we arrived at this place. I heard at the anti-people’s vote rally that someone was reported to have said that ‘it is time we returned to the time when we were a great empire’. I think this statement speaks from the viewpoint of an extremist and has been some of the fuel driving the campaign. I feel it is important to be aware of the divisive nature of this referendum and how it has polarised us as a nation in so many ways.

I feel we need to revisit the history lessons we teach in schools. When I was in Israel in the 80s and visited the Holocaust Museum I was horrified that a young German amongst our kibbutz volunteers was hearing about the Holocaust for the first time here. He was reduced to sobbing through the film. As a Jew I was very upset for him and presumed that Germany simply wasn’t ready to teach this history in its schools as yet. It was only 40 years since the war. However, earlier this year I discovered that this actually wasn’t true and that in the 80s Germany was going hell for leather teaching its children about its dark past.

Why don’t we do this? It took till I was 40 to learn that the Irish famine wasn’t just about the potato blight, but a situation taken advantage of by our government designed to starve the Irish people while their food was being shipped out the country to England. The reason for this seemed to be to teach the Irish a lesson! We may have worked hard to improve our relationship with Ireland and its people but I do not feel we are taking enough responsibility for our part in the story. To me it feels like we are expecting all the work to be done between the North and the South. We are still in a place of denial about our actions here and all around the world.

If we are not educated and our history explained to people then no one will understand the full story. If we don’t teach our citizens that this is the result of hundreds of years of the British Empire’s imperialistic bullying and ruthless actions then they will only feel anger towards what is going on. We would understand a lot more if we heard everyone’s perspective and not just our own. Every conflict has two sides, I sense that we have only ever been taught one; ours. That is only half a truth.

I believe it is time to become more aware of our role in the world story and take responsibility for our part here and the damage we have done. The Irish story in particular needs understanding for the whole 800 year journey and the sooner this is more widely taught the better.

As those who voted for Brexit point the finger at Europe and those that voted Remain point at those who voted for Brexit, it is important to remember that three of those fingers are pointing back at themselves. We are all embroiled in this for all the good and all that is not at all good. 

We are now entering another cycle,  signalled by Uranus' 84 year journey around the sun, that is bringing us right back to the energy of the rise of the right before the Second World War. This is an opportunity and it is up to us to choose which road we take, whether we step forward with conflict or peace in our hearts.

Community Rising - Step one

Community Rising - Step one

                                                        

  

  It’s been a while since my last blog and for those of you who have enjoyed my thoughts over the last few years, I apologise. I am hoping to now make amends and start blogging more regularly. The issue was that I have been formulating a plan and it has taken rather a while to come to fruition. Even now it is only in an embryonic state.

As I have been quiet for so long I feel my thoughts will come rather like a dam breaking, so I will split them into a few separate blogs and hope then to pull them altogether when the timing is right. I would like to start by filling you in with the whole story to giving you an understanding of where this all came from. 

I have been in Frome for five years and have enjoyed every minute, its vibrancy and sense of community is powerful and invigorating. I arrived in 2013 around the time that Russell Brand was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman and I was hugely inspired by his words. He spoke of building a new political way of working and this excited me as I have dreamed of this since I was 15. I never believed it possible but hearing his words and his confidence in the idea that he had no idea how it would happen or what the new landscape would look like, I knew he was on to something. He was working with evolution and not revolution - which always end in tears. This beautifully mirrored what was happening in Frome. Here, a group of individuals, who wished to drop party politics, came together and reformed the archaic system we have in our towns and replaced it with something progressive and effective. This was given a vote of confidence by the people of Frome as in the first elections, 11 out of 17 new independents gained seats and in the second they were voted in across all the wards.

I began to get the feeling that anything was possible. Inspired and energised I put out a call to gather together all like minded people to see what we could do. I wanted to create a Unity Party, a political movement for change. However, I was too premature in every way and particularly in myself. I had much to learn. So I immersed myself in Frome life, the community and the various groups that were working within it and gained a degree of understanding and had a great deal of fun at the same time.

I also had a lot of ‘life’ to contend with, losing my father and my partner losing both parents, was only a part of the list of what’s being going on. I learned to understand that everything has its time and that nothing can be rushed.

By the beginning of 2018 I had connected with TreeSisters, (about ten years later than everyone else I know!) and that hit me like a brick. ‘TreeSisters is a global network of women who donate monthly to fund the restoration of our tropical forests as a collective expression of planetary care.’ I find their work incredibly inspiring and the wealth of knowledge I have gained about myself and about our history as women in this country still amazes and horrifies me.

I feel like the whole year has been nurturing me. I attended a course at Hawkwood College, in Stroud, with Andrew Harvey, the founder/director of the institute of sacred activism, and a talk at the same college by Miki Kashtan, an International teacher, who guides people into leadership through discovering their ‘fearless heart’. At this point I realised I had shirked any kind of leadership roles in life all my life. It is time to step up.

I also have learned that we can do nothing by ourselves. The TreeSisters taught me many things but one important thing is that we must gather our community together and can only operate being supported at all times.

So if you have any interest in my work, which I will explain over the coming months, I am going to be asking for some support. I sincerely hope I can entice you in even if it is just for the smallest thing. 

I would like to thank you for reading this far and in anticipation of what may be yet to come.