Europe Is Lost – spoken word poetry

Kate Tempest, Truth Teller. ‘Stop crying. Start buying’ – Europe Is Lost:




The stories that will really get us through these times

“When a people are colonised, one of the first moves is to get rid of the poets, to get rid of the songwriters, to get rid of the people who are carrying the soul of the people… so I think its really important that we sing ourselves into community again, and that we tell the stories that will really get us through these times”

Margot Henderson, Bard. wetheuncivilised, A Life Story

The maladjusted – Martin Luther King telling it like it is

“There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men [and women] of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence. But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence […] The alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation[…] In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment[…]“
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963

“This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; and men [and women] do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963

Grieving is part of our healing

“Our decision to value above all else comfort, convenience and a superficial view of happiness, has led to feelings of disassociation and numbness and as a result we bury our grief deep within our subconscious.

The consequence is not only a compulsion to consume even more in an attempt to hide our guilt but also a projection of our hidden pain onto the world around us and at the deepest level, the Earth itself.”

http://www.theguardian.com/…/grieving-pathway-destructive-e…

tears

A new story told by the finest of tellers . . .




What makes us Human?

It’s time to draw a line in the sand.

A deeply moving talk by Tim “Mac” Macartney 




Begin it Now

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Jay Griffiths on Civilisation

“City walls were built as a physical boundary for the inhabitants, to protect them from the vile hordes outside, but they were also a kind of moral boundary, dividing the city dwellers from the devilish chaos of nature beyond, which was, quite literally, uncivilised. (Civilised comes form civis, a town dweller)”

Wild, an Elemental Journey, Jay Griffiths

“The city represents law and order (the word police derives from greek polis. “town”), while the “villains” dwell in the lawless nature outside. The word villain (a middle English variant of villain, “peasant”) once meant a rustic, and the root of the word is in villa – originally the word was merely a simple description of where someone dwelled. The word gradually shifted, coming to mean criminal.”
Wild, an Elemental Journey, Jay Griffiths

KANYINI.

The film, “Kanyini” tells the story of the Stolen Generation: A generation of Aboriginal children who were taken from their Indigenous roots, in an attempt to assimilate them into mainstream white Australian Culture; The separation of children from their land, their family and their belief system in order to make them “civilised”. In the film Bob Randall describes being severed from 5 roots in this civilisation process. He describes these roots as connecting him to his sense life, his sense of belonging – this is Kanyini:

– Belief
– Land
– Family
– Psyche
– Spirituality

To become civilised, he had to be severed from these primal sources of connection.

The painful, and ugly, uncomfortable reality of the film Kanyini is part of the shadow that we have to both acknowledge a take responsibility for, and to feel and identify with, in order to move more freely through space and time.