What is more important than poetry?
As usual, I started NaPoWriMo with a firm conviction that I would write a poem daily in the month of April. I believed that there was nothing standing between myself and success. As usual, I did pretty well in the first half of the month, then crashed in the third week. I tried to get back on track, made a decent effort, then was asked to speak for the local chapter of Extinction Rebellion to a group who would be gathering in advance of Earth Day. Surely I was not the best person to speak, as I have a long history of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or not saying the important thing at the right time. But XR is a very small group here, and nobody wanted to do it any more than I did, or was particularly better positioned for it, so I said yes. Kyle Gray’s Shapeshifter card told me to transform and unveil my previously unknown gifts. It would take me some time to hone my message and practice it so that I could deliver it in the short time allotted without mucking it up. As I wrote and rewrote, I thought about how I could have been writing poetry instead, but decided that speaking for the Earth is more important. Or rather, that there is no poetry without the Earth. The Earth is poetry, just as I am, and I am the Earth. So (compared to that) it is not audacious to say that this little thing I wrote counts as my poem for a day.
I’m Rachel Creager Ireland, with Extinction Rebellion Austin. You can find us at xraustin.org. I want to thank everyone for being here, because I know there are so many forces both internal and external telling us just stay home, don’t speak up, don’t speak out, go to school, take care of your family, get a job (I have 2)—but if you’re an activist for the earth, get used to people telling you to get a job. It’s like people can’t conceive that a person could work for the earth and be gainfully employed at the same time.
But I think that’s because we compartmentalize so much. We build these walls in our minds, in our lives, to keep some part safe. Because climate change is terrifying. The problems are so much bigger than we can even imagine. We don’t know how to live without fossil fuels. How can we be human in the face of this crisis? Sometimes we need to compartmentalize just so we can function from day to day. But, similar to an addiction, there’s a point at which the coping mechanism becomes the disease. All this compartmentalization allows us to forget how inseparably connected we are with the earth, with each other, and that what we do to the earth, we do to ourselves. Every strip mine, toxic waste dump, clear cut forest, and oil spill is a wound that we all suffer deeply, whether we allow ourselves to be aware of it or not.
We begin to heal when we recognize our oneness with the earth and every living creature.
You might be wondering why I’m saying these things here at the Texas capitol, now. The reason is that those people who spend their days in that building are suffering from the same wound, the same disease of compartmentalization. And all the lies they will tell us about the immutable laws of economics, and “human nature,” were told to them once, too. And don’t get me wrong, as a healer myself I know full well that you can’t heal a person who doesn’t want it. We can only meet the wound with presence and compassion and empathy. So our job is simply to ask them to recognize their connection with us and the earth. Stop pretending that they don’t know that the climate is changing, stop trying to suck a little more profit out of the current system as it collapses. Stop making excuses for continuing to prop up, fund, and profit from the fossil fuel industry. Some of those people are very committed to building and maintaining walls. But I think you and I know that on this unsustainable path we are on, the walls are going to come down sooner or later, one way or another. It might not be too late to do it the difficult and painful way now, or we can do it the devastating, catastrophic, heartbreaking way later.
So that is why I’m so grateful for all of you who are here, facing the truth, bucking the tendency to go on about our personal lives as if we’re not in the middle of the biggest die-off since the dinosaurs. Thank you for staying present, for showing up, even though we don’t know all the answers.
Thank you.
Last, I’d like us all to affirm our connection to the earth by kneeling down and touching the ground. Concrete is fine, energy can move through it, but touch it with your hand, your skin. Take a couple deep breaths and feel the energy flowing through you. This is our source. Every minute of our lives we are bathed in the earth’s giant electromagnetic field. We don’t actually know that we can live (for more than a few months) apart from the earth. Let us be in that truth in gratitude. I’ll start a chant, from Peace Poets, and when you’re ready to rise up, join in.
The people gonna rise like water, gonna face this crisis down.I hear the voice of my great granddaughter, saying keep it in the ground.