In January 2020 I gave a talk entitled ‘A Time of Crisis or a Time of Transformation?’, part of which is included as an article on this website. This was before Coronavirus became virtually the only news, before Lockdown, and before the resultant dire economic depression and mass redundancies that are happening now.
Nothing in recent decades has been quite like the wake-up call we’ve been hearing recently. Coronavirus brought the world to a virtual standstill and it’s effects are still ongoing.
Prior to the pandemic, around the world people have been dying in wars, from hunger and disease, from abuse, from people trafficking and modern forms of slavery. They have also been dying from depression, drug overdoses and suicide. In addition we have been losing species at an alarming rate and the planet itself is dying. And yet, we were not paying sufficient attention.
If you missed the live event, you can watch the replay from the links below:
LINKS FOR REPLAY OF AUTHOR PANEL 10/06/20
Here is the replay on the Mango Publishing Page, along with store link to purchase books:
If you don’t have Facebook, there’s a YouTube link:
I'm delighted to be participating in an online event organized by Mango Publishing. June 10 2020 1.30-2.30 pm PDT. Do join us! Here's the link:
I wish I could have described the point we're at as eloquently as this short and poignant video!
Waiting is not something many of us are good at, and we don’t like uncertainty. Yet this is where we are, and it’s uncomfortable and monotonous. We can do little but wait - for lockdown to end, for testing for all, for a vaccine to be discovered and universally made available, and for the economy to get back on its feet. None of us knows how the chaos we find ourselves in will turn out, whether life will ever return to so-called ‘normal’, and what the long-term implications of a world turned upside down may be.
This is such a brilliant and thought-provoking article by Charles Eisenstein on the current pandemic that I have to share it! It is long, but so well worth reading and re-reading.
‘When you are strong and healthy,
You never think of sickness coming,
But it descends with sudden force
Like a stroke of lightning.
When involved in worldly things,
You never think of death’s approach;
Quick it comes like thunder
Crashing around your head.’
Milarepa
The world is in shock, much of it in lockdown and curfew. After devastating fires in Australia, floods in many parts of the world, and a massive infestation of locusts in East Africa, we now have a global epidemic of coronavirus spreading exponentially. Much we’ve taken for granted is disintegrating and our way of life can no longer be as it was before.
As the global emergency that is corona virus/COVID-19 turns lives upside down and we learn to behave differently, waiting to see how everything unfolds, we need to nourish ourselves. Christa Tippet's On Being Project team have put together a series of podcasts, which includes "Poetry for Tumultuous Times" - such a great idea! Thank you, and for allowing me to share this.
https://onbeing.org/starting-points/poetry-for-tumultuous-times/