Published Tweed Valley Weekly Oct 10, 2012

Desperation about the CSG situation creates a desire in me—a life-long “good-girl”–to do something drastic against those responsible for this violence. Yet to return one violence with another only results in escalation and wider separation.

So, what are peaceful answers? Taking a tip from Ghandi? Escalate our peaceful presence? Broaden, somehow, from local pockets to a massive, state/nation-wide presence? Perhaps enlist AVAAZ, the grass-roots internet site that has given millions of people worldwide a chance to register their views—often with great success? Perhaps BE the respecters of the environment that we want CSG-ers to be? To admit that, despite our deep appreciation for the earth, many of us have areas where we fail to respect it? For example, when it’s inconvenient–to dispose of soiled plastic bags and plastic, dead batteries, etc— tossing them into the rubbish, i.e. the environment, we are broadcasting that our convenience is more dear to us than supporting clean land. CSG perpetrators broadcast that what they hold dear is power and money.

How many of us are so busy providing for our personal lives that we take little or no time providing for the earth? How many parents are, ironically, so busy providing for the children that they don’t take time to be with their children? Likewise, how many of us stop the daily juggernaut to be with the land, rather than relating to it as a backdrop for our self-important activities? What might happen, I wonder, if we each, in our own way, created Land Being Time–daily, consistent bathing of the land with our appreciation, respect, gratitude? And, OMG, here’s a radical idea—doing the same toward the blind individuals who, for whatever reasons, “know not what they do”—or, knowing, do it anyway.

Image: Climate News Australia