When something seems too big, far bigger than us, where do we turn?
On an indivudal level we turn to our friends and family, and our wider support network. But how about turning to our community?… and to Source – the Divine Intelligence, to see what they say?
Jason and I have done just this, we have turned to The Way of the Buzzard community to seek guidance and support on our local anti-fracking campaign.
In August month we heard that the government has issued licences to frack the West Pennine Moors, which our home looks out across, and which we love so dearly.
It pains me to my core the lengths people will go to to extract wealth from our beautiful earth. Drilling down deep into her body, pouring poisonous chemicals through these newly formed veins and setting of explosions right inside her flesh, just for money. The impacts on our precious water, the wildlife and our own health have not been determined, other than we know that there are impacts and they are happening right now in America and Australia. We are told of the importance of Fracking to national security, but I firmly believe energy is not needed in this form – we can take what we need from the sun and wind, and we also reduce our energy demands through more sensible choices in our lifestyles. On some days Denmark has produced 140% of its electricity demand through wind, Germany 78% of its total energy demands through its mix of renewable energy sources, and Costa Rica has run its entire country for 75 days on renewables.
But our government are not investing in renewables. In fact on the contrary they are doing the opposite – they are making it much harder for wind and solar planning applications to be approved. They are however doing all they can to go “all out for shale gas”. They have changed the legislation so fracking companies can drill right underneath our own homes without our permission. Recently they have changed local planning legislation so that they can reverse a decision made by the local councils who decide they do not want it. These changes haven’t gone unnoticed to those of us that care about such things. But its these changes which make me feel so powerless in the fight to stop this happening right on my doorstep.
So calling in all Buzzards, we decided to dedicate our September months shamanic drumming circles to the fight against fracking, and donate all the money we made to our local anti-fracking campaign.
Through journeys to their guides, our drumming circle folk gathered the most amazing insights which I will share in full soon. For now here are a few to wet your appetite… normally everything shared in our circles is confidential but in the two circles we asked – Cuerden and Stockport everyone agreed that we could capture and share with the wider community, so here it goes…
The strength of water
One of the really helpful metaphors which came through was with water itself – one of the very elements we are trying to protect. This element has so much to share with us about how we can work to prevent fracking take hold in our land.
Water has an immense strength around rock – rock so huge it doesn’t seem possible to have an impact on. Water erodes rock away over time, creating valleys, rock pools and new coastline. It doesn’t need to be a tidal wave – it can be the smallest of drops and over time it will make a hole. Even a dripping tap will make a mark left long enough.
Water is a destructive force. It destroys sea walls and breaks apart boats with its persistent waves.
Water always finds a way past something – if there is a way past it will find it. It will find its way into the tiniest of places and cracks.
Water droplets are strongly attracted to one another, and by doing so create extraordinary and diverse things, including the ocean, rivers, waterfalls, rainbows and clouds.
Water is cleansing. It will wash what is no longer needed away.
Water can change into many forms with ease. From a liquid flowing across the Earth, then evaporate into the air, then turn back in to a liquid to fall as rain.
Water is a powerful mass as are we. Water always finds a way, no matter how big the obstacle.
Amazing insights eh! There were plenty more… I shall drip feed them to you over the coming weeks 😉
I shall close with this quote, which was shared by one of our drumming circle members this month. Its by Rumi, who sums things up so succinctly!
“You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
Text by Nicola, images by Jason
Post blog note:
The Frack Free Chorley group have done an amazing job and generated enough petition signatures now to force Chroely Borough Council to debate Fracking. Well done everyone!!
