The Dancer

While I struggle to put into words my experience of discovering the door to my gods in the third and final post on that narrative (recognising of course that it was really just a first step onto the path) I thought I'd comment on something I saw today that strikes quite close to home - an article on why cities are so much hotter than the countryside.

Where I live, what I do, it's sometimes difficult to really get away from the heat of summer.

Thankfully, I live outside Tokyo and commute daily - this gives me a bit of respite each and every day, and of course on weekends.  Tokyo has tried very hard to undo the damage of the 70s and 80s though, and the city has not only retained many of the little parks and shrines that dwell here, but has deliberately built up a few green zones and some buildings even have green spaces on the roofs. 

I'm desperate for more of course, but the little islands of green help a little.

I doubt there will ever be a solution to this problem in a modern world, short of completely rethinking how we build dense communities.  The dream of small, closely knit communities living close to nature, or vast cities of earthships is nice, but I shudder to think how much more of an impact on our world that would be if we just converted with our current population and needs.

Unlike many of my friends, I think the answer is close to what Japan has been struggling with for decades: not to go back to nature, but to let nature back in. To stop struggling so hard to chain nature when it comes to join us, but to rejoin the dance.

Like so many things, it boils back down to respect.

Respect for ourselves, for the world we live in, and for our place in it.

If we can learn to respect nature again, to live with nature instead of on it or even in it, then the disasters we see looming (and those that are already here) might be more easily healed.

I think that as we approach Gŵyl Awst it's a good time to think of such things. 

What more clearly shows our respect than the way in which we approach harvest?

Harvest can be a horrible imposition, a chaining and enslavement of the world to serve our whim - or it can be a beautiful dance between equals.

Me, I prefer the dance.