I come from my mother,
and mother I be,
forest and sky and thee.

The suffering in Gaza has become too horrific for me to not say something on Green Dharma Treasury. Not speaking makes me feel somehow complicit. Speaking, however, can feel trite, a way of unloading tension in an ocean of horror. That said, I offer you these heartfelt words.

On behalf of humanity, on behalf of all life on earth, stop the bombing, stop the killing! Stop and breathe and feel your utter interdependency with this mystery of life and living. As I and others have said and written so many times, “We are in this together.” What we do, matters and what we do, seeds innumerable actions in the future.

Today’s suffering in Israel and Palestine has grown from past violence, tragedy, humiliation and forced dispossession – traumatised people passing on their wounds so that oppressed become oppressors, and the macabre dance of sufferings goes on and on. Our economies reflect this, growing from systems of slavery, exploitation, colonisation and entwined as they are with a military industrial complex. Our legal systems, our health care and education systems reflect this. Today, the expressions of human neurosis have become magnified by technology, so much so that we often loose sight of the awesome majesty and immeasurable mystery of evolving life.

My dear friends, please join me wherever you are and remember the basics of sanity. Breathe and feel your feet upon the living earth. Cultivate generosity, love, patience and your inbuilt capacity for wonderment –right now – today, in the midst of whatever you’re doing. Help others wherever you are able and cultivate a heart/mind of kindness in everything you do. Years ago, I remember the Dalai Lama saying similar things and then pausing at this point as he became obviously griped with deep feeling. He then continued, “and if you don’t know how to be kind, at least don’t harm each other.” It strikes me, as it did then that this is surely the non-negotiable core of all meaningful practice.

I’d like to finish here by sharing the second half of a longer poem/prayer I called, “We Are In This Together”

We are brothers and sisters;
Conceived and gestated and born and nurtured
and matured by our mother – Wholeness/Inter-being.
And through our reaching bones and flesh,
extending and retracting,
drawn forward in wonder
and transforming as we go,
we learn our bodies;
babies, children, adolescents and adults
all of us making and remaking the stories of our journey
life-bards, each one of us
singing the world into being,
our mother tonguesounding forth in myriad cultural dialects;
through movement and gesture
touch by touch, we know ourselves into the world,
lives of mystery,
journeys of transforming understanding.

We are in this together.
Together we are born,
together we learn,
together we thrive,
together we suffer,
together we grieve,
together we console and,
together we die.

By we – I mean every manner of us:
humans of myriad shapes, flavours, colours and beliefs,
we mammals, we reptiles; we birds, insects and fish,
we trees and flowers, fungi and bacteria;
brothers and sisters all
we are in this together,
whirling round a life giving star
flowerings of sunlight
dancing in sunlight
knowings of sunlight
fabrics of radiance – bodies and minds
woven from a common source
sons and daughters all, singing our stories
celebrating this living creation.

Each one of us belong;
needed and valued,
Each one of us, and all of us together,
mysteries of interbeing
continuously awash on primordial beaches of now
reaching forth with cautious sensitivity and finding ourselves
finger to finger,
heart to heart.
Moons of aspiration
Shedding tears for our forgetfulness.

May our communal heart be firm.
May our goodness stay firm.
May our centre – our groundedness – remain firm.
May we remember our whakapapa
remembrance in the functioning of flesh and bone and action;
not this sect or that group,
but the great and venerable whakapapa that joins and heals
This journey of all of us.

And through remembering,
our continuously transforming ever-fresh communion
becomes the womb and mother
of unimaginable futures and future beings
conceived in love,
yet to be born.

May the balms of love and healing and deep understanding,
bless us to our core.
May the guns fall silent
in the Middle-east, Ukraine, and all the conflict areas of the world.