How to start being a better ancestor, today.
- If you can’t re-use it, don’t use it. …
- Work on our trauma. …
- Treat our elders with respect. …
- And our youngers. …
- Speak of love, not war.
- Be a custodian of the earth. …
- And a steward of the future.
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Why thinking in Deep Time is good for your head
ABC RN, Tue 2 Jan 2024
We live our lives for the short term. School semesters, tax years, election cycles, next week. But have you tried thinking in ‘deep time’ — millions of years before and after this present moment? Some describe it as the ‘Long Now’, and evidence suggests it’s healthy for your head, and for the planet.
Cultural anthropologist Dr Vincent Ialenti, author of Deep Time Reckoning, spent three years getting inside the minds of nuclear waste experts who plan for the decay of radioactive waste over 700 million years.
Kulin nation story man Uncle Larry Walsh, elder in residence at the Melbourne Museum, connects with deep time through stories passed to him across generations.
Further information: More of Uncle Larry Walsh’s story
Gandel Gondwana Garden living exhibition, Melbourne Museum
Credits:Natasha Mitchell, Presenter ABC RN | Program: Big Ideas
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More than a dream
“We now begin to realise that the planet Earth will not long endure being despised or ignored in her more integral being, whether by scientists, technologists, or saints; nor will she submit forever to the abuse she has had to endure. Already the Earth is taking away the oxygen we breathe, the purity of the rain, our protection from cosmic rays, the careful balance of our climate, the fruitfulness of the soil.
Finally we begin to recover a reverence for the material out of which we were born, for the nourishing context that sustains us, the sounds and scenery, the warmth of the wind and the coolness of the water – all of which delight us and purify us and communicate to us some sense of sacred presence.
In the twentieth century this reverent attention hardly exists, nor can it exist in any vital mode until the spirituality of the new ecological age begins to function with some efficacy.”
– Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth 1988 p.119
MMM Issue 43, April-May 2024
