Talk: A Year of Sitting with the Earth

Welcome back everybody to the second half. Oh, we're just playing with the sound here on this end. Welcome back to this afternoon's session of the Sacred Earth Activism Conference. And a big thank you to everybody who's put in questions for this morning's speakers and for their talk. One of the big comments that there were for a number of them was how moving they've been and how many people have been moved to tears on some of the stories that have been shared and that whole message of dropping into those feelings that we have around all of this subject that we're discussing. So I feel, really feel, that leads us really lovely into this talk here now where I welcome Satya Robyn to speak with us. One of the books that Satya has authored is Dear Earth: Love, Grief, and Activism. Satya is also a Buddhist teacher and is the founder of the Bright Earth Buddhist Temple in Melbourne, but is also part of the Extinction Rebellion group XR Buddhists and has been part of the Faithbridge and the Earth Vigil there. We're really excited to hear from you today, Satya, and hear about what you've been doing over the last year with the Daily Earth Vigil, sitting with the Earth, and to hear about how your Buddhism inspires and influences and weaves into what you do in service of the planet. So welcome, Satya Robyn.

Thank you. Thanks for that introduction. Lovely to be here. Are people's videos turned off because of a broadband issue, or they just wanting to listen without being looked at?

Just for the recording, so to make it clear on the recording. Thanks.

Great, great. I was just thinking it would be so lovely to see all of your faces. I don't know if you are willing, if you just want to turn your video on for a few seconds. And then off again. Otherwise I'll just have to imagine you all. Ah, that's lovely. Hi Steve, good to see you. Hello lovely Ali. Hi Krista. Hi. It's not quite like being in a physical room, is it? But there is something important about just having that little connection between my face and yours. And yes, I will imagine everybody else sitting in your hopefully comfy, comfy living rooms and listening to a lot of inspiration this weekend. I feel I was reading everybody's biographies and trying not to feel inadequate in good company. Yeah, so it is wonderful to be asked to speak with you all this afternoon. I am very new to activism. I'm very new to doing things in the world that are fueled and fired by my spiritual foundations that are intended to cause change. And so I'm speaking as a newbie, and I'm speaking as somebody who lives a very busy life. There are lots of other things that I do in my life. I run a little Buddhist temple here in Malvern with my husband. And I'm a psychotherapist. That's what I do to earn my living, and I write. And so I'm also speaking as a very much a part-time activist, and I'm also wanting to just acknowledge that I'm very privileged in many ways in order to be able to do this work I have free time and free money. I have the kind of benefits that have been automatically passed on to me as a white middle-class woman. And so I just want to kind of frame everything I say with that at the beginning, because I can only speak for myself, and I'm hugely privileged and usually lucky to be able to do the work that I've been engaging in. But I also believe that we all have— we're all asked to do different things, and that we all are born with different capacities and skills and interests. And I trust that the Earth, or the Buddha, or whoever it is that you are in connection with only asks us to do the things that we're able to do. And so one of the things I'm hoping will happen as you listen to me this afternoon is that you might, you might wonder about what those things are for you. You may already be engaged with those things, or there may be new shoots, thinking about a new year before very long. So maybe I will start at the beginning of my life as an activist, and I will speak for a little while, half an hour or so, and then answer any questions, and hopefully we'll have a little bit of discussion. And as Ali's just said, if you've got any questions as they occur to you, just chuck them in the chat. I I knew about the climate crisis, as we all did, for many, many years, and I just carried on living my life as normal. I've been vegan for quite a long time now, and that was a decision that came from wanting to, to not hurt animals rather than environmental reasons. And I'd done a little bit of trying to inspire other people to eat more vegan food, but the, the state of the planet had pretty much not affected the way that I lived my life at all. I wish I was less dark, but I've got lots of light, but there we go. Let's see if that stays. Zoom's doing that thing. And a few years ago, I had a friend who'd been attending local Extinction Rebellion meetings here in Malvern, and I had known about the first rebellion, but I'd resisted getting involved or finding out anything more because my life was already pretty much full. And I know myself, and I knew that if I got involved, then it might threaten my already full diary and tip me over into overwhelm. And I was having a coffee with a friend, and she said, oh, you know, you could just go to one meeting and just see what it's like. And then you could just say to people that you've been to the meeting, and that that will be your offering, that you've said you've gone, and then other people will go, and they can carry on going. 'You don't have to be involved.' And I thought, 'Oh, okay, that sounds okay.' So I went to the Heading for Extinction talk and listened to all the facts about what's happening and where we are, and most of them sort of bounced off me. I had thoughts about them, maybe, 'Oh, that sounds really bad,' or, 'I didn't realize it was that terrible,' but nothing really entered inside. I was aware of feeling very slightly numb, and I think that that was the denial that had been keeping me safe for 40 years. And then after the talk, there was an invitation for people to share how they felt about what they'd heard. And I will never forget that a woman I know now cried. She just cried. And she'd been going to— she'd been involved in the group for a while. And, and so it wasn't the sort of the— it wasn't a fresh shock. She was, she was connecting back into her grief. I know now about the climate crisis and about the the ecological emergency that we're facing. And as I watched her cry, I can remember first of all feeling a bit surprised, and then connecting in with my own tears, connecting in with my own grief for the first time, I think. And that was the beginning, that opened something up in me that I then couldn't turn away from. I couldn't, I couldn't go back to this protected way of, of being in relationship with, with the earth suffering. And that was grace. That was a moment of grace. Because it, it showed me all the ways in which I was cutting myself off from the planet, from other people, from the— from what's being asked of us as human beings who live in this time, all of us here. Especially all of us here, but everybody who is alive at this time. There, there's something really extraordinary about, about us being here on the Earth at this time. And I'd been missing out on all of that. And ever since then, I think that my life has changed in a way that it's included more grief and more love. The placards that we use when we vigil say, "With love and grief for the earth," and those two things feel really linked to me. And the bigger The bigger the grief that I am able to connect with, both inside myself and outside, the bigger the space I have for love. I love that quote by George Fox, the Quaker, which I will— oh, I always, I always make a mess of it when I say it. I really should learn it, but it's something like that there are oceans of darkness and that there are oceans of light that are bigger than the oceans of darkness, that the hugeness, the unimaginable awfulness of what happens both outside us and inside us, I believe that there is always something bigger than that that holds it, that we can connect with, and that that thing is is compassion, is wisdom, is love. So that's a kind of a broad brush sweep of where I've been over the past few years. And my activism has always felt very connected with my spirituality. I can't really, I can't really tease them apart. My spirituality, I guess, is, is living in a Buddhist temple. It's, um, it feels like it's underneath everything anyway. But I also, as soon as I got involved with XR, felt myself drawn to speaking with other people of faith, other people who have spirituality of various kinds for two reasons, I guess. Well, probably more than two reasons. Um, one is that those are the people that I feel like I have stuff in common with because having a spiritual dimension to my life is so important to me, but also because those people seemed to have more courage in, in terms of the actions they did. And that's maybe not fair. I, I, I'm always, uh, conscious of, uh, of saying all spiritual people are better at this because non-spiritual people also are amazing and do amazing things. But there was something about, um, having that, having that, um, resource available that certainly for me and for other spiritual activists that I met, it made it possible. It made it possible. Without that resource, I'm not sure how far I would have got. So I'm meant to be talking about my vigil, so maybe I'll start winding my way to towards that. And it is an example of how, for me, the best activism that I've done is the activism that isn't the— it's not a decision that I've made about what I should be doing. It's a decision that the Buddha's made about what I should be doing. Because the Buddha always knows much better than me, despite my fighting against that. And it was last year, maybe in the summer, maybe it was earlier than that. I knew that, I think I knew at that point that COP had been postponed. And I was, I can't remember what I was doing, but I was somewhere doing something. And it was like the idea landed in my head the idea landed in my head, because I've been doing some vigiling with, with the Faithbridge groups, and our local group had been doing a weekly vigil in, in the centre of town, which they were there today earlier. The idea landed in my brain, you could do a vigil every day for a year before COP. And my immediate reaction to the idea was 'No, that's a really stupid idea because I haven't got the time and I don't really like meditating.' The kind of Buddhism I practice is chanting, meditate chanting practice. So meditating has never been something that I've been— I've never noticed any benefits from meditating. And I, you know, it's not something I'd ever choose to do. And also, I'm not very good. I'm not a very hardy person, so I'm not very good with weather. I've never, I've never been much of a walker or an outside person. So my immediate response to this idea was no. But the idea kept kind of returning to me. I can remember speaking to a couple of people about it. I spoke to my friend about it, and she said, 'No, that's too much of a commitment.' She wasn't very keen on the idea. I can remember speaking to my husband, and he had all kinds of questions of his own that were about, you know, our shared life together. And I spoke to one friend who said, 'That sounds like a beautiful idea.' And I remembered that, and I held on to that, but I didn't get any other encouragement. And I think that the process of deciding to do it was more a sort of a surrendering to doing the thing that I knew that I was going to do, or that, that had been asked of me, than it was a very kind of thought-through pros and cons, or how is it going to be possible. That it came from outside. That's where the idea came from. And I can remember, so I decided that I would start a year back from COP26. So it was the 1st of November, 2020. And I can remember walking out of the temple on my first day and I was absolutely terrified. My heart was really banging. There's something that— there's something about activism, I think, that is scary. I think there is something scary about both speaking up as a minority voice, which I guess by definition is what protesters do, and we're often speaking up against systems that are very powerful. Always, I guess. And also something about breaking the social contract, doing something that, that, that was weird. And I'd done visualizing with other people, but there's something very different about sitting alongside a few friends than, than walking to the spot in town where I'd chosen and just putting my cushion on the floor and hanging the placard around my neck. And shutting my eyes for an hour. So yeah, so that first, that first day was really scary. And I can remember sitting down with my heart kind of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And just, just taking a while to just settle into being there. I made a decision to keep my eyes shut. And that was partly because I wanted to honor the vigil that I was sitting with love and grief for the Earth, so I didn't want to spend all my time kind of talking to people. I wanted people to be able to see me but not be seen, so I had some information that they could read if they wanted to, but I, yeah, I made a decision to to not engage with people during the hour. It said on my bit of paper, if you want to talk to me, then email me or wait to the end of the hour, and pretty much nobody did. So at the end of that first hour, I was glad that I'd done it. And then the next day I went and my heart was beating but slightly less violently. And then, you know, within 3 or 4 days, certainly within the week, it felt very ordinary and natural. And I guess again, that's how it is to protest, that the first time we go on a march or get arrested or whatever it is, is scary, and then it gets less, less and less scary. And I kept going. I kept going every day. I would go for an hour and sit in my spot at the top of town where people could see me. And think of the earth, think of, think of the earth, think of what I'd had for breakfast, plan my retirement, all the things that, that go through our, our brains when we, when we stop. And there were lots of things about it that were wonderful. I learnt a huge amount about myself. I did quite a lot of, um, work on myself as I sat there. So I, I work with— my therapy model is called Internal Family Systems, and it looks at the different parts inside us and how they interact with each other as if they're families, as if they're systems, and they've got their own relationships with each other. And I did quite a lot of work with parts of me that would come up and ask for attention. I did a lot of listening to birds. There were just a few birds. There were a couple of trees behind me. It's quite a busy street, so there was lots of traffic noise and big lorries, and— but there were some birds. I Really loved sitting in the rain. I invested in an ethical, expensive raincoat at the start of the year, and it was very rain. It was very— I knew that I was going to be dry, and just listening to the rain pattering on my hood for an hour was really beautiful. I was often the most moved by people, actually. The people that would come, and you can kind of— I could hear their footsteps, and you hear their footsteps kind of pausing, and as they read my information, and then they'd often say something like, 'Thank you,' or, 'I care for the earth too.' I always feel really moved when I'm— when I encounter other human beings who share the, the, the deep care for the earth that, that, that I have, because I think it just makes me feel like I'm not on my own. And I know that I'm not on my own, but it's still every time somebody, somebody comes and connects with me in that way, it really, it really moves me. And I sat there in the snow. I sat there in the sun when it was— when the sun was actually more of a problem to my body than the cold was. There were a couple of times when I had to move into the shade because I thought, actually, if I stay here, I'm gonna be it. I'm gonna make myself properly ill. I invested in lots of mittens. Mittens are really great in cold weather because your fingers keep each other company. They really are cozy. And one of the interesting things about the weather that I learned is that it wasn't the being cold that was a problem. It was the having a kind of sudden panic about being cold. That if I found myself thinking, oh, I'm gonna get too cold, I'm gonna get shivery, and then I don't know what my brain was doing, that was a problem. But if I could just kind of remind myself, you're just cold, it's okay, then within a few minutes I kind of wasn't so cold anymore, that my body did something to warm me up again. So that was really interesting, just to that kind of practice of being with what's there without feeling that I needed to fight against it or do anything. And that stayed with me. I feel like I'm a hardier person now. So I don't worry so much about getting cold or wet or hot, because I kind of been there. Of course, you know, an hour a day is nothing compared to people who work out in all weathers all day long. So I'm not, I'm not there yet, but it brought me close, it brought me into closer contact with the earth's weather, and that was a real gift. And then I finished, I finished my year, I didn't miss any days. During lockdown, I moved to the front of the temple. There's a car park at the front of the temple because we weren't allowed to leave our house for longer than an hour, so I sat out the front there where people could see me. When we were on holiday, I'd sit in wherever we were for an hour, and I also went to a few rebellions and counted that as vigiling rather than doing it formally. And the last day that I did it, we have a local group of— they're called Rainbow Guardians. They're like the Red Rebels, but they're all different colors. And, and they all came to, to, to honor the last hour. And I had maybe 20 people locally around me. And it was just so moving because, because I think on that day, It just really connected with me with the fact that it hadn't been a solitary act. It had never been just me in the earth. It had always been me supported by my local group, supported by all the people that, that we're connected to that make our lives possible. Um, and I guess that it felt really good to do, and that is the thing that seems to me like the important thing when we're listening out for instructions from the Earth, from the Buddha. I think for me, one of the criteria that we can apply is, does this feel good? Does this feel good for me to do it? Regardless of whether it has a result or not. And obviously, you know, I didn't want to go every day. There were at the weekends when I just wanted to have a day at home and hide under the duvet. I really didn't want to go. And when I'd finished, I was elated because it was over and I didn't have to do it anymore. But it, regardless of whether it had an impact or not, it felt good to do. It was like an offering. It was like making an offering to offering to the earth. It was making an offering to the earth. It was my offering. And I think that, that, I think that there is, that the earth, the earth has something in plan for us. The earth knows better than we do what it is that we can do, and, and that those things look very different, and that it's often more of a problem when we get in the way of that process because we worry about how it compares to the friends we have who are doing much cooler things or much more dangerous things or spending much more time or taking bigger risks. I think it, you know, we, I can certainly say, I, you might not have this, but I feel like I'm never doing enough or I should be doing something differently, or I shouldn't be so whatever. And all of that's natural when we really engage with the size of the need. But I do believe that if we really tune in to what's being called of us, then it's never too much. It's never more than we can handle. It might not be quite what we would choose ourselves, but it kind of just makes sense. It makes sense that that we do it. And sometimes it's very little things, that there's something about my vigil that had a bit of a thing to it because it was a year. And you know, you can— it can be something that feels like a bigger thing like that, but all the other things that we do are just as important, those little acts. Those, those small acts of kindness, those small acts of courage, speaking up for the earth, helping each other in different ways. It's all pretty ordinary, a lot of it. It's pretty— it looks pretty ordinary, and it's also got magic in it. It's also got grace in it. So I've talked at you for half an hour. I'm going to have a look at the chat and read what you've said so far. And if any— oh, Jonathan's appeared. Hello. And if anyone has any questions, do put them in the box now. And then when I've read what you've said, then I might say some more things.

Thank you so much, Satya Robyn. Really, really beautiful to hear you talking about that. And I'll pick out some of the questions if I can through there and put them to you.

Great.

You can relax.

Okay, I'll relax. I'll read it all afterwards, because if anyone's written something, I want them to know that I will read it.

Absolutely. Well, really, really grateful for hearing all of what you just talked about there, but particularly for your dedication to that practice. It's an inspiring message of hearing that calling, hearing how you can be of service and following that. And it's been kind of amazing to hear kind of of that of the last year, because that's kind of what a lot of people we've on kind of lots of discussions of this have been like, well, what can I do? What can I bring? And that's a lovely message there of tuning into kind of that guidance. Wherever it comes or however it comes, of how you can be of service. And there is a question here that relates to another thing that comes up for a lot of people, is kind of, there is that block of that fear of, or the anxiety of stepping out, of breaking the social contract, of going out and sitting on the road or going and joining this. And there's a question in here to do with, what would you suggest to people kind of in terms of overcoming that? Anxiety and fear, and, you know, maybe how that worked for you, but what advice you can give?

Yeah, thank you, it's a great question. Yeah, I think again for me there's something about discerning between the, this, the, the kind of the types of scariness and working out whether the thing that we're considering doing that is scary is, is for us or not. So that's maybe the first question. I've been very conscious of the, the 9 activists that went to prison on Tuesday. I'm buddy for one of them, so I've been really, really aware of how it is to go to jail for our activism and and I've had a lot of thoughts about whether that's something that I should do, whether that's something I could do, and it is something that I could do. There's nothing to stop me, you know, there's money and there's lots of reasons why it would be very difficult and scary, but you know, the people that are in prison also, a lot of them had those things. So I think with that example, it would be easy, it would be easy for me if I wasn't careful to just feel like, oh well, it's just fear that's stopping me from doing it, I should just do it. But when I allow the question to simmer a bit or to compost, that it just doesn't feel like the right thing for me to be doing even though I could do it. At this point in my life. Who knows what will happen in the future? So I guess that the first thing is discerning whether or not it is a thing for you or not. And, and sometimes we feel like things should be for us, or that other people expect us to do them, or that if we don't do them there'll be some awful consequence. And that for me, that's not a good reason to do them. Um, and then when we've made that decision which is, you know, isn't always easy and can take some time. I trust that if it is something for us, then it won't be so scary as to be impossible. It will just take us a little bit beyond our comfort zone, or maybe, you know, a few centimeters beyond our comfort zone. And then there are things that we can do to help with that. I think for me, I couldn't do things on my own, So there's something about having other people that I can talk to who've done those things or who might give me advice on how to make it easier. I think rehearsing can be quite helpful. I did Rebellion of One last year, which is probably the scariest thing I've ever done, which was just sitting down in the road in my local town, my local city, without— there are a couple of secret people around, but it was just me and some very angry men who I'd stopped. So I rehearsed that before I did it. So I would just think in my mind, okay, so I'm just going to stand here and then I'm going to walk here and then I'm going to say stop, I'm going to sit down. And I did that over and over again. And that really helped because on the day when I did it, I just did what I'd already done and it was okay. I guess another thing I might say would be to really be curious about what the fears are telling you, because different voices in us will have different concerns. So, so we can ask the fear, what, what, what is it that— what is the most terrible thing that could happen? And then the fear might say, oh, people might laugh at you. So then you could say, okay, so what, what is it about people laughing at you that would be so awful? And then maybe there's a young wounded bit that was laughed at when you were young, and you can let that bit know that doesn't have to come with you, it can stay at home and watch telly, and you'll go, you know, you'll come and meet it afterwards. So really getting to know, kind of fleshing out what that fear is about. What is the worst thing that could happen? And that will be really different for different people. So I had a friend who didn't want to be arrested because she's claustrophobic, so she couldn't bear the idea of being in the back of the van where it was too too tight. So she took some kind of Valium or something with her, so if that did happen, just in case— it wasn't her plan, but if it did, then she knew that she could take the pill and that that would just kind of make it survivable. So yeah, so just really get to know it and just be gentle with yourself. Life's hard enough already without having to do anything extra or anything You know, anything where we're speaking up against these, these huge things. So I think gentleness is really important for me. If you feel like you ought to eat more vegan food, don't do it in a way that feels like a massive, you know, that you're denying yourself because it won't be sustainable. Find ways of doing it that works for you and know that, that that will be better in the long run. So I don't know if that spoke to the person's question directly or not, but those are some thoughts.

Absolutely, a couple of steps there. You remind me of a lot of the kind of role-plays and things like that, you know, some activism and some kind of acts that you see kind of are things that happen in the moment or just kind of spontaneously, but a lot of things, you know, we can really kind of prepare ourselves for, and that's kind of some great advice on that preparation, so thank you for that. The question that kind of I was wondering when hearing you talk and I was kind of really hoping to hear about was you've kind of been sitting with the earth for a year. How did it feel then on completion of that year, kind of on looking at the kind of the whole journey or kind of reaching the end of that whole journey of that practice? How did that feel?

Yeah, I think the ripples are still rippling out actually. You have to ask me again in another year. And I also made notes and I'm hoping to write a book about it. So I think that that's— it's almost like I'm not really sure how I feel until I've written the book. But lots of different threads, and partly just the satisfaction of that kind of completion, because there's something about an hour a day for a year that just felt very neat, very kind of, you know, beginning and end. It was very clear, and it's quite nice to have something that manageable in the chaos of what's happening. I think that that was— it made it— it made something manageable. Oh, I'm doing this, so that's my offering, and I've got this year, so it's not forever. So finishing it was satisfying but also a massive relief because I was kind of freed from the obligation. Yeah, and also it was just very ordinary. It was just a kind of, you know, I walk from the temple 7 minutes into town, sit down for an hour, come back again. So it was, in a way, it was just kind of something ordinary that I did over and over again. And sometimes I thought, wow, I've done a really amazing thing. And sometimes I thought, I don't know why anyone is impressed with this because I'm just sitting on my bottom for an hour a day. You know, it's not— when I compare myself with what lots of other people are doing, it's feels like a very, very mundane thing to have done.

You speak with a lot of humility about that, but I have seen kind of that it's inspired many people to go and join with the Earth vigils and with the Faith Bridge. And there was somebody who was talking about having been along kind of Downing Street way and seeing a group out there and getting chatting and now realizes from hearing you talk that that's kind of what the group was and why you were all there gathering there in vigil. So, you know, just recently up in Glasgow, there were the groups who were sitting out each day and those who were kind of sitting out other times in George Square. Are you able to kind of tell us a little bit about how that's kind of evolved and grown?

Yeah, the other groups doing things?

Yeah. From what's kind of come with the Earth Vigil and the Faith Bridge?

Yeah, yeah, so I guess that the original Earth Vigil was something that XR Faith Bridge put together that was outside Westminster just before COVID started. So the plan was to do— is it 60 days? What's the holy number of days? Is it 60? I can't remember. Christian?

40 for Lenten. I think there was.

Yeah, maybe it was 40. So it was 40 days and nights that the plan was to, for there to be somebody outside Parliament 24 hours a day for 40 days. And we did half of it in real life and then had to go online for the, once we went into lockdown. But so I did a night, a couple of nights there, and that was just really amazing kind of being there all night and walking to the hospital at 3 o'clock in the morning to get a cup of tea and And I think that there's Christian— I guess the Christian tradition has had this history of witnessing, of bearing witness, of being visible and being just embodying that kind of that silent, steady witness of chaos. So that went well. And then I think the Buddhists have also done quite a lot of actions just kind of sitting with the same placards. They often sit, we often sit where there's something chaotic, so the samba band will be going and everyone will be kind of having a dance, and then the Buddhists and the police will be there, and we'll just be kind of sitting very still. So it feels like quite an important counterbalance to to some of the other energies that surround in protest. It's also what I love about vigiling is it is so accessible because you literally all you have to do is sit down for 10 minutes and people can bring chairs or, you know, it's not about being uncomfortable. You literally just sit in a public place with a sign around your neck with the Earth on it or whatever it is you want to have and people see you, people see you doing that. So Locally, I drove past them today, we've got our group, our local XR group that vigil every Saturday. We've had more and more people join us because they're concerned and they want to do something and they don't know what to do. So they come and sit with us for half an hour and then they get chatting with us and we talk about, you know, what their concerns are and what else is going on in Malvern and it's like it's a way in. And it's also, whether or not you become involved yourself, it's a way for other people to just see that someone is concerned. Someone is concerned enough to sit down, take time out of their day, and be in that space. And that was one of the things that was most moving about doing the personal vigil, is the number of people that were grateful that I was doing it. Because they wanted to do it because they were worried, because they cared for the Earth. So I'm a bit of a fan of vigiling because I think every town should have a vigil because of it being a kind of like an entrance point. And we've got— I wrote a site a while ago called earthvigil.co.uk which has got the PDF of the placard and kind of advice. So if anyone wants to do it themselves, all you really need is 2 people I think it's nice if you're doing it the first time to have 2 people. Just print out a couple of bits of A4, get a bit of string, put it around your neck, and go and sit somewhere public. And you can, you know, maybe one of you keeps your eyes open. You can have leaflets to hand out if you want, but you don't have to. It's simple. It's really simple.

Well, fantastic. That answers another question of how others can get involved. And I can really— I mean, I've seen things that you're talking about there in in the sense that the— of how it is kind of a grounding kind of space within the kind of all of the rebellion, the kind of where there is kind of other actions, things going on, loud music, and there is this holding, this peaceful holding within it that speaks to another point of what is going on for people. And as you say, if people see you and pass you on the street, even if they kind of, you know, don't sit kind of for that vigil, there is something that they can recognize in their own love and grief with it, which is really fantastic for them to see.

Yeah, I also quite like the radicalness of doing it in towns because towns are such sort of monuments to capitalism these days, aren't they? That it's just you go to town to buy stuff and, well, you maybe go to town to drink coffee, but mostly it's buying stuff. So it's really nice for people to just see some people sitting down and enjoying that, but it's a different— it's like you're using the space in a different way.

Absolutely, absolutely. And it helps kind of bring people out of kind of the mind where they are and kind of just for just a bit of connection to— yeah, to connect it with the reasons to why you're there.

Yeah, it's interesting, as I'm talking to you, I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm really missing my vigiling." That's the first time I've had that thought since finishing.

Lovely. Well, I hope you kind of— I can see kind of with the comments here, and I hope it kind of inspires more people to think on this question of what can I do to be of service and how I can honour that call and go and be a part of it. Just to read kind of a couple of the comments to make sure I haven't missed any. I know you're going to be going through them. Imogen, who was speaking earlier, talked about— said that we held a vigil along the HS2 line in a memorial garden children, which had been ruined by the development, and it was powerful and beautiful. The community felt a real sense of connection with the activists on that evening, and it was a really way of kind of bridging it with the communities.

What sounds beautiful shared there. Yeah, I think ritual— there's just to say briefly, I think there is something about ritual and spiritual practice that can speak of unspeakable things. And that's what that reminds me of, that kind of, you know, the how do we speak of these things? And sometimes seeing somebody not saying anything is the best way of— yeah.

Within our normal hustle and bustle of life, what space is there for that grief and for that?

Yeah, ritual.

And in seeing you doing what you're doing and kind of with others kind of gives a bit of space for people just to glimpse that and sit a little bit closer to it. A question here is, you talked about that you're going to be putting together in a book the experiences of sitting with the earth. Is that still in progress? Do you know when that will be available for people to hear more of the stories?

Yeah, I haven't started it yet. I've got a book-length list of notes from— like, I made notes every day when I came home, um, but I promised myself November off, um, because I'm, you know, I do all the other things I do, but in terms of extra stuff, so I'll probably, I don't know, this spring, something like that. But, um, yeah, I've got a website and you can— if you're on— if you're not connected with me on Facebook, you can follow me there.

Super. Well, we'll all look out for that. We look forward to sharing, we look forward to sharing kind of the details of that when that's out. Really, really grateful for you speaking to us all here and sharing your stories and the work that you've been doing with Sitting with the Earth.

Thank you so much, Jonathan, and if anyone has any questions or comments, you can always email me. I'll put my email in the chat and I'll read all the chat things now. Thank you for your ears.

Take care.

Take care.