ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 40
Illustration Key:
“What Is Longing To Die”
• Linear cityscape trash-conveyor belt, banished
• The real death is trash
• What new ways of being are asking to be nurtured?
• Community and cultural wealth that go ignored
• Regenerative ecologies and economies
• Returning what was thrown away back to the sacred circle
Trash Pile: Understanding death as what creates conditions for new
life, the concept of trash is what creates true endings. Banished from
the sacred circle, what gets thrown away is denied the opportunity to
grow into its purpose. What we lose when we believe in waste is the
imagining of a next cycle.
Farmworkers: The legacy of the UFW movement lives on today as
our globalized food supply chains have complexified while remaining
entrenched in extractive growing practices and exploitation
(perceived disposability) of farmworkers.
Mycoremediation: Mycelium contain enzymes that are able to digest
biological, chemical or industrial pollutants. Mycoremediation shows
us a way for human/fungi collaboration to remediate contaminated
environments without causing more harm to living organisms.
Poinsettia: Poinsettias (cuetlaxóchitl in Nahuatl) bloom in response
to lengthening times of darkness. Endemic to present day Mexico
and Central America, their bright red leaves have been associated
with new life and immortality from pre-colonial Aztec culture to
contemporary religious uses.
Speaking to the Maiz: Decolonization is not a metaphor. To honor the
sacred we must speak to it directly, re-learn the language of that
which sustains us, and center those who carry the wisdom of living
intimately with our wider ecological body.
Regenerative Economies: We make the shift from capitalist
consumers to cultural creators when we divest from systems of
extraction and instead nurture the commons and invest in solidarity
economies. What community strengths have been ignored that are
now asking to be nurtured?
Grandmother Wisdom: This abuela reminds us that the question of
how to be in harmony with ecological life and death cycles is not
a “problem” that requires a high-tech design solution. Traditional
wisdom is future facing.
40
Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper