21 Oct Reading the Energy Field
From the Desk of Kathleen Sullivan, Coordinator, FreeportCAN
Converting fear into action and connection: opportunities for community involvement
The first frost arrived last week when the moon was full and so bright that the green ferns and white birches glowed in the dark as if lit by some ethereal angel-tinted light. In the morning, the asters still blooming in the garden looked as if they’d been shocked and hung their heads in acceptance of what is to come.
This time of year, when the dark comes sooner, the days shorten and the cold chills the body one can feel the energy shifting as if the air itself were unstable. But this year, the energy field around us is the most unstable it’s been in my almost 80 years on this planet.
Many of you are, I imagine, also feeling this terrible uncertainty about the future: a dark grip of fear when you wake, a spike of nausea when you read the news. Fear rides beside us as we absorb the great beauty of this place, this planet home.
What do we at FreeportCAN have to offer you in the face of this uncertainty and this disruption and in reality and civility we see all around us? Four years ago, we were a spot of an idea just emerging from concerns about the fires out West and the lack of discussion and consideration we found for the cause of those fires: climate change. Today we have behind us stories about how the town has embraced climate change as a real threat that we need to consider in our everyday decisions about how we buy our food, heat our homes, landscape our yards. We lead with the clarity of this idea: action is the antidote to fear.
By action we particularly mean collective action taken in relationship to your neighbors. This year we have several programs that will bring people together to learn, to act, to imagine, to console. And we would like to invite you to be part of these collectives, these circles of care for each other and for planet home.
Speaking of neighbors! One of our Freeport neighbors, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, in her phenomenally spot-on and readable new book, What If We Get It Right, has a Venn diagram that is very useful in considering your own part In this climate work. Take a look at it and consider how you might want to join us in our work!