An open letter to my 9-day-old daughter

A prayer for the healing of the Earth and her people.

Dear Lucía Nerea,

Only nine days ago you changed my world forever!

Ever since I was a little boy I have been in love with this wonderful planet we can call our home and as I grew up I have tried my best to cultivate compassion and care for my fellow human beings and the larger community of life. Yet, nothing prepared me for the opening of my heart that your first glance would gift me.

Being present at your birth — supporting your brave mother through the intensity of this wonderful rite of passage for you, for your mother and for me — was one of the most meaningful and moving things I have done in my life.

To see you crowning, your head appearing as you spiraled into this world — how you opened your little eyes for the first time and were met by the exhausted, deeply grateful, and joyous faces of your mother and me — to cut that life-line to our mother’s placenta and end your nine months of aqueous existence, to see you shuffle up from your mother’s belly to take your first feed as an air breathing little ape …

I was already deeply in love with you throughout your transformative journey in your mother’s womb nevertheless the immensity of that love at first sight was overwhelming. A love with the power to heal many of the wounds of my own immaturity, giving me the strength to renew my commitment to show up fully and play my part.

You have transformed my life. Driving back home to get the car seat for your journey from the hospital, I noticed that the world was different. As Marcel Proust said “the true journey of discovery is not about traveling a thousand miles. It is about seeing with new eyes.” I am seeing the world with new eyes, now that I know the world holds you within her womb.

Our neighbourhood, the gentle swell of the Mediterranean, the local baker and fruit shop, our neighbours and everything around me looks different to me now. I see other children — boys and girls of different ages and ethnicities — and my ability to feel compassion for their and their parents’ stories has suddenly amplified beyond all my previous experience.

Thanks to you, Gaia — the living Earth — has a new face, and for me it is yours! When I look at you my love for life and all living washes over me and through me — affirming my commitment to be of service to the healing of the unbroken whole.

I feel the weight of response-ability — my wonderful opportunity to be alive and therefore able to make a difference and be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The world we have born you into is at one and the same time wonderful and perfect, as it is in deep crisis and plagued by a human occupation riddled with imperfections.

Your century, my dear Lucía— maybe more than any other — will decide the future of our species and the future of life on Earth.

You were born into a world of multiple converging crises — climate change, resource wars, inequality, divisive fundamentalism, depletion of non-renewable resources, oceans full of plastic, decimated forests, degrades soils, polluted air, dysfunctional economic and monetary systems, to only name a few of these crises — which all find their source in a crises of perception.

Our species, your fellow humans, are destroying the fabric of life and our own life-support systems in the mistaken belief that we are somewhat separate from nature.

This has us living in a misguided story which justifies competitive behaviour in the face of perceived scarcity and makes us blind to the fact that life’s fundamental principle is to create conditions conducive to life — to unleash the power of collaborative abundance through symbiosis and living together in ways that serve all of humanity and the wider community of life.

I know you are far to small to understand all this — as you are now lying next to me, so relaxed, so trusting, so full of your own unique potential to unfold your gifts to the world in ways that only you can.

My role is to support you in your unique path of learning how you can best be part of a new culture, a new humanity, a new generation which will re-design the human presence on Earth and assure that our species’ impact on Earth shifts from being predominantly one of degeneration, destruction and exploitation to being by and large regenerative, collaborative and healing. As life, you and I have the unique potential to contribute to creating conditions conducive to life!

A decade and a half might pass until you will read these lines and get to judge for yourself how we have faired in the urgent transition towards diverse regenerative cultures everywhere. I pray that in 2032, you will be able to say: “While much was lost and more remains to be done, we have turned a corner as a species and are on a pathway towards a regenerative human presence on Earth.”

I beg the universe for the health and grace that you may also say: “… and my dad is always there for me when I need him. He did his very best to nurture and steward the emergence of regenerative cultures everywhere … he is my best friend and a wise mentor on my own path of becoming a healer of this wonderful Earth.”

When you are the age I am now, my little Lucía, and maybe blessed with having children of your own, I will — god willing — be 90 years old.

We will write the year 2062, the world’s forests will cover more than half of its landmass again, the extent of the Earth’s healthy grasslands and soil fertility will have steadily increased for decades running, the hydrological cycle will be restored — rivers will flow again were there are now dry valleys — and deserts will only cover 5% rather than 14% of the world’s land mass, there will be no more plastic floating in the oceans and the seas will be teeming with life again, coral reefs will be growing in size and virbrancy, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be near 280ppm and well on its way to pre-Industrial levels of 250ppm …

May we look back over those coming 45 years and celebrate them as the time of the ‘great turning’ — the first half of the century of regeneration that you chose to be born into.

May we witness how people of all ages, all nations and all faith groups come together in the unshaken belief that as life our role is to create conditions conducive to life. Earth Restoration Camps will be the new universities of life, where in bioregions across the planet the human family will come together to un-do the damage of the past and unleash the power of collaborative abundance as we come together to be part of the regeneration.

May we see the deep understanding spreading that the best way to care for our selves, our families, our communities, our countries and the beautiful living planet we have been entrusted with is best achieved through caring for the community of life as a whole.

May we find the wisdom to address the obscene inequality within and between nations, the commitment to justice to address the pilages of colonoalism and neo-colonialism in the form of neoliberal economic globalization and co-create a more equitable world in which all children have access to clean water, renewable energy, high quality healthy buidlings, deeply supportive education, and all families can meet their needs in ways that contribute to the regeneration of their local culture, local economies and local ecosystems.

May we come together to heal the inter-generational trauma of past atrocities in ways that we can move forward as one humanity — united in our diversity and our unshaken and regained love for life and all living, as responsible stewards of a uncertain and unpredictable future and in humble recognition of the limits of our own knowing and abilities.

May we — you, little Lucía, your mum and I — find lots of time to enjoy, celebrate and give thanks for this wonderful gift of life; and may we witness humanity undergoing its own coming-of-age as you are living through your coming of age — a rite of passage that will turn our young species, plagued by a crisis of perception that makes us still believe we are separate from each other, from the rest of the human family and from the community of life, grow into the maturity of understanding that by healing our cultures and our world we are healing ourselves — AND that by healing ourselves we are healing the unbroken whole of which we are and have always been integral parts and co-creative participants.

Life is full of such rites of passage — of constantly giving up who we are for what we could become, of personal development and growth, of transforming in syntony with the miraculous constantly transforming whole that un/en-folds within us, around us and through us.

You, little Lucía Nerea Wahl Fryer — born in Spain, on a little island in the Sea of Middleearth, to a German father and an English mother (we like to quip as our answer to Brexit) — hold within you the capacity to show your fellow humans how to overcome separation and live into a new found interbeing with all there is.

Your coming of age will — hopefully — mirror the coming of age of your own species, bringing us back into communion with the community of life upon which all our futures depend. May we all learn to become healers of the unbroken whole!

May your generation witness the rise of the Regeneration, as humanity re-designs the human impact on Earth from destruction to regeneration!

Nine years ago, exactly over the days that saw the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst and the economic system begin to crumble, I spent 12 days on a vision fast workshop in the Inyo mountains near the desert of Death Valley. As we prepared to spend four days and four nights alone in the wilderness without food or shelter and in sacred ceremony, we each put our intention and affirmation into words. Here is what I prayed for then and what the rite of passage of your birth has made me reaffirm:

I am a man of vision and spirit— ready to serve the Earth and her people — as a lover of life, a warrior of compassion, a teacher of wisdom, and a healer of the unbroken whole.

As you — my beloved Lucía who has already taught me to love more deeply and more fully than I thought possible — lie in your little cot next to me I reaffirm these vows and my prayer for grace.

May your mother and I be granted a healthy and long life so we can be there for you when you need us. So we can see you grow up into the wonderful young woman you are destined to be.

May we find ways to support you in unfolding your own unique potential to become a healer of the unbroken whole and enrich this world with your creative expressions of life’s exploration of novelty.

May your own life be a celebration of life’s creativity and beauty!

May we — you, your mum and I, our community and all of humanity — learn to celebrate the gift of life by co-creating conditions conducive to life!

I sit here humbled by the immensity of the task ahead of us all and in deep gratitude for being alive so I may serve you , all other children, and the community of life, as a lover of life, a warrior of compassion, a teacher of wisdom and a healer of the unbroken whole.

My promise to you and to myself on this ninth day of your young life is that I will do my very best to ensure that when you are old enough to read these lines, there will be more reasons to be hopeful, more proof of the Regeneration rising and less stories of destruction and despair.

I believe in you and this gives me renewed commitment to believe in a regenerative future for all of humanity and life as a whole.

Thank you Lucía for opening my heart even wider, so I may both feel the pain of the world crying and the joy of life’s rejuvenation as we are taking baby steps at the beginning of this all important century of regeneration.

Your loving dad,

Daniel Christian Wahl

Daniel Christian Wahl works internationally as a consultant and educator in regenerative development, whole systems design, and transformative innovation. He holds degrees in biology (Univ. of Edinburgh), and holistic science (Schumacher College), and his 2006 doctoral thesis (Univ. of Dundee) was on Design for Human and Planetary Health.

He was director of Findhorn College between 2007 and 2010, and is a member of the International Futures Forum since 2009 and Gaia Education since 2007. He has collaborated with UNITAR and UNESCO, many large NGO, and as a consultant he has worked with companies such as Camper, Ecover and Lush, as well as, with UK Foresight and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Daniel is a fellow of the RSA, a Findhorn Foundation Fellow, on the advisory council of the Ojai Foundation and the research group of the Global Ecovillage Network. He is co-founder of Biomimicry Iberia (2012), and has been collaborating with ‘SmartUIB’ at the University of the Balearic Islands since 2014. Daniel currently also works part-time as Gaia Education’s head of innovation and programme design.

His first book Designing Regenerative Cultures was published in 2016 by Triarchy Press and has already reached international acclaim. The ‘SDG Community Implementation Fashcards’ he developed for Gaia Education have been taken up enthusiastically by UNESCO and are being translated into the 5 official UN languages.

Daniel Christian Wahl

Written by

Catalysing transformative innovation, cultural co-creation, whole systems design, and bioregional regeneration. Author of Designing Regenerative Cultures

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