Deep Ecology Practice: Grief
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Imagine an egg. You could hold it in your hand, smooth, heavy and warm. An egg is the promise of new life, youth and renewal. It could break so easily, but its design is a marvel. The hard shell breathes just enough, through an air pocket formed between two thin membranes beneath the shell, for the embryo to grow, while he feeds on the yolk, his own bright sun.
Imagine yourself inside the egg: a whole world. Curled up small in the warm darkness, yet somehow huge and full of life, like the kernel of a great tree wrapped in a nutshell. All the blackness and brightness of the world rolled up into one place, one heartbeat.
It’s a complete world, until it isn’t. For one day, it grows dry. Your bright yolk is all gone, and your beak is touching the world’s edge. You’re going to make a door into another world, one much larger, one with color and wings and voices. You tap through the wall of your world and breathe air. You call out for your mother. Does she come?
Every day, millions of chicks break out of their eggs. What form are you taking? What life lies ahead of you?
An estimated 62 million chickens are born daily. For the vast majority, their mother will not come. Their short lives will be full of suffering, imprisoned, abused and ending in slaughter.
An egg symbolises hope and the marvel of life. For humans, birds are resonant with freedom. Winged and singing, greeting the dawn, they are surely at the origin of how we conceive angels. Yet today, what is it like to be a bird?
If we wish to go as far as possible from the poor factory-farmed chicken, we might come to the albatross. Their wings span three metres across and in their long lifetimes they cross and recross oceans, circling the globe on great angel wings.
Albatross are among the most endangered birds today, because thousands are killed each year in the fishing industry, by trawl nets and long lines, and because their food has grown scarce due to humans’ war on fish.
Hungry, they bring what they can to feed their chicks. Chris Jordan’s photos of albatross chicks rotting on the ground of Midway Island in the North Pacific Ocean show bones and grey downy feathers around open stomachs full of plastic. Brightly coloured bottle tops, a lighter, a scrap of net, a comb. Fed by the parents direct to their chick, with love and care, until the chick could take no more.
There is immense suffering in the more-than-human world today. We all know this. Anyone reading this most likely knows about climate chaos, rising extinction rates, industrial animal agriculture, pollution and ecosystem degradation. I am not going to try to persuade you that the situation is very bad, because that story of crisis is everywhere: you have already heard it.
Most people are adept at blocking their responses to the suffering in our world. Rather than thinking deeply about the lives of the chicken or the albatross, most will look away. We might think: I don’t want to imagine it. I can’t do anything about it. There are other atrocities worse. Don’t make me feel guilty. What about the wrong you do? I have my own worries. It isn’t anything to do with me.
But we live in a world that is radically interconnected, and the pain is with us, despite this great effort to block it. In her work on despair, eco-philosopher Joanna Macy returns often to the need to honor our pain for the world, because in so doing we release enormous amounts of energy (all that energy taken in blocking the pain), and begin to understand the messages we are receiving from the world-system about what is happening. She and Molly Brown write:
Silencing our deepest responses to the condition of our world not only fosters a sense of futility, but also mires us in it. Each act of denial, conscious or unconscious, is an abdication of our power to respond. It relegates us to the role of victim, before we even see what we can and want to do.¹
When looking at the treatment of the more-than-human world today, emotions that arise include grief, anger, guilt, fear and despair. These are difficult emotions, yet they express our connection with the world. We should not be afraid of this pain, because it arises from our love of the Earth.
Thich Nhat Hanh said that in order to save our world, ‘what we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.’
Perhaps he could listen, because he was at home in interbeing. He knew that he did not have to hold alone this terrible pain. You also, if you listen to that sound, do not need to take it upon yourself to fix the problem, or stand alone with the pain. We are not alone. If you open to the grief of living in a hard time, please do so knowing that the grief is not something onto which to cling. It passes through us to our true refuge, the living Earth, where healing happens.
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Recognising the pain you feel for our Earth and the beings here with us is valuable, but it is not suitable for everyone. Anyone contacting deeply their pain for our planet should ensure that they have resources for having that experience safely. Resources mean a self-care practice that works for you, such as walking outside or meditation. It could mean having someone who you can talk with about how you feel. Self-care is action that soothes the soul, creates connection between the self and the world, and brings us safely into the present moment. Do you have these resources in place? If not, could you take steps to find or create them?
There are people in vulnerable psychological states, such as depression or PTSD/CPTSD, who may find these practices too painful. If this may be the case for you, please hold back from anything that could cause harm. Be kind to yourself first. Self-compassion is Earth-compassion.
Trauma may be carried by people who have experienced oppression because of their racial identity, sexuality, gender, or difference from the perceived norm. Some trauma is generational. In speaking of suffering in the more-than-human world, the suffering of oppressed people and all humans is also present. Again, please listen to what your own body and heart are expressing to know if these practices are right for you.
Practice 1: Honoring Grief
To recognize and get to know better your own pain response to what is happening in the world today, a simple way to begin is by journaling. Try free writing in response to this open sentence: When I look at what is happening in the world today, some concerns I have are…
If this sentence feels too mild, you might choose: When I look at what is happening in the world today, what breaks my heart is…
Can you allow yourself to express fully your response? No one will accuse you of bringing down the mood. No one will judge what you write. You are free to respond as you choose. If writing in words is not for you, perhaps try drawing instead, or even movement. Take time to explore how you feel.
Practice 2: Mourning Rituals
In many cultures there are traditions of mourning where lost loved ones are remembered with a stone marker of some form, symbolizing the continued memory of their life and their existence with the eternal. In Judaism we have a tradition of leaving stones upon tombs as a gesture of love and memory. In Scotland people make piles of stones called cairns, which may mourn the dead or mark a pathway for the living.
The world’s wild places and species passing from the world or already passed deserve to be honored. They are our kin. A simple ceremony or gesture can express mourning. You might choose a stone and place it somewhere outside or in your home as a symbol of mourning, thinking as you do so of what you are choosing to remember, to mourn, and to continue loving.
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Further grief practices here.
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More deep ecology practices are listed at the end of this article. Follow me on Medium for updates.
[1] Coming Back to Life, p. 34.
