To Be Truely Green.

The theme this week on the blog is “we’re green”. An apt theme for the time we’re in. Summer is a beautiful season and our native woodlands do ‘green’ very well. Our native oak trees are full and stretching out languidly to the skies, the herbs are thick, the flowers have bloomed, the grass is lush, and the sea has a sparkle and texture due to the beaming sun. To ‘be green’ often means being responsible and kind to the environment, though there are many other connotations of the color such as money or envy or luck. I don’t really think it’s possible to truly ‘be green’ in the environmental aspect, not if you want to participate fully in modern society.
To be truly green to me would mean living out on an island, hunting bunnies and fishes with a sharpened stick, living under a little mud shelter, drinking from a natural stream and wearing clothes made from the leather from the bunnies or fashioned from tree fibres. That will most likely sound ridiculous to you readers. Of course we’ve advanced and created a society where we don’t have to do the dirty work of chasing our food with sticks, or making our clothes from raw fibres, or live with the possibility of a wolf or boar attacking you. We’ve raced away from the very real and ever-present threat of death that used to haunt our ancestors.
We chopped away our woods for houses of brick, we slaughtered all the wolves, boars and cranes, we built railways, we invented cars, we began mass-productive farming, we invented plastic, fashion was invented and ever-evolved, we mined the earth for natural resources, we sprayed gases into the atmosphere, we brought foreign species into our land that beat the crap out of our native species, we ditched the old gods for new…
I’m not saying that humans are monsters; we are wonderful creatures making the best of what we’ve got. But we forgot to respect what we had. Lughnasadh, the Gaelic festival marking the beginnings of the harvest, has just passed. The old traditions such as Lughnasadh don’t really seem to have a place in this modern world anymore. I kick myself for saying that as a pagan, but the old spirit of it isn’t there anymore. I don’t get a true hand in what goes on with my food so I feel no real joy when it’s placed on the table. I can imagine how it used to be with the villagers dancing and drinking and holding up their corn that they have grown with sweat and tears up to the Celtic sun god Lugh; the corn that determines whether they are fed and survive through the winter. It’s when the festivals come around that I celebrate (Imbolc, Yule, Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain) that I realize just how much has changed.
I think that how it used to be, when people had to really deal first hand with their lives in growing their own food, and making their own clothing, and building their homes and fires to give warmth at night, would really change how one looks upon the green world. You are much closer to death, and therefore value life passionately and recognize the life in what’s around you. And then you would be truly green. Thanks for reading :)
Cerridwen