This is a "Safe Space!".

For who? For what?

I am inviting you to read this piece as a heartfelt invitation.

Photo by Mannie Nami

When floods hit the heart of cities
When heatwaves scorch the birds from the sky
When salty waters soak the olive groves
When the crops wither away in the fields

When the Earth reminds us
what happens 
when we are not living in right relationship

The last thing we need is polarisation 
fueled by the separating rigidity 
of linear certainties, 
quick fixes 
and numbing solutionism

In Right Relationship

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

Getting back in right relationship with Mother Earth means committing to the hard, confrontational and uncomfortable work of getting back to right relationship with “each other”.

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I am feeling a tension in so-called ‘safe (and sometimes even brave) spaces’ where people talk /about/ regenerative transitions, connectedness and living in right relationship in what to me seem increasingly narrow and, paradoxically, separating boundaries.

Over the last few months, I have been present in a multitude of ‘regenerative’ spaces that were described as safe, whilst I didn’t feel there was room for the entangled, messy work our times are calling for. It made me wonder if we are confusing feeling safe and being in right relationship with the messy lifelong work of becoming in right relationship.

When spaces only feel safe if you speak a certain language, do not point at the elephants in the room or do not question the ontologies of the group, they are not safe. They are simply upholding old dynamics cushioned in the language of regeneration, safety, inclusion and connectedness. Grounding gatherings, meditations, land acknowledgements and silence are all tremendously important, and yet, they are not all there is to do; they come with responsibilities.

Getting too comfortable in carefully curated regenerative ‘safe’ spaces comes with the risk of what I, at this point, and it really pains my heart that this has happened, can only call conceptual regenerative bypassing. The dynamics of modernity are highly capable of co-opting, and they have managed to get hold of the language of regeneration. This does not take away from the all-encompassing importance of regeneration. Regeneration is life; it’s life making, healing and renewing life. This is by no means a call to throw regeneration out with the bathwater. That would be absurd; it’s like throwing life out. It’s a call, an invitation, to continue to centre nuance and context. To notice old dynamics surfacing. To be aware of the traps of modernity. To not get lost in linear solutionism, even if it’s called regenerative [x/y/x].

• What if we accept we can’t navigate liminal times with certainty, regulated nervous systems and an ever-present feeling of safety? What if we acknowledge we may confuse comfort with safety, certainty with solutionism and hard work with saviourism?

• What if we go through the pain instead of forever swaying around all that hurts and confronts?

• What if safety means committing to always trying to get back into right relationship, even when things get hard?

• What if tolerance means holding space for anger, grief and sorrow without dictating how they show up?

• What if safety means seeing the ugly, beautiful, morally messed up, confused, incoherent, paradoxical, loveliness of being alive, without numbing, shaping, erasing, tone-policing and/or silencing?

• What if safe spaces are where our nervous system can be, without the pressure of having to show up ‘healed’, ‘calm’ and ‘grounded’?

What does it mean to point at what needs to be said? To not shy away from naming colonial, patriarchal, separative dynamics? To face the harms done and commit to visible mending? To accept that these times require unravelling, noticing, composting, mending and tending? To accept that this is the hard work needing to be carried through to nurture a soil from which regenerative dynamics truly can sprout? Not ideas of utopian futures that sound regenerative but are, in all brutal honesty, repetitions of the same old pattern of extractivism and separation?

Questions Invite

We are drowning in answers 
Suffocated by solutions 
Lullabied into numbness
Grateful for a sense of impact
The true mess left intact 

Polarised by fake borders
Blind to the living world 
All space / Occupied / By Modernity

Answers keep us hostage
Working, Worrying
Grinding, Grovelling
Wishing, Wanting
Paying, Producing
Never enough
Always too busy to be alivened

Questions make way 
They surface the unspoken
Gift the space to movement
Heal pestering wounds

To imagine, restory
To relate, not hate
To thrive, not grind
To  feel not survive zombified
To wonder, not fear

To aliven an unfeeling society
Thrush open your windows of tolerance
Open yourself to the heartbeats 

The opposite of love isn’t hate 
It’s an unwillingness to be curious

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Readings & Listenings

• The origin of others, Toni Morrison

• Who Can You Be When You’re With Me? – Nora Bateson on Warm Data

• The Eternal Song “It is an offering to a world enveloped in historical amnesia, numbed to its own heartbeat by the madness of modernity.” (By Science and NonDuality)

Events & Gatherings

Online: Monthly Seismic Questions Gatherings
Dordrecht: Warm Data Lab - 16 July

Support

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Collaborations

For collaborations, inquiries and questions, please reach out to contact@minouschillings.com or check out my website for more information.

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