I promised you I’d be exploring ways to find hope in the face of this monster tsunami of climate chaos facing our lovely home and all her creatures.

But many days I feel despair. I avoid writing my blog. I don’t want to report on another project or initiative or grant funded green project. Are they really making a difference?

When I look at the big picture or hear the ppm’s of carbon that are being spewed today—evidently higher than they’ve been for millions of years— I go into a fog. I think of all the species going extinct. My rage overwhelms me at the lack of political will. A hopeless wall of grief rises around me and I fall into a very dark place.

Then I think of Greta Thunberg, 15 year old Swedish Climate activist.

Or Phyllis Stiles, who started Bee City USA.

Or Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the brilliant comet that has landed on Congress with her Green New Deal

Or courageous African environmentalist, Wangaari Mathai.

Maathai in 2001

And my friend, Sister Joan Brown, Franciscan, Director of New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light chapter in Albuquerque NM— honored under Obama’s White House with 12 others nationwide who are working to reverse the odds of Climate Change. She goes where angels fear to tread.

Joan Brown | Global Sisters Reportglobalsistersreport.org

Or Lyla June Johnston, Standing Rock young spiritual leader, earth warrioress

And I realize. It’s not the projects, ideas, wind turbines, new solar panels giving me hope. It’s the voices, the energy, the courageous, quite frankly, women behind the movements and projects. Like the suffragettes, they are often considered whack jobs or disregarded as alarmist or sirens in their own times. But they are the wise ones. I will follow them into the wilderness, for they embody what is real and what is possible. Despite the odds, they are igniting movements around the world.

When I think of hopeful things happening, I think that it is happening locally, usually one woman at a time, with a vision in hand, calling on her city, village, township or pueblo to take a step beyond complacence and “the way we’ve always done it”.

I look at the small things done with great love in my community, and around the world, and I have enough juice for one more day.

If you have hopeful stories where you are, please send them to me. People often do send me amazing bee stories, and I try to incorporate them into my blog. I can’t lift this alone, friends. I need your voices, your strength, your hope and your action to continue the work of climate justice. Pollinators will not survive this without human intervention.

Together as I work locally, and you do the same, we will create a web of resilience and change reaching around the world—a womb of protection around our Earth home.

An excerpt from “Home Planet”, (Chinese-American astronaut, Taylor Wang):

A Chinese tale tells of some men sent to harm a young girl, who upon seeing her beauty, become her protectors rather than her violators. That’s how I felt seeing the earth for the first time. “I could not help but love and cherish her.”

Home Planet by Kevin W. Kelley (Da Capo Press, 1988)

Earthrise | 100 Photographs | The Most …100photos.time.comAPOD: 2018 December 24 – Earthrise 1 …apod.nasa.govEarthrise – Wikipediaen.wikipedia.orgEarthrise Revisitedearthobservatory.nasa.gov