© Catherine Meeson 29.11.2015
Firstly, a little about why this work is important to me. I experienced what it was like to be uprooted throughout my whole childhood. From place to place, and then to a different country. I had to adapt and shift with every new location.  In my life experience often the only source of deep healing I could access  with unconditional holding came from the natural world. I always sought out nature to heal, I would walk and seek out what I could following the knowing of instinct without having the now proven findings of science to explain why it was good to do so.  Such findings include affects on all body systems, neurochemistry, biochemistry, hormones, brain wave state, mental emotional harmonisation, spiritual kinship with the community of and foundations for life. The earth was my friend, her life forms, the plants, animals, minerals and elements, my friends, my allies. At the age of 12 I had my first conservation planting experience and from there, the love steadily grew, the commitment to be a voice for the community of life and to build bridges of understanding and empathy and relation became a core element of who I was. Earth was my teacher my instincts and intuition my guides. So I vowed to serve however I could and this is crystallising into unique arts eco therapy approaches, blending a diverse field of multi disciplinary findings and lived experience through creative methodology and  transpersonal arts based research .

The great travesty of the 20th and early 21st centuries is that the collective carries wounded instincts and we are not largely allowed by our cultural models to live as natural human beings, for our created government and corporate legislations have bound us so tight we can barely breathe. People seeking to restore balance are prosecuted for daring to step outside of the control paradigm. Living off grid, walking the land; growing ones own food is not permitted in some places. Many are displaced from their ancestral homelands, the many being of all species. We are living in the era of  the mobilisation of all life and the era of the anthropocene where it is penned, that  humans have become as powerful, as major geological forces, leaving their imprint on the strata of future timelines.

Context aside. In term 4 my class expanded doubling in size, it is proving not just a creative outlet and nurturing space for the children, but a way to make friendships and build community as well, which is fantastic. I have penned a new sideline for Creative Therapeutic Encounters which is ‘ ‘Developing imagination and creativity whilst learning about ourselves and the world’.

Our theme this term, was Environment and pollution. My job is to guide the expression of feeling and thought and the embodiment in action by the children. We started with a site specific walk to immerse in the sense of place, of the sight sounds and the concept of an eco-system. Class room learning will only provide intellectual mental level connection, if at all. It will not inspire lifelong committed earthly citizens. So there is always an educational aspect to this work, but at a level they can understand. Eynesbury township is located  fringing on an  Old Greybox  forest, the trees  have sparse foliage and there are a few shrub type plants. Population is mostly birds, insects, and reptiles (one would guess) and maybe passing marsupials. No doubt there would have been many more species before settlement and the introduction of foxes and rabbits. The surrounding area was divided into farm land. 

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The children were asked to collect a gift that spoke to them from their nature walk. We used this as a starting point for reflection. We sketched out the basic concept of beginning middle and end following a stereotypical descent and rebirth sort of pattern, where the descent was the crisis and the rebirth the solution and celebration of new life.  The children became the land, the animals and the river and spoke from the perspective of their new identities. It is my hope this helps to increase awareness, empathy and relation to and with the world around them.

Richard Louve is a well known figure educating about the benefits of nature and the affect that a loss of that same connection is having on our kids  (If you  remove life forms  from the  community that supports them,  the community falls apart, community as in indigenous and systems thinking / ecosystem). Other prominent figures bringing much needed perspective to our western ways include Craig Chalquist, Amos Clifford and The Forest Therapy Association. There are many people in diverse fields of Eco Psychology such as Bill Plotkin, and many Indigenous practices and environmental ecological fields such as Spiritual and Deep Ecology rising up to remind us of what we so desperately need to remember, that our relation to earth goes way beyond economics, that economics really is an aberration and part of the problem of the consumptive mindset and base desires that is fast leading to the 6th great extinction. The same timeless utterances come down to us from the Ancients from practices such as Daoism, Buddhism and vanquished pagan and  global shamanic practises. It is the nature of life that the timeless wisdoms have to be rearticulated in every age and culture over time. Out task is how to carry this knowledge over to the laymen and women in a language they can understand, where they can get it at the embodied level.
Now I do not discuss these former things with the children. But they do find their way into other therapeutic and educational work I have been engaged in.
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Life in the Old Gum Valley- was the name of our play and it was a celebration of the life of the valley and what happens when something goes wrong. We wrote two simple songs together. I played guitar and  sang and the children played percussion instruments and also sang. In our play we also had a Park Ranger, an Aboriginal man as teacher to the ranger, a Villain and a Police women; we are connecting into the archetypal nature of these characters and what they hold / represent. (What I often refer to as Archetypal Alchemy- embodying the archetypes or archetypal energies to serve intention- explore, express, heal). The valley experienced a poacher stealing all the animals and polluting the waters. We explored what this would be like in song.
 
These people these people
They’re polluting our Lands
These people these people
They don’t understand
These people these people
They’re polluting our lands
It’s like we are living
In a fantasy land
 
I helped the children articulate and craft the song and suggested a melody, the words were all theirs.
Our villain was tracked down by the ranger and the Aboriginal man and arrested, the waters were cleared up, the animals returned and life restored to balance.

Our home is happy in the Old Gum Valley
The water is pure our home is safe
Our home is happy in The Old Gum Valley
The trees are moving Our home is improving
Our home is Happy in the Old Gum Valley
We’re all together and we’re safe again
Our home is Happy in the Old Gum valley x2
 
At this moment I can only share with you a picture of the masks some of the children wore. I am seeking permissions to use/ access some photos.

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The work was performed at the Rockbank End of Year Community Celebrations  at the Rockbank Community Hall to Rockbank Primary school and other members of the Philippino and Islander Communities, Community Gardens members and other groups associated with the Neighbourhood House programs by Melton City  council. We had a total of seven weeks to pull this off and we did it.
If this work interests you please enquire, I can facilitate and cater for Eco Arts programs for you or any other social justice /social welfare issues both creatively, and experientially with therapeutic  and educational benefits to enhance well being.

Triple Ecology Collective Associated Inc Victoria is planning the second Triple Ecology gathering in the Yarra Valley region to explore and deepen work along these themes. I will be offering a workshop there in April. Stay tuned for details and tickets in January.

Triple Ecology- Arts Activism- Healing the tree of Life Workshop with Catherine Meeson
Experiential multi modal, guided response, media and presence. Co creating a Healing Ecology.
I will also be hosting The Open Mic at the Event and the Creative Visioning Space.

Links of Interest
 
http://www.natureandforesttherapy.org/
http://richardlouv.com/
http://www.terrapsych.com/
http://www.animas.org/
http://www.childrenandnature.org/
 

​I am going to start by going backwards. I spoke to Reverend Stephen afterwards  and he shared that 40 invitations were sent out to various schools, only 3 chose to come of senior high school students. One small event; -  as a passing wind over a few fertile minds and hearts, when it needs to reach hundreds of thousands! My response to him was there needs to be a global outreach ministry to schools posing the questions discussed today, for the young to contemplate debate study   and integrate into educational curricula. Posing a way for inspired future generations to take the initiative now empowering them with the Holy Spirit, which really is what sits behind inspiration. It does not matter if people are not of a specific faith orientation what matters is the desire to act, the contemplative act followed by deliberation and action, the promotion of questions and questing to find solutions and answers, for there is no one answer as there is no one solution, there must be many, and many hands make light work.

I asked what the word Encyclical meant, referring to Pope Francis recent controversial and necessary presentation to his  congregation. He told me that it is  holy writ that has some authority within the church and  the papacy, under the advice of thought leaders and other thinkers. So the Pope presented the work but it was not fully his own work. He had the final say but the document was composed and prepared. It’s funny I only learnt at Uni recently politicians have script writers, and here was I thinking their worlds were spontaneous! I would love to see a list of advisers attached to it, especially as he is the figure head of the Catholic Church. Many words from the grass roots and from the scientific community would have informed it, the Deep Ecology field has been actively communicating such for years as has the worlds indigenous peoples. Papal Encyclicals .net defines Encyclical as “A Papal Encyclical is the name typically given to a letter written by a Pope to a particular audience of Bishops. This audience of Bishops may be all of the Bishops in a specific country or all of the Bishops in all countries throughout the world”. The pope has called his perspective an Integral Ecology. I was impressed when I heard it, I thought he was tuned in, and it came from the heart of one illuminate with insight,  tuned in or riding the winds of public sentiment. Time will tell. Even now there are those who do not support his sentiments. For the full document see here http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.pdf. Fro a video trancript  and moving images see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh-fTINLKsg Pope Francis' Encyclical: Chapter 1 - Section 4, Section 5, Section 6, and Section 7 by Bridges Programming.

 So let us now go back to the Questions and the panellists. The Panelists are Mr Rowan Callik, Professor Peter Rayner, Melb Uni, Ms Leanne Hodyl, Melb City Council, Dr Karen Jones Uni of Melb, Dr Mike Arnold Uni of Melb, Dr Anne Elvey, Monash Uni /Uni of Divinity, Revd, Dr Stephen Ames, st Pauls / Uni of Melb, Dr Stephen Utembe, Uni of Melb.Science Week at the Cathedral brochure expresses “Men and women are created in the image of god and endowed with creative power Genesis 1 : 26-8. Technology is just one expression of the God given powers enjoyed by human beings. Will it be used in the ‘image of God’- human power that produces and sustains life in all its forms- or of an idol that degrades life?”  Great questions to contemplate.

There were maybe 60 /70 students present. A couple of lay people, myself included. I had so much I wanted to say in response to all the panellists, the kids the whole thing. Yet it was not a  completely open  dialogue. So I listened and took notes.
Dr Karen Jones said “Good lives are necessary, lives in which agents engage in making”. The agency she refers to is the act of action itself, intervention to cause effect, the ability we all possess.
Dr Mike Arnold- said  that there are questions of technology- engagements passed off to technologies “from the human world allowing us to be disburdened” engaging less as persons with the world. He asked  “Which assists and which disengage?”.

Ms Leanne Hodyl- spoke about the concept of flourishing as what it means  from a very individual level and in terms of housing design. She stated that future urban planning aimed to be ethical with accessibility of jobs, affordability, wealth , and spoke of apartment living , catering for a diversity of policy / decisions. She was young and expressed sentiments a bit at odds by the majority of panellists.
Rev Stephen Ames- spoke of the inherent “ selfishness by nature” of mankind. “A good life is a life lived for others a life for the betterment of the future”. Question What does a good life mean on the scale of culture? “We need to rethink agency- not just individual freedoms. Chains of dependencies, coming to know. What it means to be human and act more responsibly for other beings/ things that are not human. Training of desires in ways that are not good for the planet.

Question. "How do we get retrained versus our desires- Psalm 15 “If you worship Idols you become like them”. What counts as a good life, it takes care about where and what it worships. For the planet to go on being a massively life producing planet. Respect of living things. Cities- resilient cities that can handle the knocks and the stresses- one of the signs would be no homeless people sleeping in the streets”.
Prepared Questions.
The speaker has  no problem with the growth in cities and thinks it is not the problem. Pace not the problem but the form that they take. Feels we need to be smarter.
“To hell with future generations (sarcastically)- she referenced the Iroquios 7th generation rule, (Karen Jones), calling it a great moral crisis – we are not thinking in terms of what we owe to future generations”.
Stephen. “Prosperity but at what cost?”
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Mike Carter Paints a cosmological  scenario. How people lived sustainably over 30 million years now we have 6 billion  people and space travel colonization ambitions. ?? [ paraphrased poorly].
“What’s the pathway to a sustainable life? that is the question. It’s not a question of do we have the tec, do we have the political will and shared view of life on the planet. Divine Economy. Life for all. Or do we want some other economy to run the show?”

“Political Will – Political imagination is what is needed. Human hearts and minds. Slow down or speed up. Who runs the agenda for how fast we run our life? Why are we running so fast? Who dictates? Growth and finitude needs to be held”- Anne.
 A thought form the young fella who posed the question. “Look left look right to the people with us and we look forward”.

My commentary. We need to look above for divine wisdom and insight, below to the earth and foundations for all life, behind us to our collective traditions and knowledge our ancestry, before moving on into the uncertainty we face.  And to our fellows left and right.

Question. Re development of definitions. “Have we or haven’t we already gone already gone too  far?”Nicola, Nicloa raised the point of earth overshoot day, how we are consuming  more than earth can sustain. For information on that go herehttp://www.overshootday.org/. In summary earth overshoot expresses how we are consuming more per year than the earth can replenish of its primary resources and that this reality is critical, critical for global realisation and seeding of action to remediate..
Views expressed  were “its already too late. It does not change the obligation to work for  a sustainable planet”. That there is a “Call from many people from all cultures to choose action- and make the difference. We must not give in to despair”. My apologies, as it  was hard to track 100% who was speaking as the conversations  got lively and different speakers spoke so all efforts made to try and preserve what I heard but as I write this now, it is a bit later on.

 Anne referenced the Popes encyclical http://www.papalencyclicals.net/ as a critique, but must be looked on with hope. She advised to bring your gifts to bare on the issues and respond. Wise advise.
Question. Kalin Student- “How can science and religion unite to enhance a good of life?” Answer “Political and Individual will- to give voice to what we are not prepared to stand for”  [ in the arena of human and global political affairs].

“Science [ contains the ]power for good or for ill- money /research- [ is used for ] ill uses, military industrial useless stuff. Religion has good and bad modes. How do we tap the good stuff?”. Rev. Stephen.
Mike- Healthcare we are healthier due to techo science[ really at what cost?]Techno optimists argue [ that the ] reason is techno science, that is why we are healthy, [i.e. increased life spans, ability to treat conditions that would have wiped us out years ago, agriculture etc].

Question. “With the help of technology moving into the future would you still be living a good life?”.
Answer. “Tech can be used to enhance agency (Karen Jones ) What matters is the relationship in which we stand to this form of knowledge and technology. The mode of engagement”. [It’s not just how you use them- we have always had them Where were they created? The ethics materials Long term effects].
Anne – “consumer turn over and disposability . This is the good life (sarcasm) waste waste waste”.
Rev Stephen mentions carbon costs.

Transhumanist question over receiving better legs, having perfect legs but wanting to get better ones because they are available. Rev Stephen- warned of the “seduction of human spirit. What is the vision of a good life? Mechanical excellence? What’s it gonna take to get that?”

My response in poetic form was

Be the tree who’s roots
Are planted firmly
so all my shelter under your roots.

My closing thoughts. I attended a few such events this week and all the conversations were centred around the things I have been writing about and the reason why we create the Triple Ecology gathering; is that there is a call in the realm of human affairs from within and from divine powers beyond us asking us to rise in defence of life, for all beings because if we do not rise to the challenge and make changes our current path is self destruction and the sixth great extinction via human agency.

What constitutes a good life is a life in harmony with all beings,  with other nations, traditions and ways, other orders of living beings on a clean energy planet where every soul can reach potential, where wars are a thing of the past  and the foundations or life are revered and used wisely. A life where we work towards balancing what we have done together because we did not know the consequences of our discoveries and technologies. But with foresight now we can prepare and at least attempt to lay a smoother path for our descendants because it is our duty. It is our future karma, For our descendants will be us reincarnated. It is the time of great tribulation, the age of Kali Yuga, the realm of maya (illusion), the great reckoning, transition, the apocalyptic age, it is called many things. It is the end of one age and the beginning of another. This era has been called The Anthropocene. Read about it below. How the Anthropocene plays out will depend on all of our actions and decisions now. The strata that gets deposited in the cosmic memory bank by todays humans will be an interesting thing to analyse some future time that’s for sure. Then we may look back and say we were crazy, we gambled too much and took everything for granted because life was all about industry and economics, not being and the foundations necessary for interbeing . http://anthropocene.info/index.php . I look forward to engaging with more young people so they may develop their minds and hearts to become stewards for the future, carers for the commons. It is after all our collective heritage on earth – for it to be a good life we need mass action. Every bit matters. After all, was it not mind over matter, now we have lost sight of matter we had better find our minds and quick smart or we may not find matter suitable for a foundation of life.
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These issues I seek to address and promote in all my workshops and artistic practice, heal person heal community heal planet. Thank you. Catherine Meeson
References

1. http://www.papalencyclicals.net/
2. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.pdf
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh-fTINLKsg Popes Encyclical narration
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96kXTtY5f0k Popes Encyclical narration

 
Other links
http://earthstatement.org/statement/
http://therightsofnature.org/universal-declaration/
http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/pages/Read-the-Charter.html

I was extremely grateful to be recommended for the Festival for Healthy Living by a wonderful lady in my local community Centre. In 2014 I was employed as assistant artist and  the focus was divided between well being and Arts assistant facilitation  all rounder one could say. 2015 I was more engaged as an Artist per say in  community Arts facilitation.

The Festival For Healthy Living program is  a 3 year program that visits regions identified as having special need at community level. In this case it just happened to be my home town, an area of low socio economic status with ample community issues. The focus is for Children and also includes the  larger community in capacity building.

We worked as a majority of the schools in the local region with thousands of students all up over two years of work shopping, and it may just continue next year.

The Workshops are held at both Primary school level and High school in a mix of art modalities. The focus is arts health engagement, how the arts can serve as  preventive mental health mediums and to increase the general well being in the community, by assisting (intentionally) enhanced peer, family and social relations, more inclusiveness, affect on self esteem/ self worth and dealing with a range of identified issues. We worked with issues such as racism and bullying, literacy and so on.

The children were given the opportunity where possible to choose art form. They got to sample drama, performance, dance, rap, song, music, writing, visual arts, circus with a range of contracted professional practising artists. Even Hoola hooping!
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Engagement levels varied with artform, school and artist teams and the activity its' self. I was engaged across the board assisting with circus stuff, The Sisters and Brothers Project, Visual Arts, Drama and  Music. At Melton South Primary school we made masks first as paper mache then as an extended cardboard and mache process which ended up as our wonderful bird heads in the opening parade for the stilt walkers  at the Dream Big festival culmination day. 

Coburns had all the artists teams. I also worked with Sisters and Brothers, Circus and running an Improvised drama session.

At Melton Secondary we worked in the gym which was a bit of a challenge with sound. Marnie made the wonderful big Wedge tailed eagles with her group, that are a feature animal out on the western plains and of course connected to the Aboriginal creator dreaming story -Bunjil.

It is the opportunity that is important for the children. Sport is a well publicised and supported part of long term health care but the arts, as yet, are not widely understood for their long term health benefits. Whether a person chooses to become a professional artist or just to express themselves,  as hobbyist crafts person etc, engagement is the key, self discovery,  promoting  a sense of joy, risk taking, promoting positive self worth and esteem. It is not about producing finished products of high art, even though we worked towards a grand finale in the second year as the festival event in the big tent, where all schools came together and contributed. See pictures below. 

The best part for me was not only getting paid, meeting new artists and having the perfect job that was an intersection of my skills, but  seeing the kids have a go, learn new skills, make new friends, discover things they did not know before, about themselves, and the arts. Everyone in the community was very proud on our big day and I am so proud of all the kids for their fantastic work, we hope that in some small way or maybe a big way, their encounters with these art forms in ways which  are not prescribed curricula, my enrich their lives. It is about having fun, trying and being engaged promoting positive mental health in the process. Who knows maybe we sprouted a few life long arts practitioners in the process, or at least encouraged them on their journey?

Thank you to the amazing and inspirational John Lane, The Royal Childrens Hospital, Linking Melton South, Regional Schools, teachers, Education department and Health workers,  and all the fantastic artist teams, what an wonderful project to be involved in, I learnt heaps!