Green means we are what we love

alena — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:50:40 +0000

Now is the time to put your skepticism aside, just a for a second.

It’s okay, it will still be there when you get back. Buy it a hot chocolate, give it a magazine and tell it you’ll be just be a moment.

There are a million and one blogs, articles, tv shows and books out there to tell us how to care for the environment. What many do not address is the fundamental shift in consciousness required before anyone cares to begin with.

Undeniably there is a groundswell in interest and attention on global change around environmental issues and living in a “green” or “eco” way. For this I am so grateful. What this means is that when I talk to the stranger at the cafe about my garden, or no longer using plastic bags or bottles, they don’t necessarily look at me like I’m a radical militant greenie. Great.

The thing that is often overlooked is the simple principle of love. We are what we love, not what loves us. This message comes clearly through so many life-altering films and books and parables. When someone close to us dies, we often remark about how we wished we’d said we loved them more often, spent more time, had more fun.

It’s the same with being green and caring for the environment. If we don’t love our garden, it literally will not bear fruit.

So today, for me, green means love (as it happens to also mean in many spiritual modalities and colour therapies).

I love my garden, I love trees and native animals and nice weather. It is out of that love that I can be bothered to read about how to care for the environment.

So my advice to anyone that asks would definitely be to get out there and get into it, find joy in your garden, your bushwalk, the tree outside your house and local birds, whatever tickles you pinky-green.

If we start to love the environment we live in, we will naturally want to take care of it – much as we take care of the people and things we already love in our lives.

Enough scaremongering and de-sensitising, let’s really feel the natural world and fall in love again.

Because we are what we love, tell the environment you love it, spend more time with it, and have more fun being green.

What is green / Aviva Hannah

alena — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:34:24 +0000

Aviva Hannah is an eco-scientist and artist. She has participated in many exhibitions and protests in relation to deforestation in Tasmania, where she is based. Since childhood her talents as an artist and naturalist have been advanced. Aviva Hannah also travels and performs whilst journaling and drawing. Her lifestyle is organic in the true sense of the word. Here is her take on the ‘what does green mean’ question.

what is green…..

‘Time to Cherish or Perish’ Aviva Hannah 2008, recycled paper, mixed media. Currently held in private collection of Christine Milne, Green Senator “being green is daring to care…..in a society that has only just begun to realise its damage and repercussions, being green is standing up, admitting mistakes and the many comforts that ‘progressive’ modern society has provided, as detrimental to ecological processes and making changes. In many cases being ‘green’ will be more expensive, harder work and more personally energy intensive but in the long term….being green is looking way past the short term economic agendas, personal and political.

being green is daring to stare into the lair of humanity… but one must beware the glare…if you care, it may tear your heart apart…. there has come a time, when we must cherish or perish….

i think being green is recognizing that the earth is the ultimate provider, protector, carer and destroyer… i think being green is about Respect and Response.”

See work from Aviva Hannah’s latest exhibition here.

I Heart Green » environment

Green means we are what we love

What is green / Aviva Hannah