Sustaining All Life, in South Australia
We held an RC Community event here in Adelaide, South Australia, to bring together Co-Counsellors, friends, and family to think about the climate talks in Paris and the Sustaining All Life delegation’s work there.1
A good range of ages—nine to late sixties—was represented. We played, and we listened to people speak about RC theory, the dispossession of Australia’s First Nations peoples, the care-of-the-environment goal of the RC Community,2 and the work of the Sustaining All Life delegation.
The gathering was delightful—human, uplifting, confronting, and fun. A Co-Counsellor said later that it was a picture of all that is good about the Co-Counselling Community—welcoming, thoughtful, playful, and a place where we can confront together the big issues facing humanity and listen to each other as we do this.
Two weeks later, ten members of our Community marched in the Adelaide March for Climate Action behind a beautiful Sustaining All Life banner. Six RCers then set up a listening post at the rallying point at the end of the march.
We have also done some fundraising to support the Sustaining All Life delegation in Paris—selling posters, asking friends and family to make donations, and making donations ourselves.
Although not everything has gone according to plan, these various actions have pushed us to reach out with our thinking, our theory, and our love, to bring the challenge of climate change to others. We have been pushed to face and counsel on environmental devastation, work together as a team at a public event, and become a resource for others so they can face the issue, feel their feelings, and then be able to think about and respond to it.
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC Community members
(Present Time 183, April 2016)
1 Sustaining All Life is a project of the RC Communities. In December 2015, a Sustaining All Life delegation went to Paris, France, to share RC tools with the activists gathering there during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
2 A goal adopted by the 2013 World Conference of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities:That members of the RC Community work to become fully aware of the rapid and unceasing destruction of the living environment of the Earth. That we discharge on any distress that inhibits our becoming fully aware of this situation and taking all necessary actions to restore and preserve our environment.Distresses have driven people to use oppression against each other and carry out destructive policies against all of the world. A full solution will require the ending of divisions between people and therefore the ending of all oppressions. The restoration and preservation of the environment must take precedence over any group of humans having material advantage over others. We can and must recover from any distress that drives us to destroy the environment in our attempts to escape from never-ending feelings of needing more resource.