In my own words — reflections on women, climate change, peace and security

#2 Broadening our beam of compassion

Continuing my series of articles based on my writing and speaking notes across many years of women-led (but not always women only) advocacy on peace, human rights and environmental issues with A Chorus of Women and the Women's Climate Congress , this article picks up on a theme of compassion, which has been bubbling around for me over the past few weeks.

At the end of February, I was a speaker on a webinar with the Global Compassion Coalition about barriers to action on climate change. And last week I was priveleged to speak on Zoom with Jennifer Nadel FRSA , the co-founder and Director of Compassion in Politics , and initiator of an All Party Group for Compassionate Politics in the UK Parliament, which was launched in March 2020 and now has some 100 members.

Then today, with friends from A Chorus of Women , I attended and sang at the annual Palm Sunday refugee rally in Canberra – calling for justice and dignity to be shown towards refugees in Australia. The first speaker referred to 'widening our compassion'. All this led me back to a short talk I gave in November 2016, not long after Donald Trump was elected President in the US. it was part of a presentation by A Chorus of Women called Singing Regeneration. This was before 'regeneration' had come so strongly into the language around climte change and environmental issues, but it had long been an important theme for Chorus – who had been singing up the ongoing cycles of life from birth to death and renewal since 2003. This event combined personal reflections and music on the laws of regeneration, regenerating humanity and regenerating the Earth. My speaking role was to introduce 3 songs in a bracket for 'Regenerating the Earth'.

In my own words (lightly edited), here is what I said:

"Not long after joining Chorus in 2006, I went to a talk by Michael Soule (1936-2020), a visonary American environmental scientist who is credited as being the founder of the modern discipline of conservation biology. He said that many people take up the cause of one of three big movements:

• human rights and peace
• environmental protection
• animal rights

... and throw all their energy and passion behind their chosen area. But these areas of concern can conflict with one another (eg animal rights activists can sometimes be in conflict with environmentalists, or human rights activists, and so on).

He said that we should all ‘broaden our beam of compassion’. This expression had a big impact on me and has stayed with me ever since.

On the day after the 2016 US presidential election [when Donald Trump was elected] Brian Rusch, a US citizen and the Executive Director of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation wrote an article in the Huffington Post titled 'The day after: healing through ubuntu'. Ubuntu is the South African concept that was one of the guiding principles for Nelson Mandela’s prime ministership of South Africa.

In his article, Brian Rusch wrote about how he, like many of us, has a sense that he doesn’t know anyone who voted for the 'other side' of politics to himself. People on the other side feel the same. It is as if we live in two separate realities – worlds that might appear to be the same, but where we have different life experiences, interact with different people, and for the most part, have different priorities for what we want out of life. The exception can be within our own families ('We love Uncle Fred. He votes for XXX, so we don't talk about politics when he is around!')

Johanna McBride [who directs the music for Chorus] attended a peace conference in Europe in 2004 and heard Desmond Tutu speak about the African philosophy of ubuntu. She wrote the meaning of this philosophy into a song with the words ‘I am who I am because of you. We are who we are because of each other.’ From the moment that I heard this song and read up about ubuntu, this idea resonated with me. Instead of feeling angry and bitter about all the people who have different views to us, ubuntu reminds us to look for how our different positions are both reflections of one reality. In the US, and elsewhere in world, the different priorities of voters has been intensified by increasing inequalities in wealth that have severely affected people’s chances in life. Listening to each other’s stories can reveal that we have more in common than we think.

In recent years, Desmond Tutu has expanded the concept of ubuntu to ‘eco-ubuntu’ – recognising our interdependence with the whole living Earth. Human issues such as peace, refugees, poverty alleviation, Indigenous land rights and so on are interdependent with environmental issues such as animal welfare, land degradation, deforestation, climate change etc. 'Peace on Earth' and 'Peace with the Earth' are two sides of the same coin. In other words, as Michael Soule had said, we should broaden our beam of compassion.

How can singing help? In 2007, Chorus studied some of the essays of Australian poet Judith Wright about science and the arts in preparation for a musical and theatrical Science Week presentation about climate change called On the Edge of Silence. Judith Wright said:

'Conservationists, with the world’s most urgent battle on their hands, must begin to enlist not only rational recognition of the problem, but human concern, distress and love.'

'This seems to me the great chance for poetry, and for a reversal of the otherwise relentless processes of destruction which threaten us, and the world around us.'

'The risk is that time is so short and the opposing forces are so strong; the abyss is terribly near and terribly tempting. And the choice of real responsibility and real understanding is a fearsome prospect.'

Following this same theme, Julianne Schultz of the Griffith Review wrote in an article in The Conversation called ‘Trump’s win shows how vital the arts and humanities are’. She quoted the American novelist Toni Morrision who apparently said after the Trump election victory:

‘This is precisely the time when artists go to work, there is no time for despair, no place for self pity, no need for silence, no room for fear, we speak, we write we do language, that is how civilisations heal.’

In our family lives, most of us love and care for one another other unconditionally, even when we have different views. We nurture each new generation and ourselves physically through the preparing and sharing of food, clothing and shelter, and spiritually through stories, poetry, art and music. We look after our homes so that they are beautiful and safe places to live.

But in our public politics these healthy connections seem to get sidetracked. At the national and international scales, we do not look after each other or our planet home, and our cultural and spiritual lives are often diminished by economic considerations. Our Regeneration project is about shifting political decision making away from a short term economic frame, to one that takes a longer term, intergenerational view that nurtures life.

Our cycle of songs in this bracket starts with 'Lament for Gaia' a lament for the Earth which is dying under the influence of humans who have not respected the laws of nature. As is usually the case, this act of lament starts the process of regeneration and renewal and in the second song, 'The Promise', humans make a promise to the spirits of the Earth that they will live in harmony with nature. The final song, 'Hymn to Gaia' is a timeless expression of praise for the wonder and bounty of mother nature that comes when we accept our interdependence and respect her laws."

See the full program from this 2016 Singing Regeneration event for further details of these 3 songs – all composed by Glenda Cloughley (1952-2023) – and other songs presented at the event.