I’m fasting today as a way to reflect on time as something that moves forward into the future. And time in another sense as made of dates like the first days of each month that punctuate an awareness of time moving forward. Ticking clocks and the pretense of normalcy even with epic, epochal droughts and snowfall and windspeeds, and walls of ice smashing into seas and weather records continually broken and storm and flood deaths little reported in the rich world. There’s massive extinctions and struggling agriculture and many peoples finding their homes and ways of living increasingly impossible. We are humans of the Anthropocene (and here is the best thing I’ve ever read on that topic). My fast is a personal act to keep me grounded in this truth, as I figure out my existential relationship to it all.
Other fasters are honouring the dead in the Philippines, a year on from Typhoon Haiyan. I’ve been very moved by Climate Walk.
Others are hoping to be a body of people putting some kind of political pressure on the current round of UN talks beginning in Lima to make the whole thing meaningful, and actually ambitious, let alone visionary, rather than pathetically lame.
My fast today will be a private meditation that I’m sharing with whoever lands on this site. It’s a way I can personally maintain my dedication towards being a) outspoken b) speaking at all in every day contexts like a blog about the climate crisis when really the norm is silence and c) my intention to consider this crisis in all my choices, actions and demands.
If you are new to Kitchen Counter Culture, here’s the first piece I wrote in a continuing thread about why I find the Fast for the Climate meaningful.
Kitchen Counter Culture 