I really meant this. I felt myself drawn into tweetdom, reading others tweets, scanning articles referenced by folks I'm following. I could feel myself being sucked into this new universe and away from the one I love, nature.
As evidence of this sucking process my morning walk did not occur until 2pm. A few blocks from home, I noticed a bird singing its heart out it seemed just to me in a nearby tree. I stopped. I love bird song, but there was something different in this experience. I could literally feel the vibration of notes stirring my heart, moving in my chest. I noticed this feeling and thought of my prior tweet and this bird's melody being felt by me.
Then this morning I awoke to an email regarding the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. The link reported that 10,000 words many related to nature like dandelion, heron, acorn, lavender, wren, and willow were being replaced with BlackBerry, voicemail, celebrity and database etc.
An official with Oxford University Press said changes in the world are responsible for changes in the book. This person was quoted as saying, “When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance. That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed.”
Excuse me !!!!Don't get me wrong. I am all for inventiveness. We need a ton of that right now to deal with the Gulf and so many things. Thanks to the spirit of discovery we've homes. We've America, airplanes, this medium through which we're communicating.
Yet just as we have the above gifts or blessings, without awareness and balance, every invention or discovery has a downside, a potential curse. Ask the original Americans, the Natives. Look at the Gulf of Mexico or into our bodies filled with chemicals sprayed onto our crops and lawns. Yes, the environment has changed because we have forgotten. When we forget the relational, our interconnectedness everyone is impacted.
But wait !!!!
What if the words omitted from a dictionary allow us, the adults, to remember! To remember that we are walking dictionaries of explanation and exploration, with capacities to teach children how to touch the earth, appreciating flowers like dandelion, poppy and buttercup and recognize their patterns which are foundational for all our inventions. What if words omitted from this dictionary allowed us to teach children about the messages offered by the animals, leopard, doe and wren and their traits as well as the vibration of our interconnectedness like I felt with the bird! What if not seeing cauliflower or melon in print allows us to teach children what cauliflower and melon are and the magic of creation from a tiny seed in dark soil. What if the fact that monk and nun, two of the omitted words, teaches us to honor our inner monks and nuns and we in turn teach our children for monks and nuns in centuries past listened, tended and nurtured the mysteries of Spirit and Creator's creation - Nature!
What beauty! In the absence of words, we become the teachers sharing the messages and experiences of our first teachers, the birds, the animals and plants! And we in turn are taught as children help us remember our senses and Experience at a deeper level than a word on paper or a computer screen!
It is time to come to our senses! Let's discover a society and story that holds both, BlackBerries and blackberries as well as the computer tweets of two legged friends and the sweet song of our feathered friends. Let's hold the new and the old with awareness and balance. Please live this shift with me!
-Dawn! the Good News Muse at imaginetheshift.com 1 July 2010
Click HERE for the link to the story on the new edition dictionary referenced.
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