Our Sacrificial Journey

Photo: Solveig Larsen

(A short bogpiece this week)

If our species is to survival its sojourn here on this planet then we will need to make some sacrifices.  Already there are indications that a number of environmental tipping points have already been surpassed, or at least are looming.

Furthermore, our efforts to reduce the likelihood of tipping into collapse are insufficient, too little, too late, and of an untenable kind.  We are putting our faith in technology and the possibility of new scientific breakthroughs.  More rooftop solar panels, shifting to hybrid cars, or carbon capture and storage technologies, will not prevent these tipping points being exceeded.

Nothing less than a dramatic reduction in consumption (primarily in the western-styled, rich, nations) will do it. 

We can’t afford to keep adding new technology.  We must stop what we are doing.

We must sacrifice.

But, I hear the shouts, that means giving something up, it means denying myself, it means going without.  It does mean that if that is the way that sacrifice is interpreted.  Our western-styled culture tells us that this is what sacrifice means. 

What if sacrifice means something different, what if the word (and the behaviour) is interpreted differently?  What if sacrifice suggested gaining something, finding something of worth?

Let’s break the word down.  Sacrifice comes to us via Latin and even further back.  The first half of the word has a meaning of; sanctify, set apart, holy.  The second part arrives from the Latin word facere, from which we get the verb to fashion, also meaning to make, to do.

Thus, when we peer into the fires that gave us this word, sacrifice means to fashion what is sacred, to make holy, to sanctify.

When we sacrifice with this understanding we come closer to our true selves, to who we really are.  Our sacrifice takes us on a journey towards our divine, towards a deeper connection with Mother Earth.

This is the sacrificial journey we must make.