World Peace and The Pact of Nature

Por: Janette Ayachi

Global Poetic Celebration of Peace

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos
                                                                                              I Ching

When we begin with the idea of world peace, where do we start, especially when the concept has never been wholly achieved, not that I don't doubt its imminent arrival because as a poet more than most I have hope and faith, this is why a poet writes; for hope, faith and healing for a better future.  Some say to define our future we must recapture the past, and I do feel within me deeply the call of my ancestors, of the land and the interconnectedness of all things in life's glorious cyclical nature. But time is not linear, and in some magical cultures like the Andeans, the past, the present and the future can all happen at the same moment, so the past is still alive and can be affected by what's going on in the present, it can get transformed. In some Peruvian ancient artefacts, we see the dead raised, dressed as mummy's and brought into ceremonies to celebrate this.  I have heard from the people who close their ears to poetry, who turn their heads away from the beauty of honouring cycles, they do not configure happy thoughts or positive vibes, so in response, their cells flare up unhappy in the body.  They barge with the concept that we as a human condition are not constitutionally able to save the planet, that we have not been able to deal with the pandemic, so what hope do we have to save the world?  But chaos first, then brilliance.

I am an advocate of believing it is living the old ways that’s key to healing communities. What I mean by that is learning to live in a state of presence. By looking at practices of culture – it could be art, dancing, or walking countryside - ‘my mind walks with my legs’ famously said Rousseau, and the mind is a remarkable thing, no earthly engineering could ever reconstruct a replication of its complex wiring and context.  We are capable of great manifestations with prayer, purpose and pulse.  All of those actions require a sense of being present.  When we are living in the present, we become more aware of our thought patterns and the inner chat that speaks to us. It is in this place of mindfulness that we can slowly begin to implement change.  Death is a celebration of new life and we are blessed with an environment of rich oceans, arid deserts and fertile valleys to harbour the process of both living and dying, from breath to bones and back again.  There is magic to this, a spell we all learn from birth, there is harmony to this; there is peace.

Nature is something that has always been present, it has been here before us, and will be here long after us, with shifts that we have seen marked and measured tectonically in rock: we are swimming in the squall of the Anthropocene.  The beauty of nature, much like parts of the human and animal body lies in its ability to regenerate, and we can assist in that process of renewal and recycling if we take time to care enough about our levels of consumption from the Earth's greatest giving of resources.  We are learning that this planetary basin is not limitless.  First, for any world peace and pact with nature, we must turn inwards and address the self to navigate a somewhat spiritual journey of betterment and development individually, so we can join forces into the global power of the human collective.  Inner peace creates world peace.

Peace bombs over war  zones
                  In the midst of chaos, why wouldn't we choose peace?  

I am a Universalist, the world is my country.  Yet, the Earth is not our domain, it's our responsibility.  Where do we belong anyway on a quantum nebulous scale of things except passing through on this journey for a momentary fleet of memory? When dabbling with the sorcery of science testing my genealogy I discovered that like most of us, my blood and DNA cells were a cross-pollination stemmed across great lands.  From Iberian to North African, Scottish to Baltic, Italian to Middle Eastern - I counted eight different nationalities I was seeded from and found this utterly remarkable.  We are tellurian tellers of many times and places vastly outstretched across the entire world.  We are all connected. There is a symphony in this, there is a serenity; there is peace.

The future of medicine is nature. The future of housing is nature. The future of Earth is nature.

Forming bonds with the spirits of the land;
                                   oceans can help us heal our relationships
                                                               mountains can lead us into deeper integrity and purpose.

The power of stories helps us transform, to work with the presence of being, of being present and navigating peace through the powers of self which then expels towards the other and into the divine communal union. If you imagine each lightworker igniting the torch within themselves, one by one across the map, a whole flood of illumination vibrates across the landscape.  One cannot even begin to imagine the soothing force on many created from one enlightened human who has made the pact to shake hands with nature, to the impact on the future, of nature both within the natural world and the nature of the self, combine these, and it is more beneficial than any government to radicalise change in our climate. The leaders negotiate change, but the people promote that navigation towards it, the people have the power to collaborate with mother earth, Gaia, Madre selva and spirit to make the right sacrifices to keep our planet whirling in not only health but total prosperity. 

The restorative and palliative qualities of hearing someone tell their story allows us as human beings to forge friendships and collectives - this is the epicentre of all movements in all countries over the entire stretch of time. Speaking the self invites the other to speak, thus a dialogue is entertained.  A lyric, a tale; if you can say something in a beautiful way, people will not forget the words.

I think the biggest shift into the late 21st century will be our human need for listening to a voice that is plugged directly into the internal, not just informative, but restorative, healing and inspiring.  

Nothing cures more, than to feel an emotion and be in touch with oneself, then hear someone else experiencing the same emotion reaching in to touch us; because we can lose touch so easily. Genealogy is a tracing of what we have already touched, gives storytelling continuity but adds an element of personal curiosity to the historical past.

The greatest storyteller is the one who has seen the most; travellers, bards, explorers and poets.  From word of mouth to spoken word, words have been handed down for generations keeping our notions of the self alive, by visiting and reinventing the language of the dead: we are implementing survival and respecting the cyclical nature of all things.  Similar to how whales carry themes in their songs to show us where they have been, we embody these messages as humans moving around the world too.

The body is responsive to nature, blood-flow, bone muscle all change and adapt in relation to our environment, all react to the touch of the immediate world around us. Speak to me in candle wax and stardust, collect bones and sing incantations.  Perception is a hypothesis which is always an expectation that builds up reception; to shut off our sensibilities to the Natural World or to be oblivious of extinction is to deny the Spirit of its life force and the body becomes imprinted with slow pace malformations; listening to the planet is contact healing for the universe.  We are eating extinction for energy and technology through invisible extractions. A lifestyle change will help, carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, it is a slow help, but it still helps nonetheless.  If we counterbalance within the scale of frequency and take a conscious role, we can raise the vibrations of the collective to activate peace, firstly by caring and sharing love.

We can make language harmonious or conflicted, ice-sculpting the sounds phonetically and transforming meaning with tricks of craft and technique, rhythm, metre or rhyme.  Poetry is a global art form and each language uses its own set of spices; imagine each culture creating one same dish, all with different ingredients depending on what nature gives them in their corner of the world, so each dish has its unique flair and taste.  Through the meal of translation, we can see that we are all human, we all have feelings, we all want peace.  Sharing compassion, sharing resources, we can course-correct on this track because deep down we all wish for peace and healing for humanity and our planet.

We are in a race between enlightenment and extinction at the moment, we must co-create with divinity in this dense dimension of reality on Earth.  Climate repair can only happen with a change in human behaviour, yes technology is the soundbar of the key technician but the self is the engineer of our collection of habits.  All great poems know more than the poets do, all profit comes from the ground, all change starts from the inside first.  Peace and bliss are found in the gaps between breath.  

Let’s wake up to the primal powers of the universe.  
                                                       We are united in verse.

Janette Ayachi (1982 -) she is a London-born Edinburgh-based Scottish-Algerian poet with a BA Combined Honours in English Literature and Film & Media from Stirling University, and an MSc in Creative Writing: Poetry from Edinburgh University.  She has been Digital Poet in Residence for The Poetry School London, and Visiting Poet on a Teaching Residency for the students of Arcadia University, Philadelphia.  She collaborates with artists; has been shortlisted for a few accolades, engages in numerous projects, performances, readings and exhibitions. Her film poems have been selected for screening at festivals and she was the founder and editor of the magazine The Undertow Review bringing art and poetry into a multidisciplinary forum. 

She is the author of poetry pamphlets Pauses at Zebra Crossings and A Choir of Ghosts, a hardback children's chapter book The Mermaid, The Girl and The Gondola illustrated by Fabio Perla in Italy. Her first full poetry collection Hand Over Mouth Music (published by Pavilion: University of Liverpool Press) won The Saltire Poetry Book of the Year Literary Award 2019. She is currently working on her second poetry collection QuickFire, Slow Burning’ and Lonerlust, a nonfiction narrative about desire and travelling alone searching connections between landscapes, culture and human connection.

Published on 20.02.2022