the potency of rebirth
Great disasters and impossible tasks can provoke hidden resources and help reveal the underlying wholeness and unity of life.
~ Michael Meade
Ah, rebirth. She has a knack for sauntering into the party unannounced + uninvited, angling that godforsaken mirror to reveal all we did our darnedest to overlook. She is promise of a thousand new worlds, and where certainty goes to die. She is beautiful + bountiful.
But before that, she is compost.
In the final days of February, prior to our acquaintance with a flood of biblical proportion, we are already flooded in. School is canned, along with the weekend plans and outside my kids boogie board on grass puddles in the pissing-down rain. They giggle + skid + scream like tiny lunatics. I watch them amusedly, noticing the puddles are a little bigger today. Soon enough, the puddles expand to a shallow moat, encroaching on the house and lapping at the door jambs.
The clouds darken, the rain intensifies, and the kids file inside like wet rats. Outside, it is as if a monsoon has arrived directly above us, relentlessly and torrentially drenching everything in sight.
In the early hours, we startle awake. Incessant rain beats the roof, as if murdering it dead. The house is filled with puddles. We mop + sweep out the water and dig more trenches outside. Before returning to bed, I check the weather to prepare for whatever shit-sandwich is forecast for tomorrow.
And shit-sandwich, it most certainly is.
Eleven severe flood warnings for our village.
Evacuation notices for each of our neighbouring towns.
Lismore Levy predicted to surpass by two metres.
Here, on a freshly mopped floor at 4am, I don’t have words for any of this. There is nothing to do but crawl back into bed with heavy eyelids + this newfound sinking feeling, and pray.
When it is light enough to see, the world is water. The houses up our dirt road are islands, all access points underwater. The idyllic creek that once bubbled along beside our house is now a raging, grade 5 white-water rafting situation. Trees + debris sweep down the new brown river like they are twigs. You dare not dip a toe.
Power out. Phones out. Internet down.
For now, and for the hours and days to pass, we know nothing of the outside world, and it knows nothing of us.
When the waters finally recede enough to drive across the nearest causeway, we don’t get far. The main bridge to town sports an impressive + impassable gap, metres wide. My stomach flips at the sight - it is the first indication of how bad things are out there.
On the other side of the bridge, people shake their heads in disbelief at the ruins. They call out to us. Do we know such-and-such + if they are alright? Do we need fuel, food, supplies?
And it suddenly dawns on us, how very little we do know.
At the bridge, a man is stationed in his tinny, in case anyone urgently needs to get out. We talk for a bit. He tells me that on the night of the storm, he had never seen so many boats out. Everyone was warned to stay at home; that it was too dangerous to go out in that weather. But everyone went anyway; manoeuvring their vessels through roads + farms + debris in the wildest of rain in rising waters in the hope of helping whoever they could.
I shiver.
Because when things get bad - this is what people do.
In the days that unfold, the microcosm of the valley blooms. Those most acquainted with addresses + landscapes + names of the community become our go-to people. People hike down from the hills, wearing babies on their backs + muddied gumboots, seeking news + supplies + help. The general store is suddenly a hub of volunteers, supplies, information + home to a handwritten headcount register.
The earth here has been violently rearranged. There are landslides + sinkholes + houses, flattened. Giant rocks rolled into new territory like marbles. Cars, buried. Roads, gone. The gentle, fertile crystal-clear waterways that had bathed + nurtured us over the years now morphed into wrecking balls, fracturing the earth and crushing everything in its path.
Hour-by-hour, story-by-story, the magnitude of the mess unfolds.
And curiously, no one is waiting for salvation. In fact, in the aftermath of destruction and in the absence of emergency (or any) services, a new way of living emerges entirely on its own. Whether we like it or not, we are forced into localism. The valley suddenly feels like rural India. Or the eighties. Kids bounce around in the back of utes. People hike on foot to check on their friends. We get weather updates from the car radio. We leave notes for one another and look after each other’s kids. We offer our skills. We gift food to one another. Every action is purposeful and well-intended. Care is rampant.
Regardless of the shitty circumstances… community thrives.
For my entire life, I have had it rammed down my throat that humans require heavy-handed hierarchy + rules + systems, or else order and peace will simply go to hell. It is the colonised way, the functionality of war. Yet these very same systems repeatedly override humanity, compassion and logic and are rooted in fear + control.
But here in the valley, in the absence of ALL structure, a new natural order unfolds. People efficiently + successfully organise themselves and situations. No greed, power struggles or chaos. No hierarchy. Just a bunch of incredibly resourceful, creative + generous humans who - in the face of a fuck-ton of adversity, very limited resources and zero planning - are collaborative, efficient and solution-focussed.
I recall how over the past couple of years we had all been praying for more unity, sovereignty, acceptance + gratitude. And here, in this particular place, at this particular time - we no longer needed to pray for these things. The focus shifted overnight from “who is wrong or right?” to “who needs help?”
Amidst the shock + trauma + mud is a remembering of what matters.
I’m not quite sure when or how we would have ever had a chance to live independently of the social structures we’ve all become so enmeshed in. But after witnessing and participating in a community that is united, connected and cared for at the worst of times, I’m not simply hopeful that a better way is possible - I am certain of it.
We’ve seen some shit this year in the Northern Rivers. We’ve endured months of rain, major flood events, turmoil + heartbreak + loss, the ruin of our homes, towns + livelihoods and environmental destruction - all of which is still yet to fully heal. We are forever changed; bound by the hours + stories that we’ve shared, humbled + graced by the goodness of humanity and held by the love of community when it counted.
Tragedy + disaster do not kill the human spirit, they strengthen it.
Rebirth is ash + worms + rotted manure in all its stink and fester. But it is as necessary for growth as the warm sun and the gentle rain. The rose needs ALL of it to bloom into full potency.
And these are potent times.
❤️
