The Fierce Green Fire and the Heart of the Cosmos

Chris Nichols

I love the story about the awakening consciousness of Aldo Leopold. He was an environmentalist at a time when that meant shooting wolves to preserve deer. He took aim, shot a wolf, and arrived to view his kill in time to see life flickering to an end:

"... we reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes ... I realised then that there was something new to me in those eyes...I had thought that fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."

As I was writing this article, my dear friend and close colleague Dr Chris Seeley died, after a year-long illness. In celebration of her work, which touched the lives of so many people, candles blazed for her on that clear December night in Argentina and Brazil, in every corner of Europe, from Syria to Senegal to South Africa, and across the Middle East to New Zealand.

So many lives were touched by her so deeply because the creativity that ran through every aspect of her being set everyone around her ablaze.

So I am writing on behalf of both of us, about what inspired the work we did together and separately.

Chris Seeley and I co-facilitated the Ashridge MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility, as well as many short courses and workshops at Schumacher College and Hawkwood.

Our work was always to be in service of fierce green fire of life, in every place and context possible.

When I do such work today, I am doing the work of the wolf and the mountain, in service of the cosmos of which all of this is an integral part.

Creativity is at the heart of all such work because creativity is at the heart of the cosmos. The Universe Story is above all a story of creative power – the unending story of energy making and remaking itself.

Creativity is the flame at the heart of the Universe: the spark in the eye of the wolf, the spark that blazes in you and in me.

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