As I am putting the final touches to this blog, southeastern Australia is ablaze with unprecedented bushfire activity, a direct result of climate change and anthropogenic global warming. Sitting in Vancouver in front of my TV, transfixed by the horror unfolding in my adopted country, I imagine a modification of the “Bless this Road” approach that might be used as a healing model for those who have been shocked, broken, dispossessed, injured, made homeless and forever traumatized by the horror of the bushfires in Australia. I imagine “Bless this Fire” emerging as a model for healing — of individuals, families, friends — and communities. And I offer our healing model in the fervent hope that someone in Australia might take it up and develop it to suit the bushfire crisis.

 

Millions of humans are being affected by this tragedy. Billions of other precious lives have been lost. Some species may never recover. Using some of the Deep Ecology activism approaches and rituals provided in this blog and this book and combining them with the approaches in the “Bless this Road” model, we might have a model that could be taken forward for healing trauma in Australian communities affected by bushfires.