The regenerative impulse of life
Regeneration is neither a new trend nor a new concept. She is the impulse of life itself — to renew, to heal, to relate, to learn. She is the force through which life creates conditions that make more life possible.
She has been alive in everything since the beginning: In the green of spring after winter. In the forest that draws new strength from rotten wood. In people, who blossom anew after fractures. Civilisations tend to crumble under their own weight only to create space for new social forms and worldviews.
The power of regeneration is also within us. Deeply rooted. In every cell, every organ, in our bones, our skin, our hair, in our resilience and ability to reinvent ourselves, express our essence and evolve.
We were never rulers over Nature, but always an expression of her magnificent diversity. We were brought up to believe that we stand outside of nature — as observers, planners, controllers. But life cannot be managed. It needs to be lived, embodied, expressed and respected.
As individuals or species we are but temporary fruit bodies popping up from the mycelium of eternal life for a limited period of time, yet we are simultaneously preciously unique expressions — emergent properties — of that dynamic living process. Death, collapse, and dissolution are the pregnant, fertile ground that feeds the eternal regeneration of life.
For most of our evolutionary history, we were regenerative expressions of the ecosystems in which we lived. Our species evolutionary survival pattern has been one of ‘bioregioning’ — of regenerative cultures as elegant expressions of the bio-cultural uniqueness of place.
The way forward is the way back to life, back to a place we love and cherish together. It is the way home. Cultural regeneration requires remembering that health does not begin in the lab, but in the compost, in relationships, in the way we care for a place. Regeneration is less about saving the world and more about understanding our role in it again — our relatedness to life.
Regeneration is a disposition of the heart, an attitude towards the community of life that asks: What serves life — in me, around me, through me?
When we begin to create from this attitude — our work, our economic activity, our decisions — then change happens. Not because we control everything. But because we participate more consciously in life as a local, regional and planetary community. Serving the community of life is the most effective way to serve ourselves and others.
