Spring is Coming

The world seems to be waiting for Spring right now in oh so many ways. It is Winter and it is cold and in some places it is really, really cold. Here we have had hale, ferocious winds, thunder and lightning. But yet Spring is coming... Yesterday there was a flower seller in truro with Cornish Daffodils. I bought a bunch of ten for 65p and they are now on my mantle piece opening in the warmth. Spring comes here first in the UK, well after it hits the Scilly Isles of our coast. If Spring is coming here then it will certainly arrive elsewhere to, even if they are in the midst of blizzards, the sun has started to win.

Spring is coming to the states as well. Powerful magic of change. I don't ever remember a new president being greeted with such excitement. The way people campaigned quietly to get him into power with icons on their blogs. Reya in Washington DC gives a fantastic sense of the way this energy is developing in her blog. For someone not in the states, it is this sort of thing that really helps us understand how people feel but it is this blog called Quaker Pagan Reflections that explained it. May Barack help bring in a new Summer for the world.

The world sorely needs Spring to come right now. Even the western world feels strapped for cash right now. The knock on affects on the poorest countries havn't much been talked about, but they have to be there. We have all seen the shops closing and heard of people losing their jobs, even if it hasn't really started to hurt us personaly yet. What worries me is it is all the independent companies that are going first. I don't want to see a world where multi-nationals own everything, where Tesco is pretty much the only place to buy food. I guess everybody is pulling in their belts right now, which makes it even more important where we spend what we have. Reconciling the two is hard...

I would love to think that times like this encourage a grey market where people do for themselves and trade with others. Be it spare produce from the garden or help building an extension. Only it seems to me that this might not be in the interests of the governments as it is hard to tax and shows little profit. It also hurts the multinationals with which they hold hands so often. There is much legislation that actively hurts small independent producers. I have read about new US safety legislation that will but makers of hand made toys out of business. I have read about people selling produce via honesty tins on their road being sent letters pointing out that they are failing to meet weights and measures legislation in the UK.

Seems to me that the people we need protecting from are less those small producers in our own communities but the large ruthless companies who are target and profit driven. It is after all the target and profit driven attitude that put us in this recession after all... I hope this current economic climate is a winter that will lead to a true Spring and Summer.

There is so much out there about a turning of the world, 2012 theories... I am unsure what to think of these but I do hope that we take this opportunity to change our world for the better because the entire world hangs in the balance right now. Juniper had a nice comment on her blog she wants the world to learn that money doesn't grow on trees, food does. Our obsession with money and gold does nothing but harm and we are killing the world around us. Gold mining itself has a horrendous effect on the environment.

We have to hope that the sun does indeed rise on the world and Summer comes. That Barack soming to power is a sign that spring is coming in the same way that my daffodils are. I choose to believe this.