Across the Wide Universe

Practice of the Week
Across the Wide Universe

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, abridged and adapted

The ancients had it easy. To them, the heavens offered guidance for the future and hinted at the will of the gods. The sky told stories of tricksters, heroes, and magical beasts. The sky was an open book, put there to be read and interpreted. It all spun around us, put there just so for our benefit. Comforting, isn't it?

In relation to our galaxy, the Milky Way, we are definitely not in the middle of things. Our sun, which is no different than any other ordinary middle-aged star, is located far out on one of the spiral arms of the galaxy, a sort of galactic backwater in a rather hum-drum neighborhood of stars, with nothing particularly exceptional nearby.

It all began back with the Big Bang – what Brian Swimme calls the Primordial Flaring Forth, and Connie Barlow calls the Great Radiance. This event is the common thread that connects our planet, sun, and solar system with the rest of what's out there. Ultimately, not only are we kin to every living thing that shares our Earth, we are also kin to nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies.

“There was no place in the universe that was separate from the originating power of the universe. Each thing of the universe had its very roots in this realm. Even space-time itself was a tossing, churning, foaming out of the original reality, instant by instant. Each of the sextillion particles that foamed into existence had its root in this quantum vacuum, this originating reality.” (Brian Swimme, The Universe Story)

Our brains are not wired to comprehend what's out there in the wide open spaces -- the vastness of it all and our own insignificance. The Earth is an atom in the grain of sand that is our galaxy, on the beach that is the universe. We are a snowflake on Everest, or a raindrop in a thousand oceans. We are very, very small.

And consider those breathtaking images of galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters from the Hubble space telescope. They are so far away that we don't even see them as they are today. The light from them has taken millions of years to reach us. When we look through our lenses, we look into the distant past, seeing the galaxies as they were when that light began its journey through space. Even light from the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, takes approximately four years to reach us. If it exploded into a supernova tomorrow, we would not know it for four years.

We're still here, on the same precious, blue-green gem we've always lived on. We're still spinning around the sun once a year. We may have lost our inflated ego, but we've gained, one hopes, some understanding, perspective, and awe.

We can use this newfound understanding about the immensity of it all and the unity of its common origin to recapture some of the wonder that tends to get lost in our technological age. We can reconnect with the wide-eyed awe that is our birthright as conscious beings. We aren't the center of the universe in the way that we thought before, but we are a part of something so much bigger than we are, something far beyond our petty differences and divisions.

Practices

1. Sky Watch. Go out on a clear night with no moon, as far away from city lights as possible. Forget star charts, constellation wheels, binoculars, and telescopes. Don't think too much. Just look. Lie down on a blanket on the ground and gaze into the velvet blackness. Imagine entire galaxies with millions of stars, gathered into clusters of their own. Imagine it all expanding, growing, and pushing out into forever. Imagine that you are suspended in space, and the entire sky is below you. Fall into the ocean of the infinite.

2. Hubble's Gifts. Search out some images taken by the Hubble space telescope. Look at these as you would look at works of art in a museum. Select a couple images as your favorites. Unlike the ancients, who looked for specific messages from the sky, you can create meaning for yourself by relating to the images on your own terms. Write in your journal about the experience.

3. Drop in the Ocean. Fill a small bottle with water and take it to the largest body of water near you: a lake, river, or, ideally, an ocean. Mindfully, imagine one molecule of water within your bottle. Picture it in your mind, glowing blue-green and beautiful. Now add one drop to the lake, river, or ocean. Sit nearby, and meditate for a few minutes on the tiny drop now drifting in the larger body of water, and that beautiful molecule you imagined drifting out with it. Follow its journey in your imagination. Where does it go? Now, mentally make the leap and see the molecule as the Earth, floating in the ocean of the universe. Allow your mind to play with that image for a while.

Group Activities

Star Party. This is simply the “Sky Watch” practice described above, on a larger scale. Choose a night when the moon is new or nearly so. Bring blankets, drinks, and snacks. Open up, and share your sense of wonder with others in the group.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• What are some other metaphors or analogies that could describe our place or size in the universe?
• How do you feel when you consider the vastness of the heavens? What emotions does the experience of staring at the night sky evoke in you?
• So, what is the meaning of it all? Is there a meaning to existence? Do we create meaning for ourselves, or are there greater forces at work? Does it matter?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Deep Time Journeys

Practice of the Week
Deep Time Journeys

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, abridged and adapted

To cultivate a healthy sense of perspective, try contemplating deep time. The Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years. Human brains aren’t wired to grasp such vast stretches of time. We try analogies: if the Earth’s timeline were a football field with one goal line representing the formation of earth and the other representing the present, the emergence of humanity would be about an inch from present. Or: if the history of Earth were condensed to a single year, each day would represent over 12 million years. Life first appeared about Mar 22; nucleated cells on Jun 19; multicellular animals on Nov 12. Sharks appeared on Nov 26. Dinosaurs roamed from Dec 12-26. Homo habilis appeared on Dec 31, just after 6:30pm; Homo erectus at 8:20pm. Anatomically modern humans first appeared at 11:45pm on Dec 31 – only the last 15 minutes of earth’s “year.”

Our arrival on Earth was quite sudden when considered from the perspective of the Earth itself. It is as though Gaia blinked, and suddenly found all of us here! But blink again, and we will pass like smoke on the breeze. Life, and the Earth, will go on without us. This realization can have a profound impact on how we view ourselves as a species. Our 15-minute-old species won’t make it another minute (8,500 years) with our contemporary lifestyle.

Many other species will probably leave along with us, mostly those who, like us, came along on New Year’s Eve: the blue whale, Siberian tiger, and mountain gorilla. The truly enduring life forms, our single-celled siblings, will continue happily into the next year without us.

Reflecting that our time on this Earth has been so brief – and the time remaining even briefer – may be uncomfortable. Yet it may also be comforting. We are part of a story much greater than our own, the grand story of life itself.

“We are one of perhaps 30 million species on the planet today, and countless millions that have gone before. ... We are called to acknowledge our dependency on the web of life both for our subsistence and for countless aesthetic experiences: spring birdsong, swelling tree buds, the dizzy smell of honeysuckle. We are called to acknowledge that which we are not: we cannot survive in a deep-sea vent, or fix nitrogen, or create a forest canopy, or soar 300 feet in the air and then catch a mouse in a spectacular nosedive.” (Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature)

This story is indeed so much bigger than our one species, and yet our story is inextricable from the story. Looking through the lens of deep time, we can see humanity more clearly as a precious and rare spark of Earth's self-awareness. We are of the Earth and are the Earth, suddenly and fleetingly self-aware. Ours is an ultrasocial species of great cognitive and emotional complexity and adaptability – perhaps some future species will equal or exceed us in these regards.

Practices

1. Deep Time Altar. Clear your altar of items, then place upon it symbols of the Earth as it existed before humans. For example, stones can symbolize mountains or tectonic plates. A leaf, pinecone, or flower can symbolize the plant kingdom, which has flourished on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. A feather or figurine of an animal might represent animal life. A small bowl of water can stand for ancient seas. Be creative. When you've completed the altar, sit with it and ponder your place in this grand epoch of life.

2. Deep Time Meditation. Visit a museum of geology or natural history, and approach the exhibits with a contemplative mindset. Engage your spirit as well as your brain. Wander the exhibits of fossils or rocks slowly and mindfully. At the various displays, imagine the world as it was when the that rock or fossil was formed. Imagine witnessing the living creature, or simply the landscape. Bring your journal and write either poetry or prose to help you reflect on the experience. Sketching or drawing may also helpful.

Group Activities

Deep Time Ceremony. In a long hallway or outdoors, measure out a fifty-foot line, representing the approximately 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. On this scale, 10 feet represent a billion years, a foot represents 100 million years, and an inch represents a little over 8 million years. Designate one end of the line as representing the formation of the Earth and the other as representing the present. Mark the following major events on the line, adding others as you like:

• 3.5 bya (billion years ago): earliest life appears in the oceans
• 3.25 bya: photosynthesis
• 1.9 bya: first cells with a nucleus
• 600 mya (million years ago): first multicelled organisms
• 500 mya: earliest land plants
• 245 mya: age of dinosaurs begins
• 65 mya: age of dinosaurs ends with asteroid impact
• 3.5 mya: earliest proto-humans
• 130 kya (thousand years ago): modern humans
• 10 kya: earliest human civilizations, recorded history begins.

What you decide to do from here is up to your group's unique creative process. You might have each member walk the timeline as a contemplative meditation – perhaps with another person reading aloud each milestone along the line as they walk. Create poetry, songs, and/or stories to celebrate each point on the line. Another possibility would be to position people at events along the line. Walk from the beginning to the present, pausing at each person to hear them describe the significance of the event.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• How long do you think humanity will endure? What factors might influence this?
• Does the process of contemplating deep time change the way you think about humanity? About non-human species?
• How does the deep time story differ from other creation stories you may have heard as a child?
• Consider the concept of ownership in light of deep time. Does it change? If so, how?

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PRACTICES INDEX

The Vending Machine God

Practice of the Week
The Vending Machine God

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, abridged and adapted

The "gospel of health and wealth" declares that God wanted people to have the big house, car, boat, or whatever, and to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. It’s is based on an old idea: that wealth is a sign of God's favor—and that the poor deserve to be poor. Never mind that it stood the core teachings of the Jewish and Christian scriptures on their head.

In “How Much Is Enough?" (HERE), we looked at concepts of status. Underlying the surface concepts of material status are more profound psychological beliefs that declare material things to be a source of deep contentment and life satisfaction. Whether or not we bought into the overt health and wealth gospel, it is not easy to let go of the paradigm of seeking contentment from material possessions. Especially since the turn of the twentieth century, advertisers have aggressively worked to convince us that we can find happiness and life satisfaction if only we purchase whatever they are selling. Since the early 1960s, they have used psychology in increasingly subtle ways, playing on our deepest longings for acceptance, love, inner peace, and contentment. It is impossible for us not to have absorbed at least some of this message. For working class people especially, the idea that wealth is a sign of God's blessing is particularly cruel. Fortunately, when we recognize the health and wealth gospel for what it is and bring it into our conscious minds, we can begin to let it go.

There are two aspects of faith in the Vending Machine God. The first aspect is believing in a health and wealth deity – i.e., an insert-prayers-get-stuff sort of God. This vision of God, along with consumerism as a whole, has been challenged by various groups who take seriously the social justice message of the ancient Hebrew prophets. One such group, Alternatives for Simple Living, issues publications confronting the excesses of holiday consumption and connecting voluntary simplicity with environmental causes.

The second aspect is more pervasive, and less obvious. It is the belief that deep satisfaction will come from the next purchase. The vending machine itself is the God. Endless pursuit of the next possession, experience, or situation to the exclusion of cultivating contentment in simple pleasures and grounding ourselves in the natural world is the adult version of being the kid at the vending machine. We chase illusions, oblivious to the utterly beautiful Earth on which we live. But the Earth is calling to us. It says: Let go, unlearn, come home.

Practices

1. Bookshelf Rethink. Sort through the various spiritual and self-help books you've accumulated over the years with an eye for what really resonates and what doesn't. Are there any health and wealth sorts of books in your collection? What do you recall about your life circumstances when you purchased or received them? Looking at them now, do they still have any value for you? After considering each book, ask yourself if there are any in the collection that you could let go of. Can they be given to charity? Maybe there's one that's so awful you want to send it straight to the trash. That's okay. It's entirely your choice.


2. Simplicity, Simplicity. Clear your altar of all decoration, and give it a good dusting. Look around your home at objects that might be suitable for placing on your altar. Choose one. Place it on the altar and simply sit and ponder it for a while. Consider the meaning that your object holds for you. What does it symbolize? Can you find several meanings to it? Leave it there for a week or so, and sit with it several times, pondering some more. See if other meanings come to light over time. After the week has passed, switch your object for another one and try the process again. Do not rush into switching objects, and do not purchase anything new for the exercise. Work only with what you have, and find or create meaning as you go.

3. Chart Your Journey. Take a sheet of plain white paper, and draw a horizontal line near the bottom of the page. Now, draw a vertical line up from the center of the horizontal one. On one end of the horizontal line, write the words spiritual confusion/frustration. On the other side, write spiritual contentment/peace. Now, starting at the bottom, where the horizontal line meets the vertical one, write your birth year. At the top of the vertical line, write the present year. Then draw a graph representing your own spiritual journey, marking a meaning line from the bottom to the top. The vertical line in the center represents a neutral state and the right and left edges represent opposite extremes. You'll probably end up with a wavy or zigzag sort of line that roughly shows the broad sweep of your spiritual life. Look at that broad sweep and consider your beliefs, practices, and life events. When were the times of greatest growth? They may have been the times of confusion and frustration. Reflect on the concepts of consumerism and materialism as you examine your graph. Consider whether there were times in your life when accumulating material things was very important to you. How do these times in your life relate to the spiritual aspects of your life?

Group Activities

Your Common Journey. Have each member of your group do the Chart Your Journey practice, above. Then gather together to share. You don't need to get into personal details unless you want to. Discuss any patterns you find

Questions for Group Conversation:

• How does the insert-prayer-get-stuff God fit with the overall zeitgeist of the twentieth century?
• Have you ever heard the message of any health and wealth preachers or advocates first hand? What was your reaction?
• Have you heard any spiritual teaching that struck you as psychologically manipulative? Did it utilize any health and wealth elements?
• Can simplicity also be a kind of abundance? How?

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PRACTICES INDEX

The Right to Live

Practice of the Week
The Right to Live

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, abridged and adapted

Autumn: colors change, days grow shorter and cooler, light and shadow shift. Acorns and leaves fall. Various critters prepare for winter, or depart for warmer places. Some die, leaving behind the next generation ensconced in eggs until spring. The annual rhythm follows the script it has followed since time immemorial.

We humans examine that script -- seek to grab it from Nature's hands and make some edits. We alter the scenery, rewrite the dialogue, enlarge the significance of our own roles. Full of bluster, we declare that we have a right to live -- how, when, and where we choose. Property rights enshrined in law give land owners rights to bulldoze forest to build subdivisions or strip malls. And the rights of the forest creatures? Our legal system scarcely contemplates such a thing.

Describing a logger from the 1800s who has discovered a new frontier, Susan Griffin writes,

"He is like a man in a dream who has discovered a treasure. He has come upon a forest untrod by human beings for hundreds of years…. In a trance, he makes figures. The numbers of the trees. Their size. Three to four million board feet for every forty acres, he whispers to himself. Centuries of growth. Centuries of rainfall. The very moisture of the air is golden…. By autumn, trees falling, moving upstream." (Woman and Nature)

There has been some shift in outlook. Today we are more likely to consider creatures that might be endangered, and the value of forests for recreation and even as a carbon sink to sequester greenhouse gases. Few of us would assign the forest existential rights. Thomas Berry is one of those few.

"So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, mountains have mountain rights. So too with the entire range of beings throughout the universe." (The Great Work)

Taking the concept a step further, James Lovelock considers the Earth itself as a living organism.

"From a Gaian viewpoint, all attempts to rationalize a subjugated biosphere with man in charge are as doomed to failure as the similar concept of benevolent colonialism." (Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth)

Our "Images of Earth" practice (SEE HERE) considered the idea of Earth as Self, rather than Other. This is true in the most literal sense possible. The recognition of it resides deep in our collective psyche, though thousands of years of Western culture teaches us otherwise.

The forest itself, considered as a collective, living whole, has a right to live out the patterns of its natural existence, to enact the script nature has written for it. It has earned this right by surviving, evolving unique adaptations, and creating a complex dynamic equilibrium.
The chipmunks, maple trees, and barred owls in the forest, and the forest ecosystem overall, have rights – not more rights than humans, but rights that obligate us to be cautious, take no more than we need to live, and approach the forests with reverence and humility. The right to simply exist is not exclusively a human birthright.

Practices

1. “Namaste” Practice. Take a mindful walk, as described in "Begin the Ecospiritual Path" (SEE HERE), but this time walk in a natural area such as a park or nature trail. As you walk, pause now and then, and have a “Namaste moment”: stand still, focus on the tree, flower, bird, cloud, or whatever aspect of nature holds meaning for you, bow, and whisper, “the holy in me bows to the holy in you” (a loose translation of the Hindu greeting "namaste.") Reflect that you and the object are both ultimately made of the same stuff—dancing together in infinite and beautiful combinations.

2. Loving-kindness Prayer. Start with yourself -- for example, “May I be healed and restored and live abundantly.” Then repeat, successively replacing “I” with the name of a loved one, the name of a difficult or challenging person in your life, “my friends and family,” “my community,” “my bioregion,” “my continent,” “the Earth and all beings.”

3. Journaling: Giving Voice to the Forest. If the forest could speak, what would it say? Would it see humans as an aspect of itself? Use your imagination, and allow the forest to introduce itself to you. Spend at least a half hour on this exercise. Write your experiences in your journal.

Group Activities

Re-Imagining the Earth as Primary. Thomas Berry said that the Earth is primary and the human is derivative. We have acted as if the opposite were true. For this exercise, divide into groups of four to five people. Have each small group imagine what sort of society would exist if we structured our legal system to reflect the Earth as primary and the human as derivative. What would such a society look life? How would our government, courts, and legal system be different? How would our educational system be different? How would we earn a living? Would our monetary systems be different? How? Spend at 30-45 minutes in small groups, working out the answers to these and other questions that come up in the course of discussion. Gather again as a large group, and share thoughts and ideas. Finally, reflect as a large group on what members needed to unlearn and let go of in order to imagine this society.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• What does it mean to have a right to live? Who has this right? Individual species or ecosystems? Human only or non-human?
• When the needs of human and non-human life conflict, should the human automatically prevail? How should we decide?
• Is there ever a time when we should give preference to the needs and rights of non-human life ahead of human life?
• What sort of attitudes must we unlearn if we are to consider the possibility of non-human life having existential rights?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Previous Ecospiritual Practice: Images of Earth

Images of Earth

Practice of the Week
Images of Earth

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, adapted, abridged

One of the most famous images of all time is the photo of the Earth taken by the Apollo astronauts. Hanging in the black void of space, the Earth looks fragile, precious. All human history has taken place on the delicate blue jewel suspended in nothingness. This realization strikes a chord in our collective consciousness and has been especially influential on the modern environmental movement.

While this view of Earth from a distance is a powerful image, it hasn’t changed how we think of our home planet. Instead, it is like a piece of art hanging in our mental gallery and mostly ignored. The dominant worldview is of Earth as an economic resource, divided by boundaries and borders. We may also understand Earth as provider, or even as mother, but the habit of regarding Earth as economic resource is never far from the surface. If we treated our human mothers the way we treat Mother Earth, we would be arrested for assault.

Even mainstream environmentalists argue that we must protect a certain habitat because someday we might find a cure for cancer there. Or that we should develop eco-tourism to help the local economy. While there isn’t anything inherently wrong about curing cancer or providing a livelihood for people who would otherwise be destitute, it reflects an underlying view that Earth’s value comes from its economic potential.

Conceptualizing the Earth in this way places Earth in the category of the Other -- something outside ourselves that exists for us. It is separate from us, and thus can be exploited for our purposes.

We not only see Earth as provider, but as limitless. We like to see ourselves as having limitless potential, able to achieve anything. It’s an unhealthy fantasy. Growth without limit is cancer. Everything has limits and recognizing them is desirable and necessary. In the 1970s, the idea of consciously choosing to limit economic growth for the sake of preserving the environment was briefly considered. Those who recall that era may remember President Carter installing solar panels on the White House roof and telling Americans to conserve energy, while setting an example by putting on sweaters and turning down the thermostat. Unfortunately, America subsequently embraced the idea of endless economic growth.

In a very literal sense, we are the Earth. Our bodies are made of the stuff of the Earth. The atoms and molecules that make up every part of us have been circulating around the biosphere since life began.

The Earth is us, and we are the Earth. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. By letting go of the Earth as Other paradigm, we make space for the possibility of Earth as Self. By un-learning the mindset of the Earth as an endless provider, we begin to form a healthy sense of our own boundaries and limits and learn to function within them. This mindset has been embraced by many indigenous cultures the world over for millennia. Rediscovering it may be the key to our survival.

Practices

1. Melting into the Earth. On a warm day, go outdoors to a quiet place where you can be undisturbed. Lie down directly on the Earth, flat on your back or on your stomach. Spread your arms wide. Breathe slowly and deeply, and spend a minute or two just relaxing. When you feel relaxed, imagine yourself as water soaking into the Earth. There is no separation between you and the ground beneath you. The cells of your body flow into and between the cells of the soil, merging into oneness. Allow yourself to experience this completely. After fifteen to twenty minutes, slowly come back to normal awareness.

2. Compost Blessing. Small-scale composting of your kitchen scraps into a vegetable garden is easy, and the ultimate in recycling. When you bring the compost out to the bin, bless it. Say a simple phrase, like “Blessings on your journey around the cycle of life,” or offer a prayer of your choosing. Visualize the compost breaking down into rich soil and nourishing next year’s tomatoes. Imagine yourself eating those tomatoes, realizing that the compost, the tomatoes, and you are all part of a greater whole.

3. Journaling: Earth as Mother. Write for at least 30 mins on the concept of Earth as mother. Some possible prompts:

• Consider yourself as a child of the Earth. What sort of child are you? Where are you in your development? What is your personal relationship to Earth, your mother?
• Broaden the focus. Answer the questions above with all of humanity as the child.
• If the Earth is our mother, what sort of mother is she? What stage of motherhood works for the image nowadays? Is she a young mother? Elderly? Pregnant?
• The mother-child relationship can also have a shadow side, dysfunctional and unhealthy. Is there a shadow side to the human-Earth relationship? What is it?

Group Activities

Culture Quest. Gather books or articles of indigenous creation myths from many cultures. Break into smaller groups of three to four, and have each group read a myth. Discuss in the small groups how the Earth is envisioned in the myth, and how this differs, or doesn’t, from the way we envision the Earth today. Consider the role of the human in each story. Come together again as a larger group and discuss the various images of Earth. Which story most resonated?

Questions for Group Conversation:

• How do indigenous concepts of the Earth as mother compare to modern or Western understandings of this idea?
• How does classifying something as Other affect how we think about it?
• The mainstream environmental movement often frames its arguments based on the idea of preserving the Earth as a resource for human use (for example, the possibility of discovering new medicines in the e4ndangered rainforest). Do you find this approach helpful or problematic? Why?
• Is it possible to assign economic value to all the Earth provides us? Would this be helpful or harmful?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Previous Ecospiritual Practice: The Problems of Progress

The Problems of Progress

Practice of the Week
The Problems of Progress

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, adapted, abridged

To one degree or another, we are all enamored with the technological accomplishments of the modern world. Centenarians living today grew up in a world where children routinely died of diseases, electricity and indoor plumbing were rare, and newspapers were the only news media. Progress has been amazing. Who knows what marvels the future will bring?

Yet there have been unintended consequences of all this progress. Bill McKibben writes in Eaarth that we are living on a new planet (which McKibben spells with two A’s). The new planet, Eaarth, is very different from the old Earth on which we were born and on which civilization emerged. Industrial civilization has unwittingly altered the very support systems upon which we all depend: the stable, predictable, self-regulating biosphere. The task before us is to learn how to live on this new, less friendly planet. So much for progress!

For most of human history, the Earth has been viewed by many people, but not all, as an inanimate resource without end, for us to exploit as we saw fit. According to Genesis, humans were placed on Earth to subdue it. And subdue it we have. The legacy of progress is not only moon landings, heart transplants, and the Internet but also mountaintop removal mining, oceanic dead zones, unpredictable climate, and depleted uranium. As Thomas Berry put it:

“We have created a technosphere incompatible with the biosphere.”

The path of un-learning is a path of letting go. We must let go of those things that no longer serve our highest good or that of the Earth (which are one and the same). One of the most critical concepts to abandon is the notion of unproblematic progress. We must ask some hard questions, and not turn away from unpleasant answers. We must approach new technologies with a “do no harm” ethic and consciously examine the role of technology in our own lives. In this respect, I love the Amish. They are one group that never quite bought into the propaganda of industrialized progress. Ironically, many of them have integrated some modern products into their lives. They have cell phones, solar panels, and battery-powered devises. Contrary to popular belief, not all Amish eschew technology completely. Rather, they are very selective. They choose only technologies that fit with their ethic of simplicity and their religious faith and use their chosen items very carefully. An Amish friend of mine keeps his cell phone out in his shed and uses it only as necessary to run his farm. No family meals are interrupted by its annoying intrusion. The Amish are very conscious of technology and its impact – for good and ill – on their lives. We all must adopt a similar kind of consciousness, for from it flows a more balanced view of the fruits of industrialization. We also need to realize how technology is a part of our lives regardless of whether we can afford, or even want, the latest gadgets. We swim in a sea of microchips, from those that store our bank account and tax records to those that run the digital x-ray machine used to diagnose our child’s broken arm. From 3-D movies to those automated phone calls that interrupt our dinner, technology is everywhere.

Progress comes with a price. Perhaps it is worth the cost, perhaps not. But here and now on our spiritual journey, we must embrace the questions about it – even if we don’t have the answers worked out completely. This is the essence of living an awakening, examined life.

Practices

1. Give and Take. Cultivating the mindset that taking requires giving. Choose one aspect of your life where you take from the Earth’s bounty. Your food, perhaps. Or your electricity, which might come from coal. Or maybe you simply collect pretty rocks from the beach. Big or small, make a pact with yourself. Write it down and post it somewhere prominent to serve as a reminder. For your chosen area, each take with require a give. If you are a beach pebble collector, you could also spend some time picking up liter on that same beach. If you choose food, you could volunteer at a soup kitchen or organize some friends to purchase fair trade coffee as a group.

2. Technology Fast. Choose one device your grandma didn’t grow up with and turn it off for a week. This could be your TV, radio, computer, GPS system, or any other piece of technology that occupies a significant place in your life. On Sunday, ceremonially turn it off. Throughout the week, journal about the experience.

3. Journaling: Exploring Feelings about Modern Life. Choose one of the starter phrases below and begin writing. Write continuously for at least ten minutes, allowing your thoughts to flow where they will. Start in on another starter phrase whenever you need to in order to keep the pen moving for ten minutes.

• If I had been alive three hundred years ago, my life . . .
• I like modern life, but . . .
• The Earth provides . . .
• If I had a time machine, and could go anywhere with it, I would . . .

Group Activities

Elder Wisdom. Invite several people who are more than eighty years old to share their life experiences with the group. Ask them: What has changed since you were children? What things are better now? What was better then? What do you see as the most significant area of human progress? What problems do you see for the future? What sort of world would you wish for future generations?

Questions for Group Conversation:

• What are some of the negative aspects of technology? Can their effects be mitigated?
• Identify one or two examples superfluous or wasteful technology. What can be done about this waste?
• What criteria should we use to decide how much technology to allow into our lives? How can we approach technological progress in a mindful way?
• What must you personally unlearn to approach technology sustainably?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Previous Ecospiritual Practice: Industrial Civilization and Everyone Else

Industrial Civilization and Everyone Else

Practice of the Week
Industrial Civilization and Everyone Else

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, adapted, abridged

On a bookshelf in my living room sits a bright and colorful book, full of interesting photos of children from around the world. In some cases, the authors chronicle small details of the child’s life, such as a favorite toy or food. I can open to any page and find something that catches my eye and holds my interest. The stories of the children’s daily lives are fascinating, and very personal.

One photo of a little boy is included without a story, just a caption giving his name, Nicodemu, his age, 8, and his country, Tanzania. That photo still draws me in every time I look at it. Nicodemu is half-smiling and looking off into the distance, away from the camera. He is wearing what looks to be a dirty cast-off rag that has been draped and knotted into a robe of sorts. The sandals on his feet don’t fit very well. He holds two long sticks, perhaps used for herding or as walking sticks. Perhaps he was part of a loving family and had his most basic needs met, despite his appearance. I hope so. My heart breaks every time I lay eyes on his picture. More than once, his image has brought me to tears. When I see him, I want to give him a hug and a good meal.

Of course, I know he is only one child of millions but statistical knowledge of “the millions” doesn’t touch us like an image or story of one child. We are hard-wired by evolution to respond to individual people, not statistics. Nicodemu has become a powerful symbol for me of the “rest of the world,” which remains mostly out of sight. I’ll never know what happened to him, but I expect that my thoughts and prayers will turn to him from time to time for the rest of my life.

If the whole world lived a middle-class American lifestyle, it would take more than four Earths to provide the resources. This lifestyle can only be maintained if others around the world do not share it, and instead live in dire poverty. Resources are extracted, exploited, and unequally shared. The reasons are complicated and subject to much debate, but this is the situation. Americans have a lot compared to Nicodemu, even those who live on a tight budget. We have way more than anything resembling our fair share, while others have so little. In fact, one of the biggest problems facing us globally is that the developing world aspires to a middle-class American standard of living, and those of us who have that keep raising the bar for ourselves.

“The citizens of wealthy nations demand that their leaders continue to raise their standard of living – and they must do so simply to avoid unemployment and please business.” (Peter Seidel)

So the disparities become every greater.

None of this is the fault of us as individuals. We no more could control the circumstances and locations of our births than Nicodemu could control his. We were lucky. While we cannot be blamed for the circumstances that led us to where we are today, we do have a responsibility to live with as much integrity and mindfulness as possible in our personal lifestyle choices. We need to say “enough” to our leaders and to the unrealistic notion that our standard of living should constantly rise. We need to say “enough” in our individual lifestyle choices. We owe Nicodemu and the millions like him nothing less.

Practices

1. Mindful Fast. Consider fasting for a day or even just a single meal. If you are medically able to do so, set aside a day to fast – preferably one in which you don’t have a lot of obligations. A quiet, solitary retreat day is ideal. Spend some time in contemplation, meditation, or prayer. When you break your fast, do so gently and slowly with simple foods. As you fast, note the sensations of your body. Do they stay the same throughout the day, or do they change? Reflect on the feeling of hunger – what meaning does it hold for you? Contemplate the haves and have-nots. Does the experience of the fast influence your thinking? How?

2. Altar: Child of Empty Bowl. Find a photo of a child from a poor country. Place it on your altar for several days, along with an empty bowl. At your altar, consider what this child’s daily life might be like. Don’t romanticize. Acknowledge aspects that may be positive, but don’t gloss over the tough stuff either. Write your thoughts in your journal.

3. Journaling: Brainstorm Lifestyle Changes. Brainstorm ideas about how you can make lifestyle changes that better reflect your values. Don’t censor yourself. In your journal, write down anything that comes to mind, no matter how wild and impossible it may seem. Brainstorm for at least ten minutes. Then set aside your list for a day or so. When you come back to it, ask yourself: "What ideas resonate most strongly? What changes can I make?" Make them.

Group Activities

Host a Hunger Banquet. At an Oxfam Hunger Banquet participants are randomly assigned to an income class. A few, assigned to a rich table, are fed a complete meal with food to spare. A few more receive a simple meal of beans and rice. The majority are seated at poor tables, where they are given a small portion of rice alone. The dinner is a powerful catalyst for discussing issues of wealth distribution. See Oxfam's INFO HERE.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• Why do we respond to stories and photos of individuals who experience suffering, while ignoring suffering on a large scale?
• Why do well-intentioned solutions from rich countries sometimes backfire in poor countries and end up making poverty problems worse?
• How would you explain to a poor child from a poor nation why the world is the way it is?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Previous Ecospiritual Practice: Cogs in the Machine
Next Ecospiritual Practice: The Problems of Progress

Nature Practice

Practice of the Week
Nature Practice

Category: ECOSPIRITUAL

When I’ve asked Unitarians what their spiritual practice is, answers are all over the place. One of the more common answers is Walking in the Woods.

Connecting to nature is indeed a vital spirituality. Spirituality is about being a part of something bigger than yourself – the context of belonging that imparts meaning to life. Earth and sky, mountains and waters, trees and animals – and all their complex interrelationships – fits the bill.

Nature Practice can be just what we need, as Dr. Winfield Sedhoff explains:

Modern living is tough. There’s just too much to do! Too many people to please, too many tasks to complete, and too many fears and disappointments to deal with. It can be exhausting, frustrating, and soul-destroying all at once, and that can be on a good day!
Along the way, all too easily, we can lose our sense of self – who am I when I’m not a parent, a friend, or a worker? Do I have any idea anymore? When it all gets on top of us, when we no longer recognise, or like, the person in the mirror, this is when we need a way to rejuvenate from within.
Increasing our spiritual connection with nature, as our ancient tribal ancestors did, can be the vital tonic we need. (Sedhoff)

Here are some entry-level nature spiritual practice that anyone can do.

Adapted from "Nature Gazing and Praising"

Sit for 5 minutes (or longer) each morning (or evening) and look at whatever you can see from the best window in your home. Use patio, deck, or sun porch in good weather. Be still. Notice what you might not have seen before. Be curious like a child. Be grateful. Take a deep breath and say thank you before continuing with your day. Add a reading from Wisdom literature on days when you have time.

Go on a short walk in your yard or neighborhood. Appreciate each sign of life and beauty. Stop and look closely at small things. Notice details of color and shape. Be amazed at the intricate web of life in which we live and move and have our being.

When you drive to work or on an errand, don’t turn on the radio. While still driving safely, notice trees, grass, flowers, sky, wind, sun, birds, maybe crops, or rain, squirrels and any other animals. Feel blessed by all of these, because you are.

Take mini-vacations during the work day. Stop and listen, look out a window for a few minutes. Break-through, creative thoughts sometimes come in such moments of reverie or relaxed reflection.

Take a walk during a break or lunch hour. Go outside if possible and let creation bless eyes, ears, body. Give up thinking and worrying for a moment. Sense the vibrancy in all that surrounds you. Fill your lungs with fresh air. Move. Be glad to be alive in, and part of, amazing creation.

Create connections with nature in your work space. Keep plants, flowers, unique stones, fish, or a small fountain in your home or office. Play nature sound music while you work.

Use imagery to connect with nature. Take a mini-vacation in your mind by using imagination. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and calmly. Imagine the most beautiful, peaceful, sacred place you have ever seen or visited. Be there! Have a virtual reality experience that allows you to see, feel, taste, smell, and hear this place as if you were actually there. Be thankful for all such places that we carry within us because we have been gifted with such extravagant life and loveliness.

If you have a special place in nature that you can visit during the week, go there and do nothing but look, listen, and feel. Attend to what feels sacred or holy in the details and realities of this place. Offer a prayer of thanksgiving as you prepare to leave.

Sing! When we take time to notice the glory of the created world we are often moved to joy. Express your praise by singing a favorite hymn or chorus.

Speak your thoughts throughout the day with mental or verbal words/phrases. A simple “Wow!” as you see a gorgeous sunset or “Earth, you do nice work,” as you spy an incredibly colorful tree can serve to heighten our gratitude and wonder.


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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Cogs in the Machine

Practice of the Week
Cogs in the Machine

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul, adapted and abridged

Part of coming face to face with reality is realizing how much of our collective situation is truly out of individual control. We live embedded within systems over which we have no power. We are citizens of a country whose government may do things – wage war, impose taxes, pass laws – with which we disagree. We may protest or work to elect people whose actions may better reflect our own opinions, but there is a limit to our influence, individually or as a group. Even if we dedicate our lives to a particular cause, there are a thousand other equally worthy causes that won’t receive our attention.

Every aspect of our lives – the food we eat, the cars we drive, the places we work, even the toilets we flush – has an impact on the environment, and precious little is within any appreciable individual control.

This can be disheartening and result in apathy. Too many negative headlines about the environment can cause people to disengage from the debate altogether, believing that it is entirely beyond our control and influence. However, despite the risk of disengagement on the part of some, the first step toward recovering from our collective addiction to consumptive and polluting culture is recognition of the extent of our powerlessness.

Consider this story: Once upon a time, “Mr. Green” wanted to live an eco-friendly lifestyle. He worked for Giant Megacorp Industries and wasn’t very happy about it, but he had children to support and jobs are hard to come by, so off to work he went. He recycled all he could at home and made sacrifices to save money for solar panels on his house. But he still worked for GMI and felt he couldn’t afford to quit. One day, GMI sent Mr. Green across the country on a big jet plane to an important convention where they served him factory-farmed food for his dinner. Every day, he handed out free goodies made of plastic to potential clients. He stayed at a Big Fancy Hotel where they changed his sheets and towels even when he told them not to do it. Mr. Green went home after the convention feeling guilty. He wanted to help GMI become more eco-friendly, but his boss, Mr. Bigshot, didn’t care.

Sound familiar? There are thousands of Mr. and Ms. Greens out there today, doing the best they can in the real circumstances of their lives. We can accomplish a lot through individual choices, but we need to be aware of systems that are beyond our control. To change them, we may need to change laws, but more importantly we need to change the culture as a whole.

Decades ago, heavy smoking was commonplace. It was sophisticated and sexy. Today, non-smoking is the norm in the US and Europe. Why the change? Studies convincingly demonstrated the health harms of smoking, and laws were slowly changed accordingly. More important was the change that took place in the culture. Smoking is no longer the mark of glamour or status it once was. Attitudes shifted.

To change the Earth-destroying systems that are beyond our control, we need to experience a soul-deep cultural attitude shift and rediscover the sacredness of the Earth. We have the scientific understanding – but attitudes have not yet substantially shifted. Planet-destroying, do-what-I-want attitudes will need to give way to Earth-restoring behavior the same way that smoke-filled offices gave way to cleaner indoor air. Facing up to the way things really are is a critical first step toward making the deep changes our society so desperately needs.

Practices

1. The Roller Coaster. When you have some time when you won’t be disturbed, imagine you are getting into a roller coaster. As you visualize, engage your whole body. You sit, and the bar comes down. You’re strapped in. As the coaster begins to move, you realize there’s no turning back. Imagine yourself on the slow, jerky climb, the stomach-churning downward rush, the wind in your hair, the twists and turns. Now, imagine that instead of stopping, the ride keeps on going, on and on. You feel queasy, but people around you seem to be having fun. You can’t get off. Slowly, one by one, others start to feel sick like you do, and together you shout to the people in the control booth. Ride the coaster in your mind a while and think about all that is out of your control. The coaster is our culture. Are we shouting yet?

2. Ritual of Release. Obtain a fireproof bowl and at least a dozen slips of paper. Place the bowl on your altar, and over the course of a week or so, write down some of the Earth-threatening things that are out of your control. For example, you might write “illegal logging in the rainforest,” or “overfishing the world’s oceans.” As the bowl fills over the course of the week, spend a few minutes each day just being at your altar. Sit beside it and contemplate all that is implied by the items in the bowl. After a week, take the bowl outside and carefully burn the papers, symbolically releasing what you cannot control. Add the ashes to your garden.

Group Activities

Group Ritual of Release. Ask each group member to write down one example of threats to the Earth that are beyond the group’s control and add it to a large bowl. Spend some time sharing as a group, then take the bowl outside and burn the papers. Invite everyone to sit in silence for a while.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• Have you every felt swept up by circumstances beyond your control? Is this experience a product of contemporary culture?
• Have you ever consciously done something harmful to the Earth simply because it was easy? Did you feel guilty afterwards?
• What charitable organizations do you support. What can you do to help their work?
• What is it about the system of government under which you live (national, state, local) that makes it difficult to bring about cultural change?

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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Falling in Love

Practice of the Week
Falling in Love

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

adapted from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul

The path of creation is joyful. Instead of dwelling on and being paralyzed by all the negativity of the world, we decide to create the type of world in which we want to live. This is a sacred place, where we walk on holy ground with every step and form deep and lasting relationships and communities where diversity is honored and uniqueness is respected, and where the Earth itself is healed and restored.

Probably many of us shake our heads at the impossibility of it all, and understandably so. All of us at some point have felt some despair at the state of things. It’s true that there are great forces at work, but just how they will affect us remains to be seen.

There is no doubt that we are in the midst of planetary change. We have surpassed the limits of Earth’s ability to regenerate its life-support systems. The climate is changing. Energy sources that fueled the Industrial Revolution may not last much longer. We are in the midst of a major transition, and the future doesn’t seem as clearly predictable as it once did. In the end, a “corrective” to our excesses is bound to occur, one way or another. The question is how to get there.

The chances of a positive short- and long-term future are far greater if we begin creating it now. If we start making the changes we want to see – cultivating reverence and awe for the Earth and allowing that reverence to form the foundation for our way of being – we are on the way to recreating the Earth. Thoreau understood this when he wrote in On Man & Nature:

“When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place – a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of nature.”

This is the kind of strength that will sustain us through the necessary losses and changes to come.

Insects that undergo metamorphosis from a larva to their adult form enter a cocoon, where they are transformed. In the cocoon, the larva begins to dissolve. The old form collapses, and the new winged insect begins to form. The process is directed by so-called imaginal cells. These cells facilitate the transformation in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. Our culture and our world are entering the cocoon. Change is upon us. Old ways are dissolving. Those who embark on the path of creation are the imaginal cells of this global process. We must envision the new, and midwife it into being through our dreams and our hard work. There is no other way.

The joyful part comes into play when we see just how much we love this exquisite, blue-green jewel that is our home. We are creatures of this place. We are the consciousness of Gaia, now able to realize this fact, truly understand it, and act upon it in ways that previous generations could not. We are the beloved children, the prodigal sons and daughters of our planet, who now understand the need to come. We are the beloved children now growing up, who realize that excess is unsustainable, greed is unacceptable, responsibility is a necessity, and our adulthood as a species is upon us. As mature beings now, we have fallen in love: utterly, madly, and gloriously in love with this place, this Earth and all who live upon it, human and nonhuman. We are head over heels for this sublime and unimaginable state of being. We are in love with Life, not our own small lives, but Life with a capital L. The Universe and All That Is. Life.

Practices

1. Ceremoney of Closure. Just as at the beginning, create a small personal ritual to mark the journey you have taken. Through words or actions, symbolize the Path of Awakening, the Path of Un-Learning, the Path of Discovery, and the Path of Creation. Incorporate elements of previous exercises, or create something entirely new.

2. Journal Closure. Even if you plan to write more in your journal later, spend some time re-reading what you have written and reflect on your experience of working through the previous practices. Which ones resonated strongly with you? Did you feel drawn to any particular ideas? What made you uncomfortable? Why?

3. Beloved Earth. Go you your favorite outdoor place. Bring a gift of thanks and leave it somewhere nearby in an inconspicuous place where it is unlikely to be disturbed by people. Your gift can be a small token that symbolizes your gratitude and appreciation for the Earth – something natural, not synthetic. Possibilities include: flowers, birdseed, bread, a seashell, a stone, water, honey, a lock of your hair, dried herbs, an object of unfinished wood. It should blend in with the land. Offer your gift, and spend some time pondering what it means to love the Earth.

Group Activities

Celebration of Life. Decorate your group altar with symbols of your love for the Earth and all its creatures. Share poetry, stories, and songs. Eat a meal together. Reflect on your experiences as a group, and share memories. Gather in circle, hold hands, and reflect on what it means to love the Earth. You might brainstorm future actions. Honor your group’s unique vision for the world and yourselves as participants in it.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• Have you ever had an experience that caused you to feel a sense of love for the natural world? What was it?
• What does loving the Earth mean to you? What might it mean in a broader cultural context?
• Do you think a better future is possible? If so, how can we get there? If not, why not?
• What now? Where do you go from here?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Widening Our Circle

Practice of the Week
Widening Our Circle

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

adapted from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul

“Six degrees of separation.” You’ve probably heard the hypothesis that each person on Earth is connected by six steps or fewer to every other person on the planet. It appears to be not quite true – but close. In 2008, a study of billions of electronic messages found that any two strangers are, on average, distanced by 6.6 degrees of separation. In 2011, Facebook determined that 92 percent of its users were connected to each other through 5 or fewer “friend” links. Humans who don’t use Facebook or electronic messaging, especially those in isolated tribes, may well require more steps.

In any case, we are all interconnected more closely than we generally assume – and by much more than links of acquaintanceship. The Gaia hypothesis, developed in the 1970s by chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis, says that the entire Earth is one integrated, self-regulating, living organism. What we do to one part of the Earth, we do to the entire Earth. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.

• Drought in Africa churns up dust into the atmosphere. The dust travels across the Atlantic, and affects cloud formation over the Caribbean.
• A man orders a burger. The burger, shipped from South America, came from a cow raised on land that was formerly part of the Amazon rainforest, now burned and cleared for grazing.
• An empty plastic bag floats across a parking lot -- and ends up floating in the middle of the Pacific six months later.

There are also positive connections:

• A woman purchases a bag of fair-trade coffee at her local co-op. Somewhere in Sumatra a father buys school books for his children with money earned from his small family coffee plantation.
• A teenager, after learning of the crisis in the rainforest, decides to skip the trip to the burger place and packs a vegetarian lunch instead.
• A couple serves locally grown food at their wedding reception, supporting the farmers of their foodshed in the process.
• A retired man spends a Saturday morning cleaning up a stream with a conservation group, ensuring that hundreds of pieces of plastic will never make it to the ocean.

We are embedded within larger systems, upon which we depend for our very lives. Trees take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Water evaporates, and then falls as rain. Cycles of ocean currents keep northern Europe warmer than latitudes alone would allow. Soil bacteria break down dead plant matter, making nutrients available for new growth. Fungi break down environmental toxins.

Not only are we a part of larger systems, we ourselves are a system. Our bodies function through symbiotic relationships with millions of helpful bacteria that digest our food and make our survival possible.

The choices we make ripple out from us and have implications far beyond our immediate community. The great challenge is figuring out those implications, and changing the way we relate to the world based on what we learn. Creating sustainable societies requires that we acknowledge and embrace our interconnection.

Practices

1. Degrees of Gratitude. Sit comfortably, and recall a meal you ate recently. Offer thanks for the people, animals, plants, and Earth systems that interacted to bring that meal to you. If you ate a cheese sandwich, give thanks for the person who made the sandwich, the cashier who sold you the bread and cheese, the dairy clerk, the baker, the workers at the cheese factory, the person who drove the milk truck from the farm, the farmer, the cow, the hay and the pasture that fed the cow, the sun for making the grass grow in the pasture, the flour mill, the wheat field, the soil in which the wheat grew, the rain that fell on the field – and the evolutionary process that brought into being cows, cheese-making bacteria, and the wild ancestor of cultivated wheat.

2. Mindful Choices. In your journal, describe one major area of your life as a consumer: food, clothing, holidays, travel, driving habits, or whatever. After describing your habits, interrogate them: Why do you do things the way you do? What obstacles stand in the way of making changes? Be honest and gentle with yourself -- change is hard. Brainstorm some do-able changes that could work for you. What are the spiritual implications of these changes?

3. How Wide Is Your Circle? Clear your altar space. Walk from room to room, and make a mental note of where the various objects in your home originated. Perhaps you have electronics from Japan, souvenirs from a Caribbean vacation, heirlooms from your family’s country of origin, a fair-trade knickknack from Africa, and some locally produced crafts. Choose several human-made items that originated from a variety of locales, and place these on your altar, thinking about the people who made these items and what life might have been like for them. What do you have in common? What is different? For several days, muse daily on the interconnectedness of it all.

Group Activities

Create Your Own Visualization. Discuss the idea of interconnectedness as it applies to people, animals, and Earth systems. Then allow group members about twenty minutes alone to reflect on the many connections that exist in our world. Have them write a brief meditation or visualization that explores this theme. After the alone time, gather again and have a few participants share their creations with the group. Discuss insights that emerge.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• How is your life connected to the lives of those around you? What impact does your life have on theirs? What impact do they have on you?
• What might the phrase widening our circle mean in different contexts? Can you widen your circle and simplify your life at the same time?
• How are your connected both to people from your past and generations yet to come? How do choices and decisions ripple out over time?
• Imagine a society where our interconnectedness with the Earth was honored and celebrated. What would such a society look like?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Meeting the Soul's Needs

Practice of the Week
Meeting the Soul's Needs

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

adapted from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul

Living sustainably and healthily, meeting needs of body, soul, and the Earth, doesn’t come naturally to us. We crave fat and salt, for instance. Our ancestors needed this craving to keep them motivated to seek out fat and salt, but today we face health risks from overconsumption of fat and salt. We must rely on the softwiring of conscious decision to override evolution’s hardwiring.

We are also hardwired for spirituality, and various parts of the brain are unusually active – while other parts are unusually quiet -- during heightened states of meditation or prayer. Wanting to connect to something greater than oneself is as natural as craving salt.

The trouble is that just as junk food makes a liability of our food desires, so our culture turns our psychological and spiritual propensities into lifestyles that are unhealthy for us and for the Earth. When we substitute hours of watching “reality” TV (which rarely resembles any functional reality) for genuine relationships and community, we’re left isolated and lonely. When consumerism dominates and our strategies of self-worth have more to do with possessions than with generosity and service, we suffer – and the Earth suffers as we extract resources to meet our demands. Consumerism and media overload are junk food for the spirit, and just as unhealthy.

The needs of bodily, spiritual, and planetary wellbeing intersect in what Chellis Glendinning calls the Primal Matrix ("the state of a healthy, wholly functioning psyche in full-bodied participation with a healthy, wholly functioning Earth"). When we struggle to keep up with an ever faster pace of activity, never pausing to gaze at a sunset or daydream in the shade of a favorite tree, our soul languishes. We lose our connection to the Primal Matrix.

Just as we must consciously choose to eat well and exercise to meet our body’s needs, we also must choose to meet our soul’s needs, and make changes that move us toward a spiritually healthier, more soulful way of life.

Meeting the needs of our souls primarily involves relationships with our inner selves, each other, and the ecology in which “we live and move and have our being.” Yet we are so removed from our Primal Matrix of physical, spiritual, and ecological health that for most of us, rediscovering and reintegrating it requires significant effort.

A thousand different demands pull on us in all directions, and its easy to allow those who matter most to slip further down on our priorities. We need to place clear boundaries on our time and energy to protect what really matters. Prioritizing relationships with the people who are most important to us may involve something as simple as eating dinner as a family more often – or something as major as downsizing to a less expensive home. A simpler lifestyle both improves interpersonal connections and helps heal the Earth through reduced consumption and less strain on natural resources. Spending a family night at home hanging out and eating a home-cooked, locally-sourced meal instead of grabbing fast food and heading to the mall for some recreational shopping prioritizes those we love by feeding them better food and spending time together, supports local farmers, and saves energy. Such choices swim against the dominant cultural stream. Making them takes effort.

Set aside time to look deeply at your own life, and honestly consider what makes you happy. This requires regular, ongoing introspection, which further swims against the dominant cultural stream. Step back. Take time-outs. Breathe. Each day spend some being still and quiet, some time journaling, and some time with spiritual texts.

Caring for the Earth is a part of the Primal Matrix of well-being. “Ecobonding” (a term from psychotherapist Howard Clinebell) heals and transforms not only our human lives but the Earth. Your relationship with your planet and with her plants, animals, soil, water, and air must be grounded in the local. It requires consciously spending time in natural surroundings near you, allowing the Earth to become a sustaining, nurturing presence for you. It also means making lifestyle choices that help preserve and heal the Earth.

Practices

1. Cloud Watching. On a sunny day, leave behind all electronic devices, find a place with an unobstructed view of the sky, spread out a blanket, and spend at least a half hour daydreaming and staring at clouds.

2. Small Change. Adopt one new Earth-friendly habit. Maybe hang out your laundry on sunny days, or taking a ceramic mug to meetings instead of using the styrofoam cups. Make it simple, but make it stick. Whenever you engage in your new habit, take a moment and pause to think about how you are connected to the Earth and all its systems.

3. Touchstone Connections. Place a small object, such as a polished stone or seashell, into your pocket or change purse every day. Whenever you reach into your pocket or purse and see or touch the object, ask yourself the simple question: What does my soul need right now? Do this for one week, then reflect in your journal on the answers that emerged.

Group Activities

Downsizing Potlatch. Have group members donate items they no longer need or want, and offer them free to the wider community. Look into the “Buy Nothing Project” (buynothingproject.org) for ideas how.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• What is your psychological or spiritual equivalent of junk food Does it adequately meet your needs or not?
• What is your favorite place in nature? Why is it your favorite?
• How can you make lifestyle changes that help create space and time for meeting your soul’s needs? What needs to change? What is fine as it is?
• What makes you truly and deeply happy? Can you make more room in your life for this?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Slow Life

Practice of the Week
Slow Life

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

See also: "Don't Go So Fast"

adapted from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul

Healing the Earth and creating a sustainable world can seem daunting. But stop for a moment and imagine a sustainable culture, a restored Earth, where humans serve and support the greater whole of the biosphere that ultimately sustains us all. What sort of lifestyle would the people live? Are they perpetually exhausted, stressed, and subsisting on fast food, or are they living at a healthier, calmer pace?

Most of us are very busy and very tired. Our obligations and duties leave many in a perpetual state of fatigue: sleep-deprived, overworked, exhausted, and without time to relax and savor the pleasures of life.

Homo sapiens emerged on the African savannah 200,000 years ago, fashioned by millions of years of natural selection into a tremendously adaptable species – or we wouldn’t be coping as well as we do with this radically different post-industrial world – but our elasticity has its limits. We are biologically wired to respond to the daily and seasonal rhythms of light and dark in a world without clocks, schedules, or artificially imposed deadlines. Our bodies and psyches are ill equipped to handle the myriad incessant demands and pressures that pull on us from all sides -- constant low-level stressors, raising our blood pressure and giving us indigestion.

How we feel about the pace of our lives is influenced not only by our own individual schedules and daily activities but also by the tempo of our surroundings. A bustling big city has a fast tempo, filled with the frenetic energy of people rushing here and there. A small rural town might have a much slower tempo, resulting in daily life feeling more relaxed. Urban dwellers might have to consciously search for an oasis of calm, such as a park or cathedral, to really slow down mentally and spiritually, a challenge not faced by those who live amidst a more relaxed tempo.

Every time one person or one family takes steps to slow down, to reclaim a healthier and more natural life pace, the quality of life of the individual or family increases, and the impact spreads through their circle of friends and family. Since healthy, natural, slow-life choices tend also to be environmentally friendly choices, the world moves toward sustainability.

Slowing down is difficult because we are embedded within larger systems over which we have little control. Even so, we can say no to additional obligations, and in so doing learn to tend to our personal boundaries. We can choose to simply stay home and hang out with our families, instead of rushing off to be entertained elsewhere. We can eat real food; turn hanging the laundry outdoors to dry into a kind of meditation; find a way to bring a slower pace to our days. These are not only soul-healing but Earth-healing choices.

Practices

1. Breathing the Hours. Medieval monks prayed seven times a day, pausing at set times from dawn to midnight to “pray the hours." Muslims pause for prayer five times daily. These traditions call practitioners away from the flow of ordinary life and create a brief liminal space amid daily tasks. Breathing the hours is a simple way to slow the frantic pace that drives us onward faster and faster. Choose how many times you would like to pause – at least four times a day – and at what times. When you pause, step to a window, or go outside. Focus on nature: sky, trees, grass, flowers. Take five slow, deep breaths, allowing shoulders to drop and belly to expand.

2. Slow Down Dinner. Together with friends or family, plan and cook a meal entirely from scratch, without “time-saving” devices: salad from lettuce from the farmer's market; beans soaked and cooked from dried, bread home-baked, etc. Also: no electric appliances (other than oven) allowed—slice, dice, mix and blend by hand. Use a tablecloth, cloth napkins, and make the occasion festive. Be sure the preparing is a communal endeavor shared by all who will join in the eating. Afterwards, wash the dishes in the sink, not the dishwasher. This may take some planning – so plan ahead. If you can't manage this weekly, try it once a month. The point is not to cause yourself more stress but to help you shift into a slower mode of being and have fun.

3. Conveniences that Maybe Aren't. Walk around every room of your house, and take note of any technology that didn't exist one hundred years ago. Then, go back over your list, and evaluate how each device affects your life. Do any devices suck up large quantities of time and/ or money without offering much in return? How do they affect the overall quality of your life? Adjust your home accordingly.

Group Activities

Looking at Time. Sit in a large circle with two white boards or large sheets of paper. Ask group members to share aspects of their lives that seem rushed or stressed, and write these on the first board. Next, brainstorm ideas that might offer creative ways to address the issues brought up by the group, and write these on the second board. Sharing insights into each others' lives can help us see possibilities we might not see on our own. At the next group meeting, follow-up to see how participants have adopted any suggestions from this exercise.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• What aspects of modern work life encourage an ever-faster pace? How can we counter these without risking our jobs?
• How are our children affected by the high-pressure, fast pace of society? Are they overscheduled? How are they affected by the pressures their parents face?
• How do you understand the connection between slowing down and sustainable living? What other aspects of daily life might also show this connection? What can we do to not only help ourselves live healthier lives, but also affect the Earth?
• What does technology have to do with slowing down? How have the various electronic devices in our lives affected our experience of time? Do we perceive time differently because of technology? If so, how?

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PRACTICES INDEX

Face, Embrace, Transcend

Practice of the Week
Face, Embrace, Transcend

Category: Ecospiritual. These practices are oriented toward developing our spirituality through our connection with our planet home and our responsibility to care for it.

adapted from Rebecca James Hecking, The Sustainable Soul

Evolution gave us cravings for sugary and fatty foods. These desires served our ancestors well in the eons before the invention of donuts, but now they undermine our health and well-being. Evolution also gave us aggressive tendencies and fight-or-flight adrenaline responses. These also were helpful in our prehistoric past, but are not well suited for modern life.

On the other hand, we evolved highly collaborative brains that could build on each other to develop all the technologies of contemporary life. Along with aggression and fear, we have leanings toward intimacy and compassion, order and cooperation.

We are prone to greed – and also to generosity. The world we create depends on which of our impulses are encouraged or rewarded.

By recognizing all aspects of our nature, we can better manage those aspects with limited functionality for the modern world, and better cultivate our compassion, and the parts of our nature that can help us create a sustainable future.

Something else evolution gave us: an attraction to the natural world. Time spent in nature is healing and can help us tap into the better angels of our nature.

“An unexpected psychological benefit from intimate bonding with nature is the awakening of creative mental processes. It enlivens the dance between the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This playful dance is the essential generator of creativity." (Howard Clinebell, Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth)

Healing our world and healing ourselves are deeply intertwined.

Our capacities for community building, creative problem-solving, gentle nurturing, and curious exploring will all be necessary to realign ourselves toward an Earth-healing lifestyle.

To address global problems and heal the damage our species has inflicted on the Earth, we will need to transcend our limited vision, and see a bigger picture. Evolution programmed us to respond to immediate, physical, local threats -- if we didn't, we would perish. However, the threats to our well-being nowadays come not from obvious and immediate threats, but from invisible sources like air and water pollutants, climate change, and over-population.

To create healthy communities, and to heal ourselves as individuals and as a society, approach the problem in three ways: face up to the parts of our evolutionary legacy that don’t fit modern times, embrace and build upon the helpful aspects of our evolved nature, and transcend the aspects of our evolutionary heritage that limit our vision. Call it Facing, Embracing, and Transcending—the three point plan for creating the future.

There is so much to do. We'd better get busy.

Practices

1. The Shadow Knows. In your journal, choose one aspect of yourself that is sometimes a source of a problem for you: an unhealthy habit, a quick temper, a phobia, a tendency to be anxious. How did was this aspect likely functional for your ancient ancestors? Explore the mismatch between what might have been helpful in the past and what is now problematic. You may want to go slowly and revisit this topic several times in order to fully explore it.

2. Love's Legacy. We are wired to connect deeply with others in loving, intimate ways. Loving feelings produce endorphins in our brains that enhance our health. Create a collage of photos of the people who have loved you the most deeply over the course of your life, and those whom you most deeply love. Focus on those people with whom you have a soul deep connection, regardless of formal relationships. Your collage can be a temporary one of photos placed on a table or your altar that lasts only a day or so, or you can create a framed permanent version to remind you of those who have blessed your life with love.

3. The Visible and the Invisible. Take your journal, and find a place outside where you sit and be still. Begin by paying attention to what you can hear, see, feel, and smell about your immediate environment. After about 10 minutes, pick up your journal and reflect: how would the sensory information have helped your ancient ancestors survive? What possible risks are not detectable to your senses (air toxins, radiation, greenhouse gases, etc.)? Finally, focus your attention back to your immediate environment and spend another minute or two observing it again. Has anything changed in the time it took to do this exercise?

Group Activities

Cultivating Community. Gather your group together for a potluck dinner for the sole purpose of enjoying each other's company. This event should have no other agenda. No seriousness allowed! What sort of evening would your group enjoy? Perhaps dinner and dancing — have some one bring a boom box and some old disco tunes. Maybe a game night would suit your group better, or a picnic with a campfire afterward. Later at home, participants should actively reflect on the time spent just having fun with the group. Consider these questions: How do experiences like this one help cement a community together? How might they help foster the creation of truly sustainable communities in the future? Next time the group gathers, share reflections.

Questions for Group Conversation:

• How can we as a species transcend our evolutionary programming in order to address the challenges that face us on a global scale?
• How can we reframe global challenges and present them to the public in a way that is in harmony with our evolutionary programming?
• Think about the lifestyle of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, and then about our contemporary lifestyle. Where are the mismatches? What behaviors, desires, or traits served our forbears well but cause us problems today? How can we address these problems?
• What aspects of human nature do you consider to be good or bad? Would the categories be different if our circumstances were different?

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PRACTICES INDEX