Blessed Unrest

I just discovered an amazing book entitled Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. In 1966, Paul Hawken co-founded Erewhon Trading Company, the first natural-foods business in America (this was long before Whole Foods). Later he launched several successful sustainability-focused companies, including the garden-tool boutique Smith & Hawken, often cited for its environmental awareness. And I thought Smith & Hawken was just another Yuppie gardening store!

In his new book, Hawken provides the historical underpinnings of the environmental movement and lays out its common aims and ideals. This is a movement that has no name, leader, or location, but is in every city, town, and culture and it is organizing from the bottom up and emerging as an extraordinary and creative expression of people's needs worldwide.

Hawken talks convincingly about the convergence of the environmental/sustainability movement with the social justice and indigenous rights movements (collectively described as “the movement,”) and the significance of the millions of organizations that have arisen world-wide to tackle the many issues that all these movements encompass. According to Hawken, there are 1 - 2 million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. He asserts that this is the largest social movement in human history. The movement has three basic components: environmental activism, social justice initiatives, and indigenous cultures' resistance to globalization.

The movement for equity and environmental sustainability comes as global conditions are changing dramatically and becoming more demanding. We are the first generation to witness a doubling of population in our lifetime. Nearly 3 billion people will join the current population of 6.6 billion within 50 years. By the middle of this century, resources available per person will drop by at least half. Wow, this statistic makes me feel guilty for having a child!

When I was in high school, I enjoyed reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays. I loved how Emerson wrote about nature as a language. In Emerson's essays, he viewed religion, science, and nature as one field of thought. According to Hawken, Emerson's ideas on how we treat nature and how we treat one another would become the foundations of environmental and social justice. I also enjoyed reading works by Henry David Thoreau, who was influenced by Emerson's essay Nature, built a cabin and retreated to Walden Pond. Thoreau believed in human interdependency and the need to respond to moral imperatives. The connectedness Emerson saw in the natural world, Thoreau saw in the human world, and it led to his writing his classic essay Civil Disobedience. Thoreau's essay heavily influenced Gandhi and Gandhi's commitment to a nonviolent means of objecting to injustice similarly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. These strands all express Emerson's faith that thought "was sent and meant for participation in the world..." What distinguishes one life from another is the one thing we can control: intention. I believe that by acting from a heart filled with grace and deep intentionality, we can make a difference in the world.

According to Hawken, there were two branches of the environmental movement in North American in the 19th century. Both Emerson and Thoreau can be credited for one branch, the idea of man and nature as one. Opposed to that view was the conviction that man is necessarily superior. George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature ushered in a revolution in the way people conceived their relations with the earth. Its message was that nature thrived without humans and while man's intervention almost always caused permanent damage to the earth, intervene we must.

I believe that saving our planet is just as important as saving our indigenous cultures. According to Hawken, areas of the world that are the most biologically diverse are also the most diverse in language. Yet, half of the world's languages have disappeared. More than 3,000 of the remaining ones are dying. There are 438 critically endangered languages with fewer than 50 speakers. The prevailing Eurocentric view about indigenous cultures tends toward the belief that assimilation of these "marginal" cultures is in their best interests. But consider this. The loss of language is yet another indicator of the worldwide collapse of ecosystems. Indigenous people want the conveniences of modern life-- just not at the expense of losing their birthright. If languages are living things, inextricably intertwined with biological diversity, then the loss of "verbal botanies" is irreparable. Culture is a critical and determining part of our environment. Ecosystems are created by the interaction of living organisms; each species depends on the others to ensure its long-term survival. As we eliminate one culture every two weeks, we court two types of extinction: cultural and biological.

Hawken concedes that globalization does have potentially positive effects: dissolution of exclusionary political borders, connectivity of people worldwide, and a wealth of new opportunities in employment, education, and income. But these benefits obscure the liabilities: resource and worker exploitation, irreversible climate change, pollution (take a look at what's happening in China), destruction of communities, and diminished biological diversity. An inordinate focus on wealth creation also obscures poverty creation, as evidenced by the United States, which has the worst social record of any developed country in the world -- the U.S. is first in teen pregnancies, drug use, poverty, illiteracy, and hazardous waste production.

Like Emerson, I believe that we are nature and any sense of separateness that we hold onto is an illusion. By holding ourselves as separate from nature, we grant ourselves permission to destroy nature and the other living beings that share our planet. Any living system is a combination of harmony and autonomy, predictability and instability. The more resilient a system, whether it be social or biological, the more shocks and impacts it can withstand and still recover from. However, as systems lose diversity and thereby their functional redundancy, they become vulnerable to disruption and collapse.

Ecology is about how living organisms interact with each other and their environment. Sustainability is about stabilizing the disruptive relationship between humans and the living world. All our planet asks from us is rest, nurturance, respect, celebration, collaboration, and engagement. Will we listen?

Bioneers Conference

On October 21, 2007, I attended the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA. Bioneers is a forum for connecting the environment, health, social justice, and spirit within a broad progressive framework. Go to www.bioneers.org/ for more information. Just like the Craig's List Boot Camp (http://craigslistfoundation.org/index.php?page=Boot_Camp) I attended in August, the Opening Session began with a drum performance. It's interesting how many nonprofit organizations seek to connect people through music, particularly drumbeats. I think the drumbeats are supposed to symbolize the common heartbeat of every living being on Earth. While I sometimes enjoy the sound of drums (depending on my mood), I prefer softer New Age type of music such as Loreena McKennitt. My favorite song from Loreena McKennit is "The Mummers' Dance." According to wikipedia, Mummers' Plays (also known as mumming) are seasonal folk plays performed by troupes of actors known as mummers or guisers (or by local names such as rhymers, pace-eggers, soulers, tipteerers, galoshins and so on), originally in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales (see wrenboys), but later in other parts of the world. They are sometimes performed in the street but more usually as house-to-house visits and in public houses.

I was deeply moved by Nina Simon's opening talk on fear. Whenever you're engaged in the work of righting social injustices, saving the environment, or protecting the rights of beings who have no voice, you have to face your fears because there will always be those who oppose your work. Nina said, "the way I know I'm on track with my life and my career is when I smell my fear and head straight for it." It's important to question what you are afraid of. When I was in my 20s, my biggest fear was poverty so I entered the financial services industry and became a Financial Consultant for Merrill Lynch because I wanted to make a lot of money. Well, I never earned the riches I dreamed of as a Financial Consultant, but I made a decent living in financial sales. So I remained in financial services for twelve years because it felt safe and I knew I could make a good living in that industry. In Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Safety is right above Biological and Physiological Needs, but below Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization. Many people go through life guided by the need for security and safety, but for me, that's only half a life. The other side of life is fear and in fear, we can discover things about ourselves that we never knew existed. Even more exciting is the discovery that fear can motivate us to achieve things we never thought possible, things that have the power to transform the world.

Nina also said, "Keep heading for what is broken." I see so many broken "things" in our world--broken relationships, broken people, broken spirits, a broken environment. And those are the things I feel most compelled to "fix." I'm particularly motivated to "fix" broken hearts and broken spirits. There is so much violence in our culture, but rather than turn away from it, I feel inspired to find ways to transform it. I love working with the elderly population in my volunteer work at nursing homes, senior centers, and hospitals. They have so much wisdom and in the "busyness" of our careers, families and outside pursuits, we tend to forget they even exist. I see so much loneliness and yearning for a human connection in the eyes of the elderly I meet. In my opinion, ignoring our elders is a form of violence. I call it the unintentional violence of neglect. As a very young child, I experienced what it felt like to be neglected and whether you're an infant or in your 80s, neglect and abandonment feel the same.

Many of the panels discussed how to save our oceans and the inhabitants of the sea. I also feel a deep commitment to saving our oceans and sea creatures. But at the same time, I feel deep anguish about the millions of farm animals that are mercilessly slaughtered every year all over the world. Unless you attend an Animal Rights Conference (which I did in July), many nature/environmental conferences do not really address the plight of farm animals. Like the elderly, they are the "forgotten" animals on our planet. On Saturday, my family and I attended a tour at Animal Place (http://www.animalplace.org/), a farm animal sanctuary in Vacaville, CA. This was a second visit for my son and me. I felt it was important for my husband to see how farm animals should live--in wide open pastures with plenty of fresh air, food, water, and sunshine. Our guide talked about the living conditions of factory farmed animals and how they are slaughtered. Unfortunately, learning more about the sad plight of farmed animals did not convince my husband to become a vegetarian, but it's not too late for my son. I think that once he becomes an adult, he'll become a vegetarian.

At the Bioneers Conference, Dr. Robyn Benson, a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, talked about the Mandala of Being. At the center of the circle is You. Around the circle of You, are six segments -- Family, Work, Play/Travel, Spirituality, Relationships, and Supreme Health. Many of us assign a much larger portion of our pie to Work which is not the way to live a balanced, sustainable life. When I was a Financial Consultant, work certainly took over most aspects of my life. Later, when I started working on my Master's degree in Marketing, school took over my life. But now that I work for a health care consulting firm, my life feels much more balanced. However, my husband would complain that volunteering consumes too much of my life (I volunteer for seven different nonprofit organizations).

Grandmas Share Ecological Vision

By Carson Walker ASSOCIATED PRESS
Contra Costa Times Article Launched:07/30/2007 03:01:36 AM PDT

HOT SPRINGS, S.D. -- Several times a day over three days, 13 women from around the world, several in their 80s, gathered around an open fire as each led a prayer ceremony unique to her native tribe. After each outdoor gathering, they moved into a convention center auditorium, where they exchanged ideas and learned about problems that plague the Oglala Lakota who live on the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Among them: high unemployment, suicide, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, diabetes and contaminated water. The women share a common vision and mission to spare future generations problems that now vex much of society. "It's hard to be proud of your cultural heritage and traditions if every day you face extinction," Debra White Plume of Manderson, S.D., told the women. The women, formally called the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com/ come from Africa, Asia and the Americas. Their languages, cultures and traditions are as different as their lands. "They're not women of politics.

They're women of prayer," said Jeneane Prevatt of The Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora, CA http://www.sacredstudies.org/ who goes by the name Jyoti. The indigenous grandmothers hope to ease war, pollution and social ills by teaching traditional ways that served their people long before the birth of modern peace and environmental movements.

Roughly every six months, they visit each other's homelands, most recently in June here in the southern Black Hills, near the Pine Ridge reservation that is home to two of the women, sisters Rita and Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance. During the prayer ceremonies, they spoke very little. Often the only sounds were the crackling fire and traffic on a nearby road. "We're praying for peace, which is not only the wars but in our homes and in the schools. We need that peace amongst children," said Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance, who believes social problems on the reservation are a direct result of people abandoning traditional ways of life.

The group first met in October 2004 in New York. So far their effort has earned them a meeting with the Dalai Lama and a relationship with the Bioneers environmental group http://www.bioneers.org/ The 13 women next plan to meet in October in San Rafael, CA for the annual conference of the Bioneers (October 19 - 21, 2007), who share the indigenous grandmothers' belief that there's a spiritual aspect to life and more to environmentalism than preventing pollution, said Nina Simons, co-executive director. "We will never have environmental sanity and health while there are so many people living in abject poverty," she said. "We can't expect people to care about the environment when they're worried about feeding their children." The grandmothers and Bioneers also believe that natural solutions can fix many modern problems, such as using a type of mushroom to digest petroleum spills, Simons said. "Part of our challenge is to learn to have a relationship with nature that makes it healthier and stronger instead of weaker and depleted," she said.

The Black Hills conference attracted people from the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Spain, France, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Nepal and Brazil. Among the roughly 250 people attending the gathering was Jan Rhine of Newberg, OR, who was raised in Africa by missionary parents. She said the grandmothers movement makes her appreciate a simpler way of life. "As technology has grown, along with the gifts it brings, we've lost our roots to nature, to mother earth and to each other. And what they are doing is bringing back these old ways that they and their tribes have carried throughout the centuries, bringing it back into this new modern technology to help us remember who we really are and what this planet is really about," Rhine said.

As a sidenote, I plan to attend the Bioneers Conference at Marin Center in San Rafael, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.bioneers.org/conference The conference runs from October 19 - 21, 2007, but I can only attend on Sunday, October 21 from 9 AM - 6 PM because I will be attending a Gifted Child class in Sacramento, CA on Saturday, October 20 from 8 AM - 4 PM. I'm particularly interested in the Bioneers session entitled "The Lives and Fates of Earth's Animals" which will take place from 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM. Bokara Legendre, television host and journalist, will interview Mark Bekoff, author of many books including The Emotional Lives of Animals and co-author (with Jane Goodall) of The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love; animal activist Camilla Fox, author of Culling the Wild; and James Deutsch, head of the African Program of the World Conservation Society, one of the largest animal-saving organizations. Bioneers also has a youth initiative for young people between the ages of 13-30. The Bioneers Youth Initiative http://www.bioneers.org/youth began as a grassroots effort to support and cultivate youth leadership while providing educational resources and opportunities to create positive social and environmental change. In 2009 when my son turns 13, I hope he will become interested in joining the Youth Initiative!