Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

[I won't be posting for a few days. I am attending a gathering this weekend much related to our theme of spirituality and ecological hope. I will not take my computer, a great liberation, though I s'pect to have some withdrawal jitters. Will post again early next week.]

I have been following this story for a couple of years now, and it finally comes to fruition. In Norway, a so-called ‘doomsday’ vault, built deep under frozen ground, has been constructed to shelter the agricultural memory of human civilization.

You may have read about this in the past day or two. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is finally ready to receive seeds and bury them in frigid temperatures, protecting them from the potential global catastrophes of climate change, and things like nuclear and/or biological or chemical warfare.

Said Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg:

With climate change and other forces threatening the diversity of life that sustains our planet, Norway is proud to be playing a central role in creating a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds, but the fundamental building blocks of human civilization.

Collection of seeds and maintenance will be carried out by the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

The vault has been constructed and supported by those who believe there is a reasonable chance that humans will push the world towards an unimaginable disaster and that, at some point in the future, surviving societies will need to be able to restart agriculture.

Wow — this is doom and gloom indeed. Folks accuse me of pessimism, but this is really preparing for the worst.

It’s probably warranted. We don’t show many signs of changing course, and the course we are on is certainly leading to disaster.

This weekend, I will be attending a weekend of ‘communal contemplation’ wistfully entitled “Quantum Leap,’ taking advantage of the device of our leap year. I will share some quiet, very intense time with a few score others meditating on this moment in the evolution of consciousness when we know everything is changing, something new is occurring within and through us, yet we have a hard time recognizing the magnitude of the change much less embracing it.

We’ll see what emerges, hopefully something we can share here.

Let’s take stock of where we are, good friends. Prices for gas at the pump are finally rising to meet the rises in the price of a barrel of crude. Millions of mortages are going into default. The credit card debt crisis is hitting hard. We are an indebted nation living way beyond our means in an economy that right now depends upon us living beyond our means. This crisis isn’t going away. Our economy is in real trouble not because of the usual temporary ebbs and flows of the capitalist system but because the whole system has become structurally unsound and unsustainable.

What are we going to do? Try to figure out how to go on as always, as if this were a real option? Can we use this time to begin to imagine another way of life?

Hate to say this, but the future of our children and their children depends upon this imagining.

The seed vault begs the question of what we are going to do with the ecological crises of our times, how we will adapt, how hard we will hold onto our unsustainable way of life, how unselfish we will be as the world begins to reel with the reality of our having lived beyond the means of the Earth to support us, with the reality of how badly we have damaged our atmosphere and biosphere, what is required to support life as we know it.

Let the opening of the vault be a moment of great comtemplation and meditation on who we are, who we are meant to be, and how much the fate of the Earth depends upon what we do now.

Some thoughts to take on the road this weekend.

[tags] Svalbard Global Seed Vault, doomsday vault, agricultural memory of human civilization, global catastrophe, ecological crises, quantum leap, debt crisis, unsustainable way of life, earth carrying capacity, fate of the earth[/tags]