One year closes - a new one presents itself
Share your Thoughts
Posted on December 31, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
To all readers of this blog, friends of the Earth, I wish you renewal of hope and inspiration as we close one year and begin another. Of course, nothing is opened and closed by these dates, artifically created by us so that we could organize our world and communities, right?
Today, I wonder if we can just close our eyes, breathe deeply, and experience deep within the sense that we are part of one unfolding reality, not broken down into digital measurements, property lines, national borders — measurements of time and space.
Today, I wonder if we still have within us the capacity to rediscover our part in this unfolding, to sense or to feel the constant creative act within the universe, within this Earth from which we emerged and to which we return. ‘Dust you are, and unto dust you will return’ — we hear this as dire, dreadful, and result of guilt and sin rather than as a simple expression of our biological being).
If we could reexperience this, rediscover this reality more real than anything invented by industrial society, we might still find within us the passion and love for this Creation that could bring about from within the human community the necessary commitment to bring our lives back into balance with that Creation.
And then, let that passion and love drive our motivation, our creative action, our relationships – personal, communal, societal, global — in a way that makes letting go that industrial society not a painful relinquishment but a renewal of Spirit, the Spirit that animates, well, everything in the universe.
That’s what I wish for us all this new year’s eve.
I will post again on Tuesday. For my new year’s wish for you, I leave you with this reflection from Thomas Berry’s new book, Evening Thoughts:
…the planet Earth is a onetime endowment. Earth came into being at a moment that will never occur again. It was given structure and a quantum of energy for its self-shaping processes whereby it could bring forth all those remarkable geological formations and all those magnificent modes of life expression that we see around us. Earth was caught up in an inner dynamism that is overwhelming in its impact on human consciousness. These creations are set in a pattern for indefinite survival if only they are treated properly. If they are abused, if the life process is wantonly extinguished, then in the future the energies that brought about these life-forms that have been functioning throughout these past millenia in such a brilliant sequence of transformations will never again be available. The quantum of energy involved in their historical existence has been expended. Their unique wonder and beauty, the entrancement with life that they evoke, will have vanished.
Yet even with all the extinction that has taken place, there does exist a quantum of energy, available at the present moment, for creative movement from the terminal Cenozoic to the emergent Ecozoic. This energy, however, will be available for only a brief period. Such transformation moments arise in times of crisis that need resolution immediately. The time for action is passing. The devastation increases. The time is limited. The Great Work remains to be done. This is not a situation that can be remedied by trivial or painless means. A largeness of vision and a supreme dedication are needed.
And that’s what I wish for all of us who care about these things as we bring this troubled year to a close– that largeness of vision, that necessary supreme dedication.
Happy New Year!
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