by Catriona MacGregor
“Partnering With Nature”
Receives 2010
Best “Social Change Book” Award
A simple book with a powerful message that illuminates the fact that our connection to nature, animals, and the earth is a vital part of our existence.
Photo by Amy Lenzo
by Ben de Vries
As we take control of the course of our lives and communities to create new more viable futures for ourselves, problems emerging from the existing system(s) may follow us if we let them. Our current capitalist, militarist, imperialist system is based upon a hierarchy of those with capital and power exploiting those who don’t. This hierarchy pervades every aspect of our existence so long as we are living by it, and the problem I wish to address in this article is features of this system that might be carried into future systems, and the difficulties interfacing any new system into the existing one.
Photo by Amy Lenzo
by Leon Miller
It is possible to have a more advantageous view of nature by maintaining a perceptual focus on what enhances the human experience while avoiding that which diminishes human well-being.
Introduction
Humanity’s understanding of the nature of existence is primarily based on perception. Humanity has long held a perspective on existence where nature and human culture exist in dichotomy. But this perspective of nature has not always been the view through which humanity perceived and experienced the environment and is not the only view through which the nature-human relationship is based. It is clearly possible and preferable to have a perspective that allows taking advantage of nature’s signaled opportunities for flourishing while avoiding what would diminish human well-being. Being able to take advantage of this improved nature-human relationship is a matter of perception.
by David Sparenberg
Since Bach first made a fugue
the simplest melody of a flute
on a hill
has been looked on as poverty.
But a hill is not poverty.
Day, daylight, the sun, seasons
air
breathed through the flute player, sent
dancing through the wooden throat
of a finger-holed flute—
this is not poverty. Go aside
‘til you find the paradise of simplicity.
Ask yourselves there in that
kingdom of God:
What is the worth of philosophy?
What is the truth of ecosophy? Continue Reading →
Prayer Of the Animals
by David Sparenberg
Our kin,
who now possess the land
where once we roamed,
plentiful and free,
lead us not into extinction,
but deliver us from the devouring
dis-ease of human greed.
Give us this day
(even unto the seventh generation)
a belonging-place to be
what we are, and in harmony
with All Our Relations.
For yours is the power
to restore or further destroy
the Sacred Hoop of Creation.
Make a warrior’s choice
by honoring unity in diversity
of the Great Mystery.
Let Spirit guide you
back to Creator’s vision-dream:
We Are All One Family.
by David Sparenberg
We progressed until we reached the latest rung in the Inferno. There before us were two seething pits of new made hell, carved like gouged eye sockets in the fearsome, rude desolation of blind punishment.
The first of such was as a lake, thick and deep with blood. Over this body of violence an angry wind whipped in bursts of crazed fury and waved in rippling obscenities of gurgling cries, gagging groans and ugly screams of pleading agony. Awash in the blood thick muck, swilling and knotted into fist sized clumps, circulated currencies of all the world—some nations contributing more to the horror, while others less.
Healing Natures, Repairing Relationships by Robert France brings together a leading group of distinctive voices to explore ideas underlying the restoration of environmental and human integrity in what pioneer restorationist Aldo Leopold once called our damaged “world of wounds.” This emerging paradigm—referred to by the editor as “Restoration Design”—is defined as the process by which participants creatively develop physical and conceptual relationships to engage nature through the architectural transformation of their inhabited ecological space as well as their internal environments. In this collection of essays, restoration design is shown to be a comprehensive process involving elements of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, ecopsychology, environmental art, ecological science, and landscape architecture. Continue Reading →
Submitted by Citt Williams
An invitation from Our World 2.0:
Our video collection “Indigenous Perspectives of Climate Change”, made collaboratively with communities and researchers in 2008-9, documents several important traditional knowledge perspectives of environmental change. Of particular relevance, the video created with FSDA.ru in the Russia’s Altai Mountains “Land has Breath” and another with Marilyn Wallace from the Wet tropics of Far North Australia “Walking on Country with Spirits”.
All of our written and video work is creative commons and is available for wide online sharing, embedding, teaching and discussion. We invite you take a look at Our World 2.0
Continue Reading →
Submitted by Martin T Brown, of Third Planet Pictures:
A new film by Emmy Award winning director Jan Nickman, titled “Sacred Earth“, moves beyond the discussion “about” nature and instead takes the viewer into a deeply personal experience “with” nature.
Here’s a trailer:
by Daniel Schwab
This is a delightful exposition of the themes explored by an avid student of Life in his Senior Thesis for Evergreen State College. Daniel’s range includes the environment, design, mathematics, biophilia, pattern, modern technology, and community. Download pdfs for Daniel’s introduction and visual summary.
a poem by Mary Sokol, PhD
Newly arrived,
this Spring day and I
to this place.
I,
walking the perimeter
exploring color and texture,
of land,
ground,
forest.
Woods reveal
themselves
to me,
woods,
frame in
my land
frame
my home,
woods defining me.
Continue Reading →
Photo by Amy Lenzo
Everything you need to know about planning and starting your home garden can be found at this handy site: homeservicesengine.com
Why Permaculture Activists Must Work for Human Rights and Social Justice
by Lisa Rayner
Photo by Lisa Rayner
Permaculture began as a foresighted response to the needs of energy descent. Initially, permaculturalists focused on food production. As the movement has evolved, it has begun to merge with the Transition Culture movement. There is an emerging awareness of the social side of descent culture among permaculture activists. Transition Culture spurns individualist survivalism and emphasizes the need for neighbors to work together to make our communities more resilient. The Transition movement is rooted in community.
As high-energy societies like ours descend from the peak and experience accelerating levels of economic and political instability, we are at risk of losing centuries-worth of human rights gains. It’s a well-known fact that resource scarcity leads to conflict and the mass migration of refugees, which in turn have an unfortunate tendency to inflame xenophobic, in-group/out-group tendencies in human nature, with a resultant scapegoating and persecution of minorities. Download the pdf to read more.
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Lisa Rayner is a permaculturist and Transition Town community organizer in Flagstaff, Arizona. She is the author of the permaculture book Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains, The Sunny Side of Cooking solar cookbook and her latest book Wild Bread. More at www.LisaRayner.com.
by Dr. Theresa Sweeney Ph.D. Ecopsychology
“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?” My friend and I jokingly debated this age-old question on our way into the woods for an afternoon hike.
We walked together for awhile before coming to a familiar fork in the path. One leg led to a small pond the other up and over a ravine. This day my friend was attracted to scaling the ravine but I was feeling rather tired and wanted to take the easier trek towards the pond. So we split up agreeing to meet at the water in a couple of hours. Continue Reading →
