Lead Us Not Into Extinction

Prayer Of the Animals
by David Sparenberg

haeckel's art forms from nature

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.

Poetry and Prose Shortlink

Canto

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.

Continue Reading →

Poetry and Prose Shortlink

Healing Natures, Repairing Relationships: New Perspectives on Restoring Ecological Spaces and Consciousness


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 →

Books Shortlink

United Nations University: Our World 2.0

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 →

Links, Media Shortlink

Sacred Earth

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:

Film Shortlink

Humanistic Design

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.

Art, Articles Shortlink

Tending to Trees

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 →

Poetry and Prose Shortlink

Home Gardening Guide

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

Links, Photography Shortlink

Squirrel


photo by Amy Lenzo

Photography Shortlink

Transition culture, social tolerance and moral courage

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.
______________________________________________________________
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.

Articles Shortlink

Forest Symphony

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 →

Links, Poetry and Prose Shortlink

The Soul of Sensing Beings (AnimAnimali)

by Guido Dalla Casa

This article about the soul of sensing beings is an English translation of an Italian article published on Marcella Danon’s Italian e-zone, Ecopsicologia.net.

What soul is
The idea of soul is connected with a stable, permanent, autonomous and unitary entity in all Western culture tradition and in Judeo-Christian and Islamic religion teachings. It “exists” or “doesn’t exist”: it’s attributed exclusively to a human being and only to an individual.
Continue Reading →

Articles Shortlink

Developing a Greater Sense of Belonging

An Art and Method for Ecological Sustainability
by Danny C. Shelton

“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” ~ Alan W. Watts

Among our most basic needs as human beings is that of being accepted by others of the society in which we live. As we develop, our need for acceptance expands into greater circles of interrelationship with other people. Through maturity, we further develop understandings of cultural variations and recognize what is shared in-common between greater variations of cultural practices. It is this search and discovery of what is shared in-common, among cultural variation and diversity, that we may sense, recognize, and rediscover our greater shared sense of belonging in Nature. The word common has its roots in the concept of equally belonging and shared alike. It is the root of the word community, and most importantly of communion, or that which is shared in-common through participation in direct natural sensory relationship.
Continue Reading →

Articles Shortlink

In Service to the Deities

Chellis Glendinning and Jesús Sepúlveda Talk across Continents
submitted by Chellis Glendinning
originally published in Sacred Fire,  No. 9,  2009

Poet Jesús Sepúlveda and psychotherapist Chellis Glendinning sat down to talk.  Well, sat down at keyboards on their respective continents: Sepúlveda in his native Chile, Glendinning from New Mexico USA. 

Sepúlveda is known for his essay, The Garden of Peculiarities, published in Spanish and translated into English, French, Portuguese, and Italian.  He is also the author of Hotel Marconi, Place of Origin, Pax Americana, Escrivania, and Correo negro.  Glendinning is the author of six books, including My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization and Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy, and the bilingual folk opera De Un Lado Al Otro.

The following conversation took place in the summer of 2008.

Continue Reading →

Interviews Shortlink

New Ecopsychology Journal

posted by Thomas Joseph Doherty, Psy.D.

To recognize Earth Day, I am proud to announce the launch of Ecopsychology, a new, quarterly online peer-reviewed journal from Liebert Publishing. You can download free articles from the first issue Continue Reading →

Articles, Links Shortlink