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Living within a living, loving planet
Earthenspirituality
From the Archives – A New Story
Sep 15th
A New Story
There have been a few “deep feeling” people who have called for a “new story.” There can be no doubt that we desperately need a new story. All major religions advocate “love.” and “Peace.” But unfortunately, they seek “God” to bring peace. Part of the new story, is that Peace and love must come from within each of us. Also, they are not what we can “have” or “obtain” but what we “are.” So, why do we have problems? We are taught that we are helpless and must invoke assistance from “God” out there somewhere. This is “the pollution of the ages.” Further, it is “Earth energy” that nourishes and sustains us yet we are alienated due to basic beliefs that don’t keep their promises. We now have runaway Global warming where the positive feedback is increasing at an increasing rate. We either cooperate, and very soon, or suffer unimaginable consequences. This is not a Henny Penny or chicken licken story either – just do the maths!
Sky: 10 January, 2019
Tragic?
Apr 28th
Beyond belief?
“In Madrid, the father looks up, and then replies to his son: “That’s the Milky Way. Don’t you remember learning about it?” “Yeah…,” the boy answers. “I just didn’t know that you could actually see it.” The father looks back up, then removes his glasses. They both stare and stare.” David Abram – In the Ground of Our Unknowing
Turtles Among Us
Dec 21st
PUBLISHED IN SPRING 2019 | Kosmos
Turtles Among Us
sweetgrass
The Power of Gratitude
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/turtles-among-us/
“If our leaders don’t lead, then we have to. If all our leaders ask is that we are quietly complicit to destruction, we say, “We are a better species than that.” All over Turtle Island, people are rising up to reclaim their roles as caregivers for the Earth, to be more than consumers, to be givers”
Hallowed Ground
Apr 28th
Hallowed Ground
by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
“Yews are the oldest living things in Britain, considered ancient only when they reach the age of nine hundred. Some are believed to be at least five thousand years old.”
“The roots of religious belief and the sacredness of nature were once closely entwined. Traces of this ancient relationship remain today: thousand-year-old yews grow in churchyards; the forest monks of Thailand have long followed the Buddha’s example of revering trees. In this essay, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder profiles theologian Martin Palmer and his work to engage faith-based communities in recovering stories of love and care for local ecologies.”
“The yew, Taxus baccata of the family Taxaceae, is a conifer native to the United Kingdom. Growing up to twenty meters (sixty-six feet) tall, and sometimes taller, with peeling auburn bark and small, straight needles that grow in two dark-green rows, yews provide habitat for the goldcrest and other small birds. Every part of the yew is poisonous, with the exception of the bright-red, fleshy arils that encase the seeds, food for the blackbird and the mistle thrush. Yews are the oldest living things in Britain, considered ancient only when they reach the age of nine hundred. Some are believed to be at least five thousand years old. Yews carry an air of the secretive, and their age is notoriously difficult to determine because of their ability to withstand extraordinarily long periods of dormancy and then mysteriously decide that the time is right for new growth. Some of Britain’s oldest yews have witnessed Roman expeditions led by Julius Caesar, ancient Celtic ceremonies, Anglo-Saxon conquest, and the Black Death.”
“The National Geographic wrote that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is this high ‘for the first time in 55 years of measurement—and probably more than 3 million years of Earth history.’ The current concentration may be the highest in the last 20 million years.”
“At the beginning of each interglacial period as the ice receded from the land, vast numbers of trees spread north and performed a carbon sequestering service. They also released water vapour which stimulated cloud cover that increased the albedo effectively taking the place, as far as reflectivity is concerned, of the miles and miles of ice that had melted. With that negative feedback firmly in place and the orbital forcing factors favouring cooling, the downward cycle of Gaia’s temperature was assured and triggered the end of the interglacial period.
Unfortunately for all, these natural feedback factors been destroyed by humans. Millions of trees over thousands of years have been chopped to build armadas and commercial shipping, other war implements, and shelter for humans as if the trees’ only function to serve the greed of humans.
“Apart from the profligate burning of fossil fuels and releasing the earth’s long-term carbon and energy storage depot that has taken millions of years to lay down, deforestation has been the main contributor to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has resulted in global warming.” Sky McCain, Unpublished
See: http://www.earthenspirituality.com/global-warming/
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/hallowed-ground/
“You take out sacred things at your peril,” Martin says. “You’re changing the map of where you live.”
Lord give us this night our daily certainty
Mar 31st
“Give us God in whatever form She, He, It, or They consents to assume, so long as that transcendent something supplies us with an answer we can curl up around close enough to breathe ourselves to peace, or anyway to sleep. Lord give us this night our daily certainty.”
“The first step toward creating some way out of our dilemma may involve allowing our sense of certainty itself to unravel.”
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-religious-value-of-the-unknown/
George Prochnik
Our modern technology has given us a strong sense of certainty by its “swap the board” or “replace the unit” fix. Unfortunately, main stream science uses a mechanistic model as a basis for “fixing” climate change. Even the measurement devices are designed for machines instead of a living Earth; a living being. Homo Sapiens have never encountered the present level of CO2 and some other green-house gasses. CO2 is now building up in the troposphere at an increasing level and the rate of increase is increasing. Further the rate of increase is variable and unpredictable.
There is no certainty and no meaningful computer models to assist in predictability.
Of course, this is green fodder for those paid to spread fear and doubt thus discrediting 97% of climate scientists who know that humans are accountable for this runaway increase in CO2, warming of the oceans and melting of polar icecaps to name a few climate variables. We accept uncertainty when our physician prescribes a remedy and then tells us that if it doesn’t work we are to return for an alternative. However, there is no loss of profits in that situation whereas keeping fossil fuel in the ground might throw a few people off the billionaire list! Sky 31 March, 2019
We ARE the Planet
Aug 8th
“Professor Johan Rockström, a co-author of the new paper from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told BBC News. ‘What we are saying is that when we reach 2C of warming, we may be at a point where we hand over the control mechanism to Planet Earth herself.’”
Carbon Brief Daily | 07/08/2018
I don’t seem to be on the same page here. When did anyone ever dare to think that (1) That we were ever “in control” of Earth’s survival mechanisms and (2) That we have anything to “hand over” to “Planet Earth.” We and all our brethren are first and foremost “Earthlings.” We are not “on” this planet, we ARE the planet – inseparable.
We have not “lost” our connection. That’s impossible. We have either lost consciousness of it or perhaps never were conscious of being part of the, so to speak, eyes, ears, nose and throat of our greater beingness, the marvellous planet Earth.
What can be more sacred than drinkable water?
Nov 5th
What can be more sacred than drinkable water?
Indian water settlements
Indian Water Rights Settlements
Charles V. Stern
Specialist in Natural Resources Policy
September 18, 2015
Congressional Research Service
http://nationalaglawcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/assets/crs/R44148.pdf
“Indian water rights are vested property rights and resources for which the United States has a trust responsibility. The federal trust responsibility is a legal obligation of the United States dictating that the federal government must protect Indian resources and assets and manage them in the Indians’ best interest.” 1
“The specifics of Indian water rights claims vary, but typically these claims arise out of the right of many tribes to water resources dating to the establishment of their reservations.” 2
“Over the past six years, since Republicans took control of the House, Congress has failed to fund a single Indian water settlement- despite numerous settlement bills being introduced.” 3
“I’m tired, an exhaustion I can’t sleep away,” said Prairie McLaughlin, a 33-year-old protester, sitting inside the teepee in which she has been camping. She said that despite the brutality she and others have faced from local police, “I feel like failure is not an option.” 4
_____________________________________________________________________________
1
For more information on the United States’ relationship with Indian tribes, see CRS Legal Sidebar WSLG253, The
United States Relationship with Indian Tribes and Federal Indian Policy, by Jane M. Smith.
2
Separately, some tribes also have time immemorial rights to water resources based on tribal water uses that preceded the establishment of reservations.
3
4
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/north-dakota-access-pipeline-protest-last-stand
Incarnational Opportunity and Creativity
Sep 27th
Incarnational Opportunity and Creativity
27 September, 2016
Sky McCain
“It is the testimony of the wisdom bearers that we come here from the realm of the unconditional in order to experience the conditional. Our original spirit nature is unconditional love, but apparently we set that aside temporarily in order to fully participate in the human experience. We are typically attracted to such an incarnational opportunity because it represents something so different than our actual state as light being souls, and hence is intriguing to us in our natural curiosity and trajectory towards infinitely expanding Self-awareness.”
From Bob O’Hearn “Self and Other”
The clarity of the description above has stimulated me to inflate my ego enough to offer an idea that has resided within me for many years. Firstly, I suggest that we are, among many other attributes, “reality structurers.” Reading Seth from Jane Roberts and in later years Vadim Zeland about Transurfing has supported my view that we not only in great part “make” our reality but actually can “choose” our reality in the sense of the life-path we are following. From Lynn Margolis I learned about the symbiotic theory of evolution that points to a basis of love and cooperation rather than random chance and deadly competition. From here, sprinkled with other bits and pieces of pertinent information my vision manifested as follows:
Creative development is a fundamental attribute of Consciousness. All of what we call “things” shine with some amount of this Consciousness and all things express Consciousness to the extent of their abilities. Parallel to the realm of what modern science calls aliveness has come a renewal of the Panpsychism or minds in a world of mind. I can now proceed to my hypothesis. Large organisms, such as a planet, contain almost unlimited potential and are largely limited by the level of consciousness they are expressed through. Lower order levels of consciousness strive, through what we call creativity, to expand their awareness and consciousness channels. To cut to the chase, we may desire to be a planet, our next higher holon in the holarchy of our known existence. Our experience must be immense and our ability to channel love greatly deepened. Our power is in the present, the dance, and it is dance all the way up and down.
Warding off Despair
Aug 14th
Warding off Despair
“The Power That Preserves” Book Three of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by
Stephen R. Donaldson October, 1978
“Further, I tell you that there is no blame for us in the wisdom or folly, victory or defeat, of the way we have elected to defend the Land. We are not the Creators of the Earth. Its final end is not on our heads. We are creations, like the Land itself. We are accountable for nothing but the purity of our service. When we have given our best wisdom and our utterest strength to the defence of the Land, then no voice can raise accusation against us. Life or death, good or ill – victory or destruction – we are not required to solve these riddles. Let the Creator answer for the doom of his creation.”
Pg. 48
The feeling of helplessness, reinforced by almost daily reports of another ecological disaster, can easily result in despair. Despair can also be the result of suppressed rage against those who cruelly and wantonly destroy our Earthly life support systems. A lot of us suppress rage over the knowledge and helplessness as we encounter more and more exploitation, especially economic. All too often, this suppressed rage descends into a deep despair and we find ourselves just adding power to the very dark spirits that we rage against. These dark forces, Vadim Zeland calls them “pendulums”, suck up our anguish and feed on it making the pendulum even stronger.
I think the quote above can assist us in realizing that we do not need to take on the blame and responsibility for saving the Earth. The burden is too heavy and will sink us into oblivion or what Christians call hell. Earth, as a living, loving and intelligent being needs our support and loving energy but does not and cannot expect us to carry the weight of guilt in not “fixing” the damaging attitudes arrayed against her. We cannot and need not take on the responsibility of a planet being.
Love of the Earth
Jan 27th
“You carry Mother Earth within you,” says Thay. “She is not outside of you.”
Thich Nhat Hanh interview with Jo Confino, an executive editor of the Guardian
http://www.ecobuddhism.org/wisdom/interviews/tnh-be
I am so grateful for the message of Thich Nhat Hanh who gets right to crux; the missing, fundamental principle of why so many humans do not love the Earth and thus will not sacrifice for that which they do not love.
“You carry Mother Earth within you,” says Thay. “She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life. Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.
Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing. So to breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it and realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Not to cut the tree not to pollute the water, that is not enough.”