CARING FOR CREATION

Our natural world is a treasure. We must never lose our sense of awe at the magnificence of our planet.
Learning about nature 'and how to live in harmony with' nature,
Is a wonder of discovery. Many people are now coming to realize that we must choose to work with nature if our civilization is to survive and flourish. Spiritbride & Bridal Veil Sanctuaries promotes a 'Science ' founded on a living, and holistic ethic; also a socio-economy founded upon 'Green' Markets. We are spreading the word on the World Wide Web. Help us make compassion for all living things, the virtue that is reality!

REAL ENERGY SOLUTIONS.. CLICK HERE!


The importance of environmental sustainability and the conservation of biological diversity cannot be overstated.
Simply, if we succeed in destroying the web of life we may also succeed in destroying all life. A main problem associated with conserving our environment; and hence its biological diversity, is economic procedures. That is to say; it is the way that industry, technologies, and agriculture, are implemented in practice that are in need of revision if we are to maintain a sustainable environment. Also, we must restructure our 'Knowledge Authority System' so that it is compatible, not contrary, to an ecological approach. Further, giving women an authoritative voice ( Their rightful voice ) within our culture, will promote a much needed nurturing ethic. These changes will only come about by appropriate social action. Appropriate action will only happen if the general public is informed of the necessity, appropriately educated, moved in their hearts, and apathy and resistance are overcome. Revising underlying management structures within our economic structure will contribute to the correct social and environmental action. However, it is the realization of a ‘spiritual aspect’ to the conservation of all life, that will be the primary mover in the successful creation of a beautiful and healthy world. The offering of a solution and the providing of hope, will 'in fact' do far more to motive people to action then continual ‘doom’ saying. However, we should never forget that man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it; whatever he does to the web, he does also to himself. Consequently, we need to reweave our world vision. A greening of the human mind must precede the greening of the earth. If we act now, these problems do have a common solution. It is the purpose of this document to outline an approach that will reveal how to begin moving in a direction of positive change.


    All the various forms of life on earth are unique and irreplaceable and there are many reasons for protecting each from premature extinction. Wild plants and animals are a source of beauty, wonder, and joy. Most of the world's population relies on plants or plant extracts for medicines. Many of these medicines have active ingredients extracted form wild species. Wild plants and plants domesticated from wild species supply rubber, oils, dyes, fiber, paper, lumber, and other useful products. Wild species supply us and other species with food from the soil and sea, while recycling nutrients essential to agriculture helping maintain soil fertility. Each species has scientific value because it can help scientists understand life. Yet, after decades of scientific study we still know relatively little about the abundance of life in such areas as the rain forests or coral reefs. Amazingly, we know more about the surface of the moon. Each species of the millions of orgainisms found in these places holds secrets locked in the code of its genetic makeup. Some few of these secrets have been discovered; enough to reveal that these areas are important to our future well-being. Each orgainism has made its unique adaptation to life. And the information encoded in its genes may prove invaluable. Because biodiversity is a vital part of the Earth capital that sustains all life, preserving the planet's genes, species, and ecosystems, must be seen as one of our most important priorities. We all must come to fully understand that the ecosphere together with the earth's mineral resources, is the source of all the goods and wealth produced by human labor. That this wealth depends on the ecosphere. It depends on the sun, the rain and the green herb. In this sense, money does indeed grow on trees, and only because of trees. wealth extracted from the earth's natural resources is not only used to satisfy immediate human needs, such as food and shelter; it is also used to produce all the implements of civilization. And yet of all the changes that have happened to man, perhaps the least understood is his loss of the land, of weather, of growing things, and a knowledge of his body that these things give. We do not know much about man's ecological needs, but we readily assume that he has none to be taken seriously. However, In the spring, on the first soft, sunny day after the long winter, man feels a nameless longing. Could it be that he is not entirely without the need for birds, blossoms, hope and spring weddings. Could it be that there is, at the very least, a biological link to the land. How is it that this is not included in our scientific outlook?

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The environmental crisis is a sign that the ecosphere is now so heavily strained that its continued stability is threatened. It is a warning that we must discover the source of this dangerously ill stimulus and control it before it consumes the environment and ourselves. Every institution must seek its own renovation and renewal. Precisely in those areas where modern man has seemed most prosperous and secure, most efficient in action, most adept in thought, we begin to realize that something has been left out of his regimen, something essential to his organic balance and development. Could it be himself, and his connection with the land?

Over the last decade the concept of biodiversity has fundamentally changed the way conservationists approach nature and natural resources. Biological diversity, is the life support system underlying all our efforts towards sustainable growth and development. The conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity calls for new tools and new approaches. Economics has a large role to play in the development of these new tools and approaches.
It should be made perfectly clear that environmentally sound technologies are also economically viable. Technologies such as heat-pump technology assisted by passive solar design in architecture, not only work extremly well, in the long run they is less expensive to own and maintain. Advancing technology has yielded steady gains in energy efficency throughout the past century. However we are currently capable of accelerating this process. Vast improvements in the design and maintenence of electric motors could by themselves eliminate the need for hundreds of large power plants around the world. Simply decreasing the 'wieght' or mass of automobiles through the use of ceramics, plastics, and composite matirials would extend gas mileage considerably. This alone would make a drastic cutback on fuel oil consumption within society. Converting the internal combustion engine, the powerhouse of the automotive industry, from burning fuel oils to burning natural gas, which burns cleaner and is less expensive, is one example of what sort of applications need to be inacted. Once inacted this conversion would allow a future conversion to hydrogen technologies, which in effect burn water. Hydrogen powered cars would be powered by more direct energy conversion processes through the use of fuel cells and electric/hydrolic motors. They would have better range and performance than today's cars but with virtually no emissions. Another application of current technological capabilities is the employment of oil drilling techologies within geothermal power generation. We have the technology to create a temperture differential almost anywhere on the globe. While these energy sources may be more expensive to develop, the energy system as a whole could be far more economical. The problem is that this source of energy is not considered 'high grade'. Which really means that it does not produce the highest market returns in the shortest time. However, in the long term this form of application in technology is less harmful to the environment and less expensive to maintain. No completly new technologies are need to transform the fuel-oil based global economy. What stands out is the enormous abundance and versatility of alternative resources. An economy based on renewable energy would be stronger, more stable, and less polluted than today's economy. We are currently capable of using technology to start a conversion process within industy to achieve both purposes of a clean, beautiful earth as well as provide the civilization of man.
A viable and dynamic idea for change is to use the very mechanism that moves the corporate engine to improve that same system. This can be accomplished through what is known as Green Marketing. Green Marketing is an idea that all of us, whatever our political view, can endorse. Specifically, Green Marketing refers to the promotion or advertising of products produced with environmental concern. More generally, Green Marketing consists of a broad range of activities, including product modification, advertising modification, packaging changes, and changes in the production process. Ultimately Green Marketing looks at how marketing activities utilize of natural resources, while satisfying consumer wants, as well as achieving industries objectives. In a capitalist system your purchasing power is your practical vote. Money is a symbol, a form of exchange, representing the energy spent in human endeavors, if we use money for indifferent purposes, human energy is squandered indifferently.

However, how we use our money; for good or for evil, is our own decision, and we all take part. The action required to bring change can be supplied by the laws of supply and demand in the marketplace. It is there that business will not underestimate the power of the consumer. It is there that you, personally, can take back the power. Therefore, the most serious effect of an environmental recovery program on the economic system can be generated by the simple requirement of the rational use of its productive capacity, through Green Marketing. An extension of Green Marketing is socially responsible investing, or investing with your conscience. This can be applied by individual or institutional investor across the political spectrum who wish to follow investment strategies that coincide with their own personal beliefs, as well as enjoy a competitive rate of return; proving that higher principles can have a higher rate of return. Wealth retraining would have the effect of changing the compulsive consumption conduct we have been brainwashed with. The simple concept of promoting barter within the community and neighborhood would provides a wealth of human relation and wholesome pleasure. The simple practice of trading homemade goods for backyard services is not only thrifty and practical, it is personally rewarding as well.
The fact is that environmental deterioration is caused by human action and exerts painful effects on the human condition.

The environmental crisis is therefore not only an ecological problem it is also a social one. Extrapolation from this would imply that conservation and enviromental principles and associations would have an intimate relations with humanitarian and social organizations and issues. This relationship can be understood on the level of every day jobs and schooling. With more people making vocational choices than ever before, the social and environmental impact of these choices has increased dramatically. Unless we begin to factor into our career choices a sense of our responsibility to the environment and human community, continued environmental degradation and social disintegration are inevitable. Therefore: Marketing organizations should be integrated into social service and conservation organizations. Where marketing profits are directed equitably between responsible private enterprise and environmental and humanitarian concern.

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There are many promising alternatives to our current practices and proceedures. We can have new technologies such as ceramics in materials production, ocean resource development in aquaculture, small scale power source development, and environmentally compatible civil engineering, provide the necessary growth required for continuing expansion. Dematerialization, mimiaturation, and nanotechnology, are ways to decouple economic growth from a concomitant increase in the consumption of material resources. The silicon chip is a classic example. Solar cells and computer chips are very small, highly productive, and made from one of the most abundant materials in the world; sand. We can have the promotion of natural cottage industry supply universal employment in the form of rubber trees, fruit orchards, cotton dresses and silk purses. Individually we can favor natural products such as wool and down within our own lifestyles We can make food production and distribution top of our priority list as a nation and as part of the family of man. Making the most of earth's productivity while doing the least damage. Individually we can take simple steps such as having the meat from mammals play a smaller role in our diet, while replacing it with exciting gourmet alternatives.

New food sources, polyculture, and agroforestry, can play an important role in the conservation of biodiversity and environmental sustainability. Polyculture, a more complex form of intercropping, is an agricultural method in which many different plants are planted together and mature at different times. If cultivated properly, these plots can provide food, medicines, fuels, and natural pesticides and fertilizers on a sustainable basis. Agroforestry is another important practice that can be promoted. Agroforestry, or alley cropping, is a variation of intercropping in which crops and trees are planted together. For example, a grain or legume crop may be planted around orchard trees or in rows around fast growing trees or shrubs which have useful properties. New food sources are extremly viable. An example of this is the winged bean. The winged bean is a protein-rich legume now common only in New Guinea and Southeast Asia. This plant yields so many different edible parts that some call it a " supermarket on a stalk. " And because of nitrogen-fixing nodules in its roots, this fast growing plant needs little fertilizer. Raising more fish through the practices of fish farming and fish ranching is viable. Fish farming involves cultivating fish in controlled environments and harvesting them when they reach the desire size. Fish ranching involves holding species in captivity; usually in fenced-in or floating cages in coastal lagoons.

consumers can vote with their buying dollars to sway market demand to bring more environmentally friendly products into the marketplace.

Bamboo flooring is a rising trend in home flooring and a great alternative to traditional hardwood floors. It is the most environmentally friendly natural hardwood flooring alternative you can select for your home, it is a renewable resource, is stronger than steel, and has a greater resistance to expansion and contraction problems associated with temperature and humidity changes.

 

Further examples of this is the fact that soaps do not pollute; being basically a salt, while detergents are synthetic and do pollute. It is because detergents are inexpensivly made and provide huge profits that they are promoted instead of soaps. A further illistration of this can be seen in the use of synthetic drugs instead of natural medicines. All medicines originate from nature, not from the test tubes of organic chemistry. We all know the effects of tabacco on the body. Many of us have recognized that the opiates are in constant use for the relief of pain. Yet, there are few of us that know that herbs are an important part of many drug formulas, ointments, and medicines, both as an intergral part or as the beginning of a synthetic drug. Unfortunatly, the use of herbal medicine requires the diversification of any focus of power or hierarchies found in the current pharmaceutical corporations. A clever intrique clearly exists, though well-disquised, to wipe from our memories the fact that herbs have any significant value at all. Farms distributed geographically across the globe could provide viable, effective, and healthy medicines while fostering holistic thinking. Compare this to the current practices of the pharmaceutical industry which promotes its own best interests while holding the public hostage to its pills and their side effects and ignoring the value of biological resources. And the herbalist who understands the medicinal value in herbs has been branded as a quack.
 

So, what about unemployment and the labor to restore our natural resources? Not many people remember or are told about a real success story that happen during the great depression. In response to the Great Depression, The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), was established in early 1933. The CCC's mission was two-fold: to reduce unemployment, and to preserve the nation's natural resources. CCC projects centered around constructing dams and dikes, planting vegetation and trees, stabilizing stream banks, and erecting numerous buildings, fire towers, telephone lines and support facilities. CCC enrollees throughout the country were credited with renewing the nation's decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees from 1933 to 1942. By 1942, 53 national wildlife refuges had benefited directly from corps work Indian reservations, and other public lands also benefited. Before it was over, over three million young men had been employed The CCC was largely responsible for a reduction in crime. The CCC existed for only a short time, but some estimate its work pushed American conservation efforts ahead by fifty years. All CCC camps offered education programs for enrollees. Many members got their high school diplomas through the CCC. Some even took correspondence courses from colleges. Journalism was a popular class and most camps published their own newspapers or wrote regular columns for the local town papers. The United States entry into World War II foreshadowed the end of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Congress terminated the program on July 2, 1942, sending these young men to the military. The CCC legacy, however, lives on in the nation's landscape and in the hearts of its members and their descendants. There are still CCC alumni chapters throughout the country.

What is preventing all of these hopeful possibilities from realization? Sorrowfully, there is an oppositional force that must be overcome. This opposition comes from the desire for money and power within large institutions, corporations, and 'good old' boys' clubs. It also comes from the promotion of the half-truths advertised by these powers in public media and propaganda. Corporate assistance is the missing piece of the debate on economic reform. If you cut 26 percent of the welfare now given to the rich you have instantly balanced the budget. If you cut out wealthfare, you could pay off the national debt of 8 trillion dollars in 12 years. Corporate welfare creates an uneven playing field. By giving selected businesses and industries special advantages, corporate subsidies put businesses and industries that are less politically well connected at a disadvantage. All too often, the firms and industries that contribute the most to political campaign coffers are the largest recipients of government handouts. Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress granted the authority to spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize the computer industry, or to enter into joint ventures with automobile companies, or to guarantee loans to favored business owners. The enormous and myriad subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, tax loopholes, debt revocations, loan guarantees, discounted insurance and other benefits conferred by government on business-is a function of political corruption. Corporate welfare programs siphon funds from appropriate public investments, enable pharmaceutical companies to gouge consumers, injure our national security, and weaken our democracy. It is raw political power that creates and perpetuates most corporate welfare programs. The public commonwealth is corporatized to enrich the already-rich.

There is no serious public policy argument for why television broadcasters should be given control of the digital television spectrum-a $70 billion asset-for free. Until we remember that major media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America, and that the media elite are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the information content, and the general use of media resources. The restructuring of media in the United States is creating forms of censorship that are as potentially damaging as overt censorship. Some have even blacklisted artists that speak out on controversial issues.

The endless tax loopholes that are worth billions to oil companies-cannot be explained by any exotic theory of fair taxation. But it can be explained by the power of the oil lobby.

The war in Iraq has costs 400 billion so far. With that money we could have provided 20 million students four year scholarships or we could have ensured that every child in the world was given basic immunizations for next 134 years.

 

Socrates said, the state is to us as a parent is to a child, and since it is wrong for a child to disobey a parent, it follows that it is wrong to disobey the state. Here we might raise serious doubts about the legitimacy of the analogy between our parents and the state. While the President and the Congress have gutted the welfare system for poor people-fulfilling a pledge to "end welfare as we know it"-no such top-down agenda has emerged for corporate welfare recipients. What has been directed against imaginary "welfare queens" has never been matched with parallel denunciations of corporate welfare kings. The new welfare law sets strict time limits for how long poor people can receive government supports, but no such time limitations attach to government handouts to big business. Perhaps the majority are just unwanted step children to the rich and powerful.

 

In Civil Disobedience”, Henry David Thoreau, stresses on the true importance of the individual. Unlike Socrates he does not see the value in sacrificing oneself for the sake of a government seeming to be an entity in and of Itself. I believe that just as Thoreau has spoken, “”There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.” We pay lip service to this idea now, but we all know the government really acts like the King’s men. High ideals can only be realized by the promotion and example of an abundant life for everyone. Can intention alone perform the necessary work? I believe this is the whole of Thoreau’s argument and I totally agree. Intention comes before action or inaction. All the ways of the world, with its wars, poverties, social injustices, toxic illnesses, crimes, are but a consequence to what we believe, It is done to us in accordance with what we believe. Fear and lies has been the picture painted by corporate and political greed as well as the constant doom saying of economic and environmental forecasters. However, we must fully understand that the ecosphere together with the earth's mineral resources is the source of all the goods and wealth produced by human labor. This wealth depends on the ecosphere, not on economic models or corporations. It depends on the sun, the rain and the green plants. In this sense, money does indeed grow on trees, and only because of trees.

 

Perhaps caring people can be transformed into a catalyst for social change. Myles Horton, and the people who made up the Highlander School, championed the working class, empowering them to stand up to the factory owners and politicians. The C.C.C. restored the countries resources. Cannot we do the same?

More than half of the scientists who ever lived are alive today. More than half of the discoveries in the natural sciences have been made in this century. More then half of the goods produced since the earth was born have been produced in the two centuries since Adam Smith. Over half the books ever written were written in the last half-century. More new books are published each month than were written in the entire historical period before the birth of Columbus.

Discovery and invention have not stopped or even slowed down. Who can imagine what will be discovered if research continues to accelerate? Each discovery reveals new mysteries. The more we learn, the more we realize how ignorant we were in the past and how much more there is still to discover.

 



What and who are we denying in our 'modern world'?

Women have long been associated with the medicinal use of herbal plants. However, women have never been given their rightful place along side of man. It has been said "Look to the wounds to search for the source that heals." So let us look, let us look into the foundations of our philosophies and spiritual values. We can no longer afford outdated and uncomprehensive theories within our sciences! Neither can we hold onto values the do not benifit life and all that lives! We can no longer deny the voice of our sisters and mothers! If we look we will find that there is a common fault, and a common solution!

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The culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natural world, and the uselessness of Christianity to any effort to correct that destruction, are now established cliches of the conservation movement. This is a problem for two reasons: First, the indictment of Christianity by the anti-Christian conservationists is, in many respects, just. For instance, the complicity of Christian priests, preachers, and missionaries in the cultural destruction and the economic exploitation of the primary peoples of the Western Hemisphere as well as of traditional cultures around the world, is notorious. Throughout the five-hundred years since Columbus's first landfall in the Bahamas, the evangelist has walked beside the conqueror and the merchant, too often blandly assuming that his cause was the same as theirs. Christian organizations, to this day, remain largely indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and of its traditional cultures. It is hardly too much to say that most Christian organizations are as happily indifferent as most industrial organizations to the ecological, cultural, and religious implications of industrial economics. The certified Christian seems just as likely as anyone else to join the military-industrial conspiracy to murder Creation.

The conservationist indictment of Christianity is a problem, secondly, because, however just it may be, it does not come from an adequate understanding of the Bible and the cultural traditions that descend from the Bible. The anti-Christian conservationists characteristically deal with the Bible by waving it off. And this dismissal conceals, as such dismissals are apt to do, an ignorance that invalidates it. The Bible is an inspired book written by human hands; as such, it is certainly subject to criticism. But the anti-Christian environmentalists have not mastered the first rule of the criticism of books: you have to read them before you criticize them. Our predicament now, I believe, requires us to learn to read and understand the Bible in the light of the present fact of Creation. This would seem to be a requirement both for Christians and for everyone concerned, but it entails a long work of true criticism--that is, careful and judicious study, not dismissal. It entails, furthermore, the making of very precise distinctions between biblical instruction and the behavior of those peoples supposed to have been biblically instructed.

I cannot pretend, obviously, to have made so meticulous a study; if I were capable of it, I would not live long enough to do it. But I have attempted to read the Bible with some of these issues in mind, and I see some virtually catastrophic discrepancies between biblical instruction and Christian behavior. I don't mean disreputable Christian behavior, either. The discrepancies I see are between biblical instruction and allegedly respectable Christian behavior.

If, because of these discrepancies, Christianity were dismissable, there would, of course, be no problem. We could simply dismiss it, along with the twenty centuries of unsatisfactory history attached to it, and start setting things to rights. The problem emerges only when we ask, Where then would we turn for instruction? We might, let us suppose, turn to another religion--a recourse that is sometimes suggested by the anti-Christian environmentalists. Buddhism, for example, is certainly a religion that could guide us toward a right respect for the natural world, our fellow humans, and our fellow creatures. I have a considerable debt myself to Buddhism and Buddhists. But there is an enormous number of people, and I am one of them, whose native religion, for better or worse, is Christianity. We were born to it; we began to learn about it before we became conscious; it is, whatever we think of it, an intimate belonging of our being; it informs our consciousness, our language, and our dreams. We can turn away from it or against it, but that will only bind us tightly to a reduced version of it. A better possibility is that this, our native religion, should survive and renew itself, so that it may become as largely and truly instructive as we need it to be. On such a survival and renewal of the Christian religion may depend the survival of that Creation which is its subject.

If we read the Bible, keeping in mind the desirability of those two survivals--of Christianity and the Creation--we are apt to discover several things that modern Christian organizations have kept remarkably quiet about, or have paid little attention to.

We will discover that we humans do not own the world or any part of it: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein" (Ps. 24:1). There is in our human law, undeniably, the concept and right of "land ownership." But this, I think, is merely an expedient to safeguard the mutuality of belonging without which there can be no lasting and conserving settlement of human communities. This right of human ownership is limited by mortality and by natural constraints upon human attention and responsibility; it quickly becomes abusive when used to justify large accumulations of "real estate," and perhaps for that reason such large accumulations are forbidden in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. In biblical terms, the "landowner" is the guest and steward of God: "the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. 25:23).

We will discover that God made not only the parts of Creation that we humans understand and approve, but all of it: "all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made" John 1:3). And so we must credit God with the making of biting and dangerous beasts, and disease-causing microorganisms. That we may disapprove of these things does not mean that God is in error, or that the creator ceded some of the work of Creation to Satan; it means that we are deficient in wholeness, harmony, and understanding--that is, we are "fallen."

We will discover that God found the world, as he made it, to be good; that he made it for his pleasure; and that he continues to love it and to find it worthy, despite its reduction and corruption by us. People who quote John 3:16 as an easy formula for getting to heaven neglect to see the great difficulty implied in the statement that the advent of Christ was made possible by God's love for the world--not God's love for Heaven or for the world as it might be, but for the world as it was and is. Belief in Christ is thus made dependent upon prior belief in the inherent goodness--the lovability--of the world.

We will discover that the Creation is not in any sense independent of the Creator, the result of a primal creative act long over and done with, but is the continuous, constant participation of all creatures in the being of God. Elihu said to Job that if God "gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together . . . " Job 34:15). And Psalm 104 says: "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created.... " Creation is God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian, Philip Sherrard, has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden being."(n1) Thus we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate. To every creature the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. As the poet, George Herbert, put it,

Thou are in small things great, not small in any.... For thou art infinite in one and all.(n2)

We will discover that, for these reasons, our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. To Dante, "despising Nature and her gifts" was a violence against God.(n3) We have no entitlement from the Bible to exterminate or permanently destroy or hold in contempt anything on the earth or in the heavens above it or in the waters beneath it. We have the right to use the gifts of Nature, but not to ruin or waste them. We have the right to use what we need, but no more, which is why the Bible forbids usury and great accumulations of property. The usurer, Dante said, "condemns Nature. . . for he puts his hope elsewhere."(n4)

William Blake was biblically correct, then, when he said that "everything that lives is holy."(n5) And Blake's great commentator, Kathleen Raine, was correct both biblically and historically when she said that "the sense of the holiness of life is the human norm...."(n6)

The Bible leaves no doubt at all about the sanctity of the act of world-making, or of the world that was made, or of creaturely or bodily life in this world. We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time. But what keeps it from being far better known than it is? Why is it apparently unknown to millions of professed students of the Bible? How can modem Christianity have so solemnly folded its hands while so much of the work of God was and is being destroyed?

"The sense of the holiness of life" is not compatible with an exploitive economy. You cannot know that life is holy if you are content to live from economic practices that daily destroy life and diminish its possibility. And many if not most Christian organizations now appear to be perfectly at peace with the military-industrial economy and its "scientific" destruction of life. Surely, if we are to remain free, and if we are to remain true to our religious inheritances, we must maintain a separation between church and state. But if we are to maintain any sense or coherence or meaning in our lives, we cannot tolerate the present utter disconnection between religion and economy. By "economy" I do not mean "economics," which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of Nature. To be uninterested in economy is to be uninterested in the practice of religion; it is to be uninterested in culture and in character. Probably the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: What sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints, of "right livelihood"? I do not believe that organized Christianity now has any idea. I think its idea of a Christian economy is no more or less than the industrial economy--which is an economy firmly founded upon the seven deadly sins and the breaking of all ten of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable iniquities, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy--which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.

A second reason why the holiness of life is so obscured to modem Christians is the idea that the only holy place is the built church. This idea may be more taken for granted than taught; nevertheless, Christians are encouraged from childhood to think of the church building as "God's house," and most of them could think of their houses or farms or shops or factories as holy places only with great effort and embarrassment. It is understandably difficult for modern Americans to think of their dwellings and workplaces as holy, because most of these are, in fact, places of desecration, deeply involved in the ruin of Creation.

The idea of the exclusive holiness of church buildings is, of course, wildly incompatible with the idea, which the churches also teach, that God is present in all places to hear prayers. It is incompatible with Scripture. The idea that a human artifact could contain or confine God was explicitly repudiated by Solomon in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple: "behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee: how much less this house that I have builded?" (1 Kings 8:27). And these words of Solomon were remembered a thousand years later by St. Paul, preaching at Athens:

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands....

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said.... (Acts 17:24 and 28)

Idolatry always reduces to the worship of something "made with hands," something confined within the terms of human work and human comprehension. Thus Solomon and St. Paul both insisted upon the largeness and the at-largeness of God, setting him free, so to speak, from ideas about him. He is not to be fenced in, under human control, like some domestic creature; he is the wildest being in existence. The presence of his spirit in us is our wildness, our oneness with the wilderness of Creation. That is why subduing the things of nature to human purposes is so dangerous, and why it so often results in evil, in separation and desecration. It is why the poets of our tradition so often have given Nature the role, not only of mother or grandmother, but of the highest earthly teacher and judge, a figure of mystery and great power. Jesus' own specifications for the church have nothing at all to do with masonry and carpentry, but only with people; Jesus' church is "Where two or three are gathered together in my name" (Matt. 18:20).

The Bible gives exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) attention to the organization of religion: the building and rebuilding of the Temple; its furnishings; the orders, duties, and paraphernalia of the priesthood; the orders of rituals and ceremonies. But that does not disguise the fact that the most significant religious events recounted in that book do not occur in "temples made with hands." The most important religion in the Bible is unorganized, and is sometimes profoundly disruptive of organization. From Abraham to Jesus, the most important people are not priests, but shepherds, soldiers, men of property, craftsmen, housewives, queens and kings, manservants and maidservants, fishermen, prisoners, whores, even bureaucrats. The great visionary encounters did not take place in temples, but in sheep pastures, in the desert, in the wilderness, on mountains, by rivers and on beaches, in the middle of the sea; when there was no choice, they happened in prisons. However strenuously the divine voice prescribed rites and observances, it just as strenuously repudiated them when they were taken to be religion:

You new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mind eyes from you: yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isa. 1:13-17)

Religion, according to this view, is less to be celebrated in rituals than practiced in the world.

I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypaethral book, such as Thoreau talked about--a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes.

What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined. When you think you have captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left. It is after this foolish capture and the inevitable escape that you get translations of the Bible that read like a newspaper. Holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not sound like a newspaper.

It is clearly impossible to assign holiness exclusively to the built church without denying holiness to the rest of Creation, which is then said to be "secular." The world, that God looked at and found entirely good, we find none too good to pollute entirely and destroy piecemeal. The church, then, becomes a kind of preserve of "holiness," from which certified lovers of God dash out to assault and plunder the "secular" earth.

Not only does this repudiate God's approval of his work; it refuses also to honor the Bible's explicit instruction to regard the works of the Creation as God's revelation of himself. The assignation of holiness exclusively to the built church is therefore logically accompanied by the assignation of revelation exclusively to the Bible. But Psalm 19 begins: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork." The word of God has been revealed in fact from the moment of the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis: "Let there be light: and there was light." and St. Paul states the rule: "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead. . . " (Rom. 1:20). And from this free, generous, and sensible view of things, we come to the idolatry of the book: the idea that nothing is true that cannot be (and has not been already) written. The misuse of the Bible thus logically accompanies the abuse of Nature: if you are going to destroy creatures without respect, you will want to reduce them to "materiality"; you will want to deny that there is spirit or truth in them, just as you will want to believe that the only holy or ensouled creatures are humans, or only Christian humans.

By denying spirit and truth to the nonhuman Creation, latter-day proponents of religion have legitimized a form of blasphemy without which the nature- and culture-destroying machinery of the industrial economy could not have been built--that is, they have legitimized bad work. Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors Nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. And such blasphemy is not possible so long as the entire Creation is understood as holy, and so long as the works of God are understood as embodying and so revealing God's spirit.

In the Bible we find none of the industrialist's contempt or hatred for nature. We find, instead, a poetry of awe and reverence and profound cherishing, as in these verses from Moses' valedictory blessing of the twelve tribes:

And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that croucheth beneath,

And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon,

And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills;

And for the precious things of the earth and fullness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush.... (Deut. 33:13-16)

I have been talking, of course, about a dualism that manifests itself in several ways; it is a cleavage, a radical discontinuity, between Creator and creature, spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, worship and work, etc. This dualism, I think is the most destructive disease that afflicts us. In its best known, its most dangerous, and perhaps its fundamental version, it is the dualism of body and soul. This is an issue as difficult as it is important, and so to deal with it we should start at the beginning.

The crucial test is probably Genesis 2:7, which gives the process by which Adam was created: "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul." My mind, like most people's, has been deeply influenced by dualism, and I can see how dualistic minds deal with this verse. They conclude that the formula for man-making is: man = body + soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Genesis 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula given in Genesis is not man = body + soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man of dust; by breathing his breath into it, he made the dust live. Insofar as it lived, it was a soul. The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul; it became a soul. "Soul" here refers to the whole creature. Humanity is thus presented to us, in Adam, not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together, but as a single mystery.

We can see how easy it is to fall into the dualism of body and soul when talking about the inescapable worldly dualities of good and evil or time and eternity. And we can see how easy it is when Jesus asks, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matt. 16:26) to assume that he is condemning the world and appreciating the disembodied soul. But if we give to "soul" here the sense that it has in Genesis 2:7, we see that he is doing no such thing. He is warning that, in pursuit of so-called "material possessions," we can lose our understanding of ourselves as "living souls"--that is, as creatures of God, members of the holy community of Creation. We can lose the possibility of the at-one-ment of that membership. For we are free, if we choose, to make a duality of our one living soul by disowning the breath of God that is our fundamental bond with one another and with other creatures.

But we can make the same duality by disowning the dust. The breath of God is only one of the divine gifts that make us living souls; the other is the dust. Most of our modern troubles come from our misunderstanding and misvaluation of this dust. Forgetting that the dust too is a creature of the Creator, made by the sending forth of his spirit, we have presumed to decide that the dust is "low." We have presumed to say that we are made of two parts: a body and a soul, the body being "low" because made of dust, and the soul "high." By thus valuing these two supposed-to-be "parts," we inevitably throw them into competition with each other, like two corporations. The "spiritual" view, of course, has been that the body, in Yeats's phrase, must be "bruised to pleasure soul." And the "secular" version of the same dualism has been that the body, along with the rest of the "material" world, must give way before the advance of the human mind. The dominant religious view, for a long time, has been that the body is a kind of scrip issued by the Great Company Store in the Sky, which can be cashed in to redeem the soul, but is otherwise worthless. And the predictable result has been a human creature able to appreciate or tolerate only the "spiritual" (or mental) part of Creation, and full of a semiconscious hatred of the "physical" or "natural" part, which it is ready and willing to destroy for "salvation," for profit, for "victory," or for fun. This madness constitutes the normality of modern humanity and of modern Christianity.

But to despise the body or mistreat it for the sake of the "soul" is not just to burn one's house for the insurance, nor is it just self-hatred of the most deep and dangerous sort. It is yet another blasphemy. It is to make nothing, and worse than nothing, of the great Something in which we live and move and have our being.

When we hate and abuse the body and its earthly life and joy for Heaven's sake, what do we expect? That out of this life that we have presumed to despise and this world that we have presumed to destroy, we would somehow salvage a soul capable of eternal bliss? And what do we expect when, with equal and opposite ingratitude, we try to make of the finite body an infinite reservoir of dispirited and meaningless pleasures? It is the same spite and destruction, the same poor, preposterous assumption that Paradise can be recovered by violence, by assaulting and laying waste the gifts of Creation.

(Times come, of course, when the life of the body must be denied or sacrificed, times when the whole world must literally be lost for the sake of one's life as a "living soul." But such sacrifice, by people who truly respect and revere the life of the earth and its Creator, does not denounce or degrade the body, but rather exalts it and acknowledges its holiness. Such sacrifice is a refusal to allow the body to serve what is unworthy of it.)

If we credit the Bible's description of the relationship between Creator and Creation, then we cannot deny the spiritual importance of our economic life. Then we see how religious issues lead to issues of economy, and how issues of economy lead to issues of art, of how to make things. If we understand that no artist--no maker--can work except by reworking the works of Creation, then we see that by our work, by the way we practice our arts, we reveal what we think of the works of God. How we take our lives from this world, how we work, what work we do, how well we use the materials we use and what we do with them after we have used them--all these are questions of the highest and gravest religious significance. These questions cannot tee answered by thinking,but only by doing. In answering them, we practice, or do not practice, our religion.

The significance--and ultimately the quality--of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.

If we think of ourselves as merely biological creatures, whose story is determined by genetics or environment or history or economics or technology, then, however pleasant or painful the part we play, it cannot matter much. Its significance is that of mere self-concem. "It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing"--as Macbeth says it is, when he has "supped full with horrors" and is "aweary of the sun."(n7)

If we think of ourselves as lofty souls entrapped temporarily in lowly bodies in a dispirited, desperate, unlovable world that we must despise for Heaven's sake, then what have we done for this question of significance? Not much, I think. For we are still stuck, like Macbeth, in a condemnation of this life and this world, which were not made for our condemnation. If we divide reality into two parts, spiritual and material, and hold (as the Bible does not hold) that only the spiritual is good or desirable, then our relation to the material Creation becomes arbitrary, having only the quantitative or mercenary value that we have, in fact, and for this reason, assigned to it. Thus we become the judges, and thus inevitably the destroyers, of a world we did not make, and that we are bidden to understand as a divine gift.

It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in this world either signifies nothing or has only a negative significance.

If, on the other hand, we believe that we are living souls, God's dust and God's breath, acting our parts among other creatures all made of the same dust and breath as ourselves; and if we understand that we are free, within the obvious limits of mortal human life, to do evil or good to ourselves and to the other creatures--then all our acts have a supreme significance. If it is true that we are living souls and morally free, then all of us are artists. All of us makers, within mortal terms and limits, of our lives, of one another's lives, of things we need and use.

This, Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote, is "the normal view," which "assumes. . . not that the artist is a special kind of man, but that every man who is not a mere idler or parasite is necessarily some special kind of artist.... "(n8) But since even mere idlers and parasites may be said to work inescapably, by proxy or influence, it might be better to say that everybody is an artist--either good or bad, responsible or irresponsible. Any life, by working or not working, by working well or poorly, inescapably changes others' lives, and so changes the world. That is why our division of the so-called "fine arts" from "craftsmanship" and "craftsmanship" from "labor" is so arbitrary, meaningless and destructive. As Walter Shewring rightly said "the plowman and the potter have a cosmic function."(n9) Bad art in any trade dishonors and damages Creation.

If we think of ourselves as living souls, immortal creatures, living in the midst of a Creation that is mostly mysterious--that, even when visible, is never fully imaginable--and if we see that everything we make or do cannot help but have an everlasting significance for ourselves, for others, and for the world, then we see why some religious teachers have understood work as a form of prayer. We see why the old poets invoked the muse. And we know why George Herbert prayed, in his poem "Matters":

Teach me thy love to know; That this new light, which now I see May both the work and workman show.. (n10)

Work connects us both to Creation and to eternity. This is the reason also for Mother Ann Lee's famous instruction: "do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live on earth, and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow."(n11)

Explaining "the perfection, order, and illumination" of the artistry of Shaker furniture makers, Coomaraswamy wrote: "All tradition has seen in the Master Craftsman of the Universe the exemplar of the human artist or `maker by art,' and we are told to be 'perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.'" And searching out the lesson, for us, of the Shakers' humble, impersonal, perfect artistry, that refused the modern divorce of utility and beauty, he wrote: "Unfortunately, we do not desire to be such as the Shaker was; we do not propose to 'work as though we had a thousand years to live, and as though we were to die tomorrow.' dust as we desire peace but not the things that make for peace, so we desire art but not the things that make for art. . . we have the art that we deserve. If the sight of it puts us to shame, it is with ourselves that the re-formation must begin."(n12)

Any genuine effort to re-form our arts, our ways of making, must take thought of "the things that make for art." We must see that no art begins in itself; it begins in other arts, in attitudes and ideas antecedent to any art, and in nature. If we look at the great artistic traditions, as it is necessary to do, we will see that they have never been divorced either from religion or from economy. The possibility of an entirely secular art, and of works of art -- made things -- that are spiritless or ugly or useless, is not a possibility that has been among us for very long. Traditionally, the arts have been ways of making that have placed a just value upon their materials or subjects, upon the uses and the users of the things made by art, and upon the artists themselves. They have, that is, been ways of giving honor to the works of God....

In denying the holiness of the body and of the so-called "physical reality" of the world -- and in denying its support to the economic means by which alone the Creation can receive due honor -- modern Christianity has cut itself off from both nature and culture. It has no competent interest in biology or ecology. And it is equally uninterested in any feature of culture by which humankind connects itself to nature: economy or work, science or art. It manifests no awareness of the specifically Christian cultural lineages that connect us to our past. There is, for example, a splendid heritage of Christian poetry in English that most church members live and die without reading or hearing or hearing about. Most sermons are preached without any awareness at all that the making of sermons is an art that, at times, has been magnificent. Most modem churches look like they were built by robots without reference to the heritage of church architecture or respect for the site; they embody no awareness that work can be worship. Most religious music now attests to the general assumption that religion is no more than vaguely pious (and vaguely romantic) emotion.

Modern Christianity has become, then, in its organizations, as specialized as other modern organizations, wholly concentrated upon the industrial shibboleths of "growth," counting its success in numbers, and upon the very strange enterprise of "saving" the individual, isolated, and disembodied soul. Having witnessed and abetted the dismemberment of the households, both human and natural, by which we have our being as creatures of God, as living souls, and having made light of the great feast and festival of Creation to which we were bidden as living souls, the modern church presumes to be able to save the soul as an eternal piece of private property. It presumes moreover to save the souls of people in other countries and religious traditions, who are often saner and more religious than we are. And always the emphasis is on the individual soul. Some Christian spokesmen give the impression that the highest Christian bliss would be to get to Heaven and find that you are the only one there -- that you were right, and all the others wrong. Whatever its twentieth-century dress, modern Christianity as I know it is still at bottom the religion of Miss Watson, intent upon a dull and superstitious rigmarole by which supposedly we can avoid going to "the bad place" and instead go to "the good place." One can hardly help sympathizing with Huck Finn when he says, "I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it."(n13)

  Jesus once compared the Kingdom to a
mustard seed which, upon dying to itself, becomes a mighty tree, thus providing
a nest for all the birds of the heavens. Likewise does Gautam Buddha talk about
a certain tree…a mighty tree whose roots reach down into the living heart of the
earth; a tree which provides shade and refreshment and shelter to weary
travelers coming along the weary paths of the Spirit—and this tree he called
Sila. That is what Sila means, literally. The word translates as: a green, lush,
life-giving, leafy shade-tree along the side a blistering hot and dusty road. It
is a place where people can rest up for a bit; have a picnic, or simply take a
nice long nap. It is a place by the wayside where people can enjoy themselves. I
find this really quite beautiful, all the more so because if you translate that
word into English it simply means morality! But what a way of looking at ethics,
hmm? No connotations here of sin, of damnation, of duty or obligation or of a
weighty burden. The question is though, just what kind of trees are we planting
for ourselves and for our neighbors? If our ethics are strident and hurting,
then we are planting cacti along side of the road. Maybe some of us plant
Peyote. Who knows? The point is though, our morality is not something we carry
around on our backs. It isn’t about doing this or that, or about passing
judgment, let alone about following a set of archaic instructions handed down to
us from on High through our ancestors (at least, St. Paul didn’t think so). It
has everything to do with who we are as people though, as human creatures, and
of how it is that we live out our lives in Her, who is all that is and is not. 
The ancient Greeks called it virtue—the sum total of all that creates us, and
this includes the environment within which we exist. In that sense, morality
isn’t anything personal, and we sure as hell can’t take credit for it. Virtue,
sila, ethics, morality—it is how we worship and give expression to our love; to
all of the love that wells up inside of us when we are feeling grateful and
happy and at peace with ourselves. Sila is how the Word which is Wisdom lives on
in us, and through us and as us. We are the instruments of Her peace, and we
have the choice as to whether or not we let go long enough for Her music to play
through our hearts and minds. We can focus our hearts on what is beautiful, and
thereby bring more beauty into that precious sanctuary of the World which She
is, and when we plant the Tree of our Lives, we plant for eternity. Don’t we?
Everything that creates us—all of our thoughts and feelings and actions and
hopes and dreams-- take on a whole new meaning when we see them within the
context of the infinite. Suddenly, how we wash the dishes or do the laundry or
get out of bed in the morning becomes just as important (and just as
meaningless) as how we feel about ourselves and how we treat others.

*

 

Deep ecology, Systems thinking, and Ecofeminism are terrms used to describe facets of an emerging world view. These philosophies are an intergral part of this world view, and this view is broad and encompassing. This world view involves a change form a mechanistic to an ecological paradigm. During the last century the change from the mechanistic to the ecological paradigm has proceeded in different forms and at different speeds in the various scientific fields. It is a paradigm shift that constist basically of moving from parts to wholeness. The emphasis on the parts has been called mechanistic, or reductionist. The emphasis on the whole, holistic, organismic, or ecological. This holistic perspective has also become known as 'systems thinking'. Systems thinking was pioneered by biologists who emphasized the view of living organisms as intergrated whole. This was further emphasized by the ecological sciences. In short, the holistic perspective says, that the whole is more then the sum of its parts. All of this is in contrast to the view that all of nature is a perfect machine. In the beginning of the industrial revolution, the old world view based on philosophy 'and' theology changed radically. The notion of an organic, living, and spiritual universe was replaced by that of the world being a machine. Like a swiss watch it was precise and exacte but not really anything more then a machine. This world machine became the dominant metaphor of the mordern 'scientific' era. In this view the material universe can supposedly be understood completely by analyzing it in terms of its smallest part; or reduction. The belief that in every complex system the behavior of the whole can be understood entirely from the properties of its parts is central to the Cartesian paradigm. This was Descartes's celebrated method of analytic thinking, which has been as essential characteristic of modern scientific thought. However, since that time there has been a profound discovery that systems cannot be understood by analysis. The properties of the parts are not intrinsic properties but can only be understood within the context of the larger whole. Thus the relationships between the parts and the whole has been reversed. In the systems approach the properties of the parts can be understood only from the organization of the whole. Systems thinking is contextual, which is in contrast to that of analytical thinking. Anaylysis and redution mean taking something apart in order to understand it. Systems thinking means putting the parts into the context of the larger whole. Few people today realize that this 'systems paradigm' also holds true in the sciences of physics and chemistry; fewer still realize that it is also true of mathamatics. Modern science has forced upon us the realization that the 'ultimate building blocks of the universe' subatomic particles are not ultimate unto themselves at all. The theories of quantum physics and relativity physics has forced scientists to accept the fact that the solid material objects and simple physical forces of classical physics disappear at the subatomic level into wavelike patterns and probabilities. These patterns, moreover, do not represent proabilities of things but rather of interconnections. Thus, subatomic particales and physical forces have no meaning as isolated entities but can be understood only by interconnections. Whereas in classical mechanics the properties and behavior of the parts determine those of the whole, the situation is reversed in quantum mechanics and it is the whole that determines the behavior of the parts. When the material universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events; none of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental. they all follow from the other parts, and the overall consistency of their interrelations determines the structure of the entire web. When this approach is applied to science as a whole, it implies that physics can no longer be seen as the most fundamental level of science. Since there are no foundations in the network, the phenomena described by physics are not any more fundamental then those describe by the life sciences. They may belong to different system levels, but none of those levels is any more fundamental than the others. Another important implication of this view of reality concerns the traditional concept of scientific objectivity. In the Cartesian paradigm scientific descriptions are believed to be objective; that is, independent of the human observer and the process of knowing. The new paradigm implies that epistemology-understanding of the process of knowing-must be included in the description of natural phenomena. All of this means that the 'web of life' must be included in the 'web of the universe' within our understanding of the material universe. Now the web of life is not a new idea. It is an idea which has been used by poets, philosophers, and mystics throughout the ages to convey their intuitive knowing. A way of knowing the interwovenness and interdependence all life and all phenomena. Today the paradigm shift in science, at its deepest level, implies a shift from physics to the life sciences. It is a shift to long in coming and a shift that may have come sooner if women had been given their rightful place and respect. this is because women are more inclined to a ecological perspective and the realization that the whole is more then the sum of its parts. For example, if the women of antiquity had been allowed an authoritative voice in the fields of science and philosophy they would have developed theories concerning the effects of the moon on biological organisms, thereby revealing an intimate link between physical forces in the heavens and the earth’s biosphere, and hence, it’s creatures and ourselves. This would require a nonlinear systems, multilevel network, or ecological paradigm to be developed within our world view of philosophy and nature (Physics). This would have been an effective counter force to the ‘machine’ view of the ‘clock works’ that has been dominant in science for so long. Simply, this is because our own biological clocks are not mechanistic in nature.


There are solutions to the major problems of our time, but they require a radical shift in our perceptions, our thinking, our values. We are now beginning to change our world view; a change of paradigms as radical as the Copernican revolution. Still, the recognition that a profound change of perception and thinking is needed has not reached our political leaders, corporate leaders, or the administrators or professors of our large universities. Our process of deductive logic has led civilization into a paradoxical maze that is contrary to the natural order. We must restore the simple truths through which mind and nature operate in a basic unity. A unity that is essential to our continuing existence. We need a powerful, brilliant vision of universal harmony. A vision which is capable of transforming today's reductionist, 'coldly objective' science. As they become thus transformed, science and technology would in turn hasten the transformation of the system of production. Thus, once begun, ecological recovery and humanitarian pursuits would become an expanding, self-accelerating process.


New lessons from the study of living systems have enormous implicatons for the way we visualize problems and conduct our affairs. Environmental protection is much more than sorting garbage, saving wildlife, preserving forest, and installing scrubbers on smokestacks, as important as these activities are. It is also about the nature of nature and how nature works. This includes human nature and why people make the desicions that they do. If we accept nature as infinitely rich, subtle, and irreducible as a philosophical foundation, we are already moving away from a mechanistic cast of mind that has dominated science for three centuries. It would then be possible to restore the essential mystery to the cosmos and to seek understanding within in the wider framework of celebration, relationship, and respect. When new methods and technologies, cut across the narrow lines of the current scientific disciplines, and when a life ethic replaces a cold production ethic, we might expect scientists to overcome their abstract, deductive, reductionism bias and to develop new areas of knowledge which, more closely than present ones, match the structure of the real world, the natural world, and more readily illuminate actual human problems.
The technology and productive capacity now so misdirected, can, if directed by the people for their own needs, provide within a few decades adequate food, decent housing and clothing, clean water and clean air, quality health care and quality education for the entire world population. All of this is possiable while sustaining a healthy living environment for all of God's creatures. The elimination of want and misery on earth; along with the making of a beautiful world, can in turn, set the stage for the human race to reach for the stars. The burden of renewal lies upon us; so it behooves us to understand the forces making for renewal within our persons and within our culture; and to summon forth the plans and ideals that will impel us to purposeful action. This is the goal of what is known as Deep ecology.

*

Deep ecology is the conviction that we must make a conscious descion to act on behalf of our world; that the basic environmental problem is one of attitude. If all people were agreed on the seriousness of the situation and convinced that something had to be done, the problem would be close to a solution. The difficulty about the environment is not only what to do with it, but also, what we think about it. In order to save the environment, ingrained attitudes toward it must be changed and redirected. If one looks realistically at the current situation, the threat to the environment is obvious. The person who resists environmental protection because he does not believe the changes are necessary, or because he will be discomforted, must be made aware of the fact that there does exist today a problem that presents a clear and present danger.


The forces that are causing desertification and deforestation and a hundred other kinds of environmental spoliation, as well as the social problems of poverty and the destruction of cultures, can readily be traced to a basic assumption in the dogmas of today's science. Namely, that there is no reality, worthy of interest, in religious experience.


We need to become renewed and share in the songs of life. We need to comprehend that there is a purpose to the universe. That there is a dance that all creation shares. We need to come to the understanding that just as the seed proceeds the root and is the completion of the flower, so is the joy of life also the essence of life. All real and permanent growth must begin here. We need to regain our connection with the natural world and with our inner selves. The human family has broken with nature's circle of life. Consequently there is a great fault with the society of man. If we are to find a different destination for our civilization, every part of our lives must be re-examined and overhauled. And unless we are to face unemployment on a absolutely appalling scale or the possibility of a near 'peasent' class of underpaid workers, fresh forms of work must be created. This new work will not be created by the government, neither will it be created by massive global corporations. It will only be created by individuals. It will be born of their inspirations, compassion, and natural talents. And more is at stake than our personal livelihoods, the livelihood of humanity is in question. This is because the very sustenance which sustains us is in peril.

We typically go to great lengths to provide for our children, investing heavily in education and health care? How much are we willing to invest in a habitable planet. How is it that we are so distracted by the symptoms, rather than the source, of our society's ailments, and so blind to the abuse of Mother Nature? To deal with our environmental problems is not just a matter of cleaning rivers or recycling glass bottles. It requires the questioning and redefining a value system which we have inherited! The human brain without doubt represents the pinnacle in the evolution of orgainized forms on this planet; but it is not the pinnacle of human evolution. Contrary to what some materialistic biologists would have us believe, the essential man is a spiritual being who uses the brain along with the rest of the body to unfold his inner faculties. And again contrary to what matrerial science effects to believe, the rational mind of man that functions through the brain still does not represent the highest point of human evolution. Beyond the rational mind there lies a realm of wonder and majesty. It is from this realm that man derives his feeling nature, his capacity to appreciate beauty in nature.


*

Ecofeminism is a new term for an ancient wisdom. It is a great and difficult idea; great because it finds hope and power in our bonds to each other and the earth, difficult because these bonds have been attacked and ravished.. Ecofeminism starts with the recognition that the fundamentally antiecological nature of many of our social systems and economic structures and their technologies is what is known as the dominator system of social organization. Ecofeminism can be viewed as a special school of social ecology because it addresses the basic dynamics of social domination within the context of patriarchy. However, its cultural analysis of the many facets of patriarchy and of the links between feminism and ecology go far beyond the framework of social studies. It is little wonder that the oppression of both women and Native Peoples has allowed them to see that the world of nature is also oppressed by the same self assertion and rugged individuality found in patriarchy and colonialism. Ecofeminists see the patriarchal domination of women as the prototype of all domination and explotation in the various hierarchical, militaristic, capitalist, and industrialist forms. They point out that the explotation of nature in particular has gone hand in hand with that of women. This is because women have been identified with nature throughout the ages. This ancient association of women and nature links women's history and the history of the environment and is the source of a natural kinship between feminism and ecology. Accordingly, ecofeminists view female experiential knowledge as a major source for an ecological vision. Ecofeminism does not stop short at the phase of dismantling the androcentric biases of our 'modern' society. Once the critique of such dualities as culture and nature, reason and emotion, human and animal has been posed, ecofeminism seeks to reweave new stories that acknowledge and value the biological and cultural diversity that sustains all life. These new stories honor women's biological particularity as crucial to the transformation of feminism. The presence of these strains of thought indicate that ecofeminism in not a monolithic, homogeneous ideology. In their hope for the creation of a new culture that would live with the earth, many women were inspired by the myths of ancient cultures in which creation was seen to be female and the earth was seen as sacred. Others were inspired by the symbols and practices of Native American cultures. Ecofeminism recognizes the lived connections between reason and emotion, thought and experience, through poetry, rituals, and social interaction, from tree planting to artistic communities. A feminine ecology teaches us that we must discover the balanced and harmonious vision that all people may share. Rugged individuality may have been useful in carving out a living from the wild frontier, and self assertion may be invaluable in a corporate hierarchy, but these values decrease in importance when they become a liability instead of an asset. The wilderness no longer needs carving out, rather, it must be restored. Corporate hierarchies need to be seen as the robbers they are. They need to be replaced with cooperative networks; replacing competition with cooperation. We must realize the connection in the changes in thinking and values. Both may be seen as shifts form self-assertion to intergration. Power, in the sense of dominaton over others is execessive self-assertion. Individuality is all elbows, it seperates and isolates, and if we mistake individuality for the personal life we will remain isolated. The characteristics of lindividuality are independence and self-assertiveness. It is the continual assertion of individuality that hinders our spiritual life more than anything else. Personality is that peculiar, incalulable something that is meant when we speak of ourselves as distinct from everyone else. There is a difference; personality is spiritual, individuality is not. When the Holy Spirit strikes a man, he is transformed, he no longer insists upon his separate individuality. Personality merges, and we only reach our real identity when we are merged; with another person, with nature, with God. Love is the outpouring of one personality with another personality. The Holy Spirit wants to bring us into union with Herself, but unless we are willing to give up the right to ourselves She cannnot. These spiritual truths are also very practical if we choose to utilize them. For example within our Knowledge Authority System the baneful effects of peer review and hyper-specialization can be overcome by the systematic synthesis of 'separate fields'. This would involve initiatives such as the encouragement of interdisciplinary research programs, and the organization of far more extensive interdisciplinary education at the undergraduate level. This is extremely important because it is generally not known that values are not peripheral to science and technoloy but constitute their very basis and driving force. During the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, Values were separated from facts, and ever since that time we have tended to believe that scientific facts of what we do and are, therefore independent of our values. In reality, scientific facts emerge out of an entire constellation of human perceptions, values, and actions.


It is also important to remember that the connection between science and technology, and the economic system is a two way affair. While economic activity depends on the productive processes generated by science and technology, the reverse is also true. Every knowledge system is shaped by the characteristics of the society that produces it. We are accustomed to considering the flow in the opposite direction, seeing how scientific and technological advances have shaped modern society. But it is of critical importance to recognize both flows. We have the kind of society we have in part because of the fruits of science and technology. But the converse is also true: we have the kind of science we have in part because of the particular nature of the society in which it was developed. Thus, the economic system, and the political ideology it expresses, imposes important constraints on the development of science and technology. One of these is simply money, which is provided by government agencies, private foundations, and business enterprises to support research and development. Those who provide this support can and do, influence the course of science and technology simply by choosing the areas they favor. An example of this shaping of science by society is seen in the current funding and support pattern. In the United States today, government funding of scientific research is , as a matter of policy, almost exclusively dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge that will contribute to the advancement of the elements of the 'corporate engine'. Thus, science and technology are not independent sources of information to be used or ignored by the social system, but rather are themselves commodities subject to the corporate engine. Nevertheless it remains true that whatever action is taken by productive enterprises or government agencies relevant to the ecosystem must depend on science for the necessary knowledge and on technology for the know-how.  Thus, we see the very important dual relationship between a society and the science that it develops. The scientific knowledge that has been gained influences the way we perceive the world. But, the way the world is experienced in a particular culture influences what kind of science gets developed by that society. The importance of the issues raised here can hardly be overestimated. It can be indicated by one simple observation. We in modern society give tremendous prestige and power to our official, publicly validated knowledge system, namely science. It is unique in its position; none of the coexisting knowledge systems of philosophy or theology is in a comparable position. Thus it is critically important that our science is adequate for its sphere of influence. It is impossible to create a well working society on a knowledge base which is fundamentally inadequate, seriously incomplete, and mistaken in its basic assumptions. Yet that is precisely what the modern world has been trying to do. A major part of the problem with the modern scientific world view is that it has not worked in the critical area of choosing and implementing fundamental value commitments. Because of this the world lacks a vision of a viable global future. The industrialized world, having lost any consensus on ultimate meanings and values, steers itself mainly by economic and financial signals serving as pseudo-values. In such a world, man's spiritual life is limited to that part of it which directly of indirectly serves science and technology; all other interests and activities of the person are suppressed as "non-objective". We must restore primacy to the human person; that is to say, we must nourish those parts of man's nature that have either been neglected or made over in the image of the machine. To overcome the distortions of technology, we must cultivate the inner and subjective as our ancestors during the last three centuries cultivated the outer and objective. But our proper goal is a balance between these essential aspects of the personality. We have a common responsibility to restore order and value and purpose, on the widest scale, to human life. 

This means we must find out how to make our subjective life more disciplined and resolute, endowed with more of the qualities that we have poured into the machine, so that we will not equate our subjectivity with the trivial and the idle, the disorderly and the irrational. If we are to move toward a more holistic and healthy world, then we must discover a way of unifying the statements of objective science with our personal vision of the world, and we must do this without diluting the authenticity of either approch. So then, first and foremost is the reawakening of the subjective and spiritual ground of humanity.

*

The drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually independent factors, but are in a reverse interdependence. The more the push toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the push toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the power of destructiveness. Clearly a society is perilous when its actions are no longer guided by what will make men healthier and happier, when its power is no longer in the service of life. We find ourselves living in a society of people who have discovered their own nonentity where they lest expected to; in the midst of power and technological achievement. Man today has a desperate need for spiritual depth and authenticity in his life. What we see around us in the pollution of the air, the streams, rivers, lakes, oceans, our woods and forests and countryside is but a dramatic image, externalized, of what man is doing within himself in the unlimited expanse of his inner spaces. The ground of this wretchedness is our lack of communion with the Divine. Our failure to realize the implications of the Incarnation, to accept the gift of union with God to the flesh, in all its aspects, is also the basic reason for the decline in the Church's vitality. Therefore the renewal of our world as well as the renewal of Christianity depend on accepting the Incarnation in all its fullness. We need to realize that under our feet lies a heart made of ground; created by our Creator. For without the realization of God's love for the world, we can love neither the world or God. In contemplation, therefore, The Holy Spirit calls us downward to Her suffering world. It is the Grace of God that changes darkness to light, and sorrow to joy. Once we experience in prayer the transfiguring power of God's love for us, we can love his world by surrendering ourselves to his presence.

Through the transforming power of love, the Holy Spirit enters our heart in order to serve and to bring God forth more radiantly, so that the whole world may recognize that he is the source of all being. Within the Holy Spirit we find the expression of Joy and Compassion, in a Divine Balance; and this Divine Balance is also expressed within Nature's Beauty, Male and Female, and Harmonic Rhythms. In discovering the Holy Spirit at our center, we discover Her also at the center of God’s world. In God , we can go forth and love the world as God loves it.

There is a Tibetan meditation on mothers in which you bring to consciousness the notion that everything that exists has been mothered-forth. Uncounted numbers of mothering creatures through the eons have brought forth life, gave it form and sustenance, and guarded it fiercely from danger and decay. Let us call upon the sacred energy of these mothers to renew our sense that we are not alone in the struggle to survive.



Seven Veils Sanctuary




 

 

Study Bible for Women
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Bush has allowed fuel prices to rise to a point higher than those during the 1970s.

 

When the Democrats took control of the White House they installed Solar Panels to encourage businesses and building/homeowners to use Alternative Means of Energy.  Clinton created tax incentives for businesses and building/homeowners who used Alternative Means of Energy and increased funding for programs to find viable Mean of Alternative Energy.  To encourage States and Cities to use Alternative Means of Energy, Clinton increased funding for the infrastructure of States and Cities that used Alternative Means of Energy, especially in their buildings and public transportation systems.  Clinton was trying to DECREASE the US's dependency on fossil fuels, especially foreign fuel.

 

When the Republicans took control of the White House they removed the Solar Panels and did away with the tax incentives for businesses and building/homeowners which used Alternative Means of Energy.  Bush cut funding for programs finding viable Mean of Alternative Energy and to Cities and States that were using Alternative Means of Energy, especially in their building and public transportation systems.  Bush, his administration, and the Republican Party did this because they were lobbied by their millionaire buddies/contributors in the fossil fuel business.  Bush has INCREASED the US's dependency on fossil fuels, both foreign and domestic.

 

Bush has also attacked and done away with environmental laws and laws protecting environmentally protected areas.  At the request of oil companies, Bush has allowed them to drill on environmentally protected areas.  Fuel has been found in some of these areas but the fuel is not being used to lower prices in the US, it is being sold and shipped overseas.  Bush is allowing his millionaire buddies/contributors and his family members in the fossil fuel business to pad their pockets at the expense of the average American.




 

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