Mother Earth needs "cathedral thinking" from all of us.
The Frontispiece Quote from Gretta Thurnberg. Her reference to "cathedral thinking" comes from her speech, delivered in April of 2019. She is the Swedish teenage activist who challenge us to act now and to do the seemingly impossible.
Page 8 -The phrase "Global Environmental Emergency" has been chosen after much consideration. It is Global because it is. This is not an emergency that excludes any part of our Globe. Further, it requires large-systems-thinking to address. All the parts of our Globe are interconnected into a whole, and thus a problem in one part impacts all the other parts. Solutions in one part can also impact the whole, and therein lies some of our hope. Environmentalwas chosen in order to keep our focus on the natural world within which we live and move and have our being. Certainly this is an emergency that has vast tendrils that spread out into every corner of creation. Emergency. Using the tired phrase "climate change" just doesn't convey the urgency. This is truly and emergency.
Page 8 -Mother Earth. A phrase with it origins back in ancient Greece, it has become a common way of naming the source of life upon our globe. I've chose it because it is commonly understood, and because it is such a delightfully warm and neutral term that evokes the transcendentals of goodness, truth, and beauty. Mother Earth has both agency and communion. She is often appreciated to be a goddess. We are supposed to love our mother. We are to be about Loving Mother Earth with great reverence for the life she gives us.
Page 8 - Honestly, I have been a lazy environmentalist. Still am, in spite of writing this book. Old habits are hard to break. My background is in the Christian faith. My father was an esteemed pastor in a small mainline protestant denomination. He and my mother served four parishes over the years, mainly in the New York Metro area - Long Island and Norther New Jersey. I was raised in Reformed tradition - Calvinism with its emphasis on the five principles of TULIP. Here they are: the Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistable grace, and Preservation of the saints. Interesting, huh? Mine was a very word/Bible centered indoctrination. However, I have been imbued with wonderment. When I took psychology in college and we studied rats running through a maze, tracking their behavior in order to appreciate that they behaved with 98% consistency when stimulated. As for me... fascinated by that other 2% who wouldn't run the maze! What is out there beyond conformity? I am an evolutionary, a becomer, a participant in the BIG BLOOM that continues to emerge. I have traveled farther and further yet. Today I have my sights set on a post-progressive world view that integrates one and all. Out of my journey, this book has emerged. A family motto, carved in wood by my brother Chris, hangs in our homes: The Courage to Grow and the Right to Fail. We each are to step beyond our fear, to be courageous in our effort to grow. And we are all to give each other the right to fail. Life is an experiment in creative grace.
Page 10 - Consciousness is a tough subject to grasp. Consciousness exists at the subtlest of levels as awareness, as information given and received. Behavior is more easily observed. We can, for example, take images of your brain as it behaves, but we don't really know what is on your mind when you head is in a fMRI or SPECT machine. We do know that as one's consciousness shifts, there are corresponding behavioral changes. To address our Global Environmental Emergency we need to shift our consciousness, and our behavior. Both.
Page 10 - Regeneration of Mother Earth will take a lot of work. In fact, "regeneration" is a hot topic in the environmental world and will remain so for years to come. We must regenerate our planet or it will be uninhabitable for life as we have known it. That is the truth. No skirting around it. Regenerate or perish. The very systems that we are dependent upon for life will no longer be present if we do not regenerate the earth.
Page 11 - There is no Planet B. I have a green t-shirt with that message on the front. Yes, Elan Musk is focused on Mars, but that is a long shot. If our species wrecks this planet what hope will there be for Mars when we get there? If we get there. And think of all the beautiful pieces of creation that will not be on Mars with us. No lions, tigers or bears on Mars. No sports. Just think about it. We don't really want to sustain our survival by re-locating to Mars, do we?
Page 12 - The Inconvenient Truth as Al Gore names it, is this: Mother Earth is expelling us. I'll talk more about the extremes of Deniers and Catastrophizers soon, but for now, let's just accept the fact that it will not be convenient for us to change in order to prevent Mother Earth from expelling us. Yes, if we keep doing what is convenient, we will be expelled. In fact, we are in the process of being kicked out of existence as I write this. We have to face the truth and shift from convenient to courageous.
Page 14 - How big a deal is "Climate Change"? It is URGENT and IMPORTANT. I believe the science. This is Mother Earth's natural response to what is mainly a man-made problem. This is an urgent Global Environmental Emergency. This is the most important challenge facing our planet and everyone who lives on it. And yes, LOVING MOTHER EARTH is our shared mission.
Page 17 - The Amplifying Feedback Loop we seek is increased environmental engagement, which feeds our spiritual evolution, which feeds our environmental engagement, which feeds our spiritual evolution... and as we expand we might just convince Mother Earth not to expel us.
Page 18 - Are you drawn toward being a more engaged environmentalist? I have to assume so, or you wouldn't have read this far. Are you drawn toward evolving spiritually? That, too, begs a positive assumption. It is true that there is more to know than you have learned. More about how to regenerate Mother Earth, and more about how to evolve toward being an Enlightened Lover. Without end. It all is without end unless we choose to stand still. Stagnation will undo us. A lack of wonderment, a lack of curiosity, a lack of imagination, a lack of exploration, a lack of experimentation... will undo us all.
Page 19 - Enlightened Lovers. That's the call. That's the goal. We are on a mission to help each other to become Enlightened Lovers. In Chapter 7 we will explore the the journey toward Enlightened Love. It is a journey that you and I are on separately, and together. If we don't continue on, there is no hope. Seriously. It is that important. No hope for sustaining Mother Earth and with that, spiders and ants, dogs and cats, men and women will perish all over our planet. This is the BIG aspiration! Make it the goal of your life. Become an Enlightened Lover.
We are in this together. Each of us is a part of this community regeneration project, and each of us is working apart from the others, doing our own thing to persuade Mother Earth to keep us here.
Email me your thoughts, you comments, question, wonderments, challenges. I've published a first edition of LOVING MOTHER EARTH and the second edition will be richer for the feedback you have given me.
As the African Proverb says, it does take a whole village to raise a child. And, it will take a whole village of readers, commenting on what is here, to raise up a better edition of LOVING MOTHER EARTH. Please email you thoughts to me at andy@andyatwood.com. Thank you.