Why Activism Needs The Sacred, By Carolyn Baker

Why Activism Needs The Sacred, By Carolyn Baker

Cherishing the sacred in our activism and in our visions of revolutionized communities and cultures increases the likelihood that we will resist from our hearts and not simply from our heads. As a result, the new paradigms out of which our visions are realized will engender authentic transformations with more enduring resilience as opposed to reinventions of formerly oppressive systems. As we integrate the sacred with activism, we ally with all aspects of our being beyond merely the mental and physical, thereby opening to an expanse of possibilities that we had previously excluded. In sacred activism, the mystic, the artist, and the activist become one integral person who realizes that both great works of art and social change derive from a source within, yet also beyond the bounds, of their own skin, to embrace the body of the world.

The Greatest Danger, By Joanna Macy

The Greatest Danger, By Joanna Macy

How do we live with the fact that we are destroying our world? What do we make of the loss of glaciers, the melting Arctic, island nations swamped by the sea, widening deserts, and drying farmlands? If you’re really paying attention, it’s hard to escape a sense of outrage, fear, despair. Author, deep-ecologist, and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy says: Don’t even try.

Finding The Light In The Era Of Permanent Winter Solstice, By Carolyn Baker

Finding The Light In The Era Of Permanent Winter Solstice, By Carolyn Baker

This year as we in the Northern Hemisphere approach the annual winter solstice on December 21, we abide not only in seasonal darkness but in what appears to be a permanent psychic darkness resulting from catastrophic climate change and near-term extinction. In our despair, we may ask ourselves if there is any point in seeking to find any light in this terminal darkness. Why don’t we just mimic our bear brethren who willingly descend into the darkness for the winter and hibernate? Why not eat, drink, sate ourselves, sleep in, check out, and die? After all, glimpses of light are only poignant reminders of our inescapable predicament.

The Future Of Planet Earth: Are We The Last Surviving Generations? Radioactivity And The Gradual Extinction Of Life, By Dr. Rosalie Bertell

The Future Of Planet Earth: Are We The Last Surviving Generations? Radioactivity And The Gradual Extinction Of Life, By Dr. Rosalie Bertell

How grateful we must be for this magnificent gift of life and all we have needed to sustain it over the last hundreds of thousands of years! Yet, today it is under threats never felt before in its entire unfolding journey!“ Rosalie Bertell (Slowly Wrecking Our Planet, 2010) We are presented with the chance of an awakening from the deceptive dream of a righteous way how things are working. We have the opportunity to recognize that in the end what counts are only the recognition and practice of the joy of living and the love of life! However, this life as it is possible on this earth – unique in our cosmos – is incredibly endangered today. If we manage to recognize this, then paradoxically we can grow toward the ability of perceiving and experiencing this joy and this love anew or maybe for the first time in its full dimension – and this time without any naivety, but rather as an answer to the question about what we can actually really do in face of this fear provoking threat towards life and the earth: Namely to stand up for them – beyond feelings of fear and anxiety – what else!?“ Claudia von Werlhof (Two Years Of Planetary Movement for Mother Earth: The Fear and – What to do?“, 6th Letter of Information of the PMME, June 2012)

We Are Deluding Ourselves: The Apocalypse Is Coming–And Technology Can't Save Us, By Tim Donovan

We Are Deluding Ourselves: The Apocalypse Is Coming–And Technology Can't Save Us, By Tim Donovan

Last week, Salon ran an article, “Thanks for killing the planet, boomers!,” where I argued that it’s wholly unrealistic to assume humanity will undertake the massive, world-changing, economy-disrupting policy solutions needed for us to even stand a chance of long-term survival. Given that our local political and economic systems are as fragile, stalled and polarized as they’ve been in most of American history, these predictions only seem more dire, and the problem only more intractable. Which is why I’m constantly amazed by the notion that our technology will somehow save us, what I’ve come to consider the deus ex machina defense.

Gratitude And The Gift Of Life, By Michael Meade

Gratitude And The Gift Of Life, By Michael Meade

Consciously feeling part of the whole of creation is an aspect of the collective human inheritance of the gift of life (see attached video). Holidays and holy days found all over the world are intended to bring us back to the sense that life is a gift continuously waiting to be uncovered, to be revealed and be seen anew. The giving of gifts and acts of thankfulness, the lighting of candles and sharing holiday cheer in the dark of the year demonstrate that we know in some way that there is an underlying wholeness and holiness to life. Whether it is Hanukkah or Thanksgiving, Christmas or Winter Solstice, New Year’s Eve or a festival of light, the human instinct to move closer to the source of light and life intensifies when the world around us grows darker and colder.

The Torture Of Not Knowing, By Carolyn Baker

The Torture Of Not Knowing, By Carolyn Baker

With catastrophic climate change we do know two things: We know that it is progressing with unimaginable speed, and we know that if it continues to do so, there will be few habitable places on earth by mid-century. Yet what else are we not being told? Does the silence matter? Will it make a difference ultimately? With Fukushima, however, we know so much less. How much radiation has already been released? How much is being released every day? How much radiated water is actually being dumped into the Pacific Ocean every day? What is the actual size of the radiation plumes that are moving eastward in the Pacific toward the West Coast of North America? Specifically how are these affecting sea life and human life? What is the relationship between environmental illnesses or the incidence of cancer and Fukushima? And the questions exacerbate and spin and swirl in our minds.