Joanna Macy: “Declare Climate Emergency NOW”

Reposted from http://www.souland.org/blog/declare-climate-emergency-by-joanna-macy.
#DeclareClimateEmergency NOW

Note there is more information in a link at the end of this blog about the events we are encouraging folks to create, on the weekend of May 18/19.

They are as children, playing with their toys in a house on fire. 
~ The Buddha

An invitation to Dharma friends and all who love our beautiful planet and her myriad beings. Let us do what we can.

Breaking the Trance, Finding Refuge Together

This document aims to encourage collective engagement in a challenge so great, a revolution so profound, that everything has to be re-examined, overturned, and reconfigured. It has also arisen from within the Buddhist core ethos and practice of “Avoid evil, cultivate the good, and purify the heart.”

This is a call to action founded in the understanding that the mind precedes all and that action needs to be informed by inner spiritual work for optimum sustainability and success. The core intention of this document is to inspire us to come together to undergo, through deep reflection and sacred ceremony, the recognition that we have moved into a new world, a new calamitous reality that needs all of our conscious, collective engagement.

This is an invitation into a conversation that clearly acknowledges our world has undergone a state shift in the Earth’s biosphere due to exponential warming that is producing regular, devastating, extreme, weather events. The Earth is also undergoing rapid environmental dismemberment due to human activity. We are in the sixth mass extinction and at the cusp of runaway climate feedback loops that are heralding the collapse of human civilization.

In response to the urgency of our time, this document lays out, in brief, a pathway for one practical and vital action. This is to Declare Climate Emergency. This action starts with a conversation within our close relationships and near community, moving out to be requested from institutions, business, and demanded from government. Undertaking this process overcomes denial and procrastination while empowering us to be as creative and radical as we possibly can.

Our old way of high carbon use, of expendable resources, heightened individualism at the expense of the whole, and assuming life will go on as we’ve known it, needs to be recalibrated. For this we need each other, we need to be truthful, we need to undergo deeper levels of renunciation while drawing from the living Dharma, the living spirit of the Earth, and the compassion, truth telling, and power of Sangha, the community.

While the truth that we are headed toward extinction is a terrible shock, it has the potential to quicken our collective awakening powering a profound transformation of our world. This transformation begins within. We need to know ourselves, not only as individuals, but as co-creators within a deeply ensouled web of life where all is conscious. Once we align with the reality and depth intelligence of consciousness itself, we connect with a spiritual and moral power that gifts intuitive wisdom, guidance, and courage. It is this courage that will enables us to stand together to protect mother nature, grandmother earth, and all life.
Making the transition into our new reality, spiritually, psychologically, and in embodied, practical acts, frees us to engage this greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. The enormity of this task, for sanity, health, and well-being, has to be grounded in a careful, listening and mindful embodied presence while supported by daily practices that care for body, heart, and mind and our near relationships.

So welcome to journeying through these steps, we’ll be with you along the way. 

  1. Alignment with the Sacred
  2. Declaring Climate Emergency: Why & Our Demands
  3. Resources & How to Stay in Touch.

1. Alignment with the Sacred
Use Sacred Ceremony
As each piece of news about climate breakdown lands, it generates overwhelming shock, grief, and outrage. Yet, while unbearable, this shock is waking us up. We can honor our awakening process by creating an intentional sacred space and ceremonial process through which we cross the threshold from our old world, and old ways of operating, into conscious engagement with our new reality. Witnessing each other, we can make a firm commitment to align our personal lives, make sacrifices, and together, support each other as we gather the courage to engage. Every one of us is needed, every offering is important. There are many ways we can contribute, each according to their situation. Aligned with spiritual and moral power, resourcing ourselves, with determination and focus, we commit to work for a sustainable world.

Standing Rock on Every Street Corner
Standing Rock on Every Street Corner: Seven Lakota-Sioux Guidelines for Being in a Living Prayer & the Art of Collective Resistance.
We call on the spirit of Standing Rock. The spirit of all ancestors who strived for truth, equity, and freedom, and who embody compassion and wisdom. We call on all protector spirits of the earth, lands, oceans, rivers, forests, plants, and the elements. We call on all the forces of goodness throughout all time and all directions to be present with us now and to add their power, their guidance, and to bring their protection.
We recognize that all beings, even those who through greed, hatred, and delusion destroy and divide, share the same core consciousness. We hold all with compassion. We pray for all. We work for the children and grandchildren of all, regardless.
We recognize that all beings have received the gift of life through the power of Mother Nature, Grandmother Earth and all have the right to be here. We humbly step down from our ego fixation to align with the spirit of truth, wisdom, and compassion.
We ask for guidance at this utmost dangerous time. May our collective awakening quicken exponentially. We join together with purpose focused on the reclamation of the sacred web of life. We make a solemn vow to work to save a sustainable world for the future.

Sacred Activism: Informing Activism with Inner Work
Enduring and successful change movements such as Civil Rights in the US, Satyagraha in India, and Solidarity in Poland, were informed by non-violence, moral authority, and spiritual practice. Essentially, our planetary emergency is a spiritual crisis. We are stuck in a narrative and self-perpetuating reality founded in survival of the ego and its separative consciousness. However, our evolutionary cusp echoes into Indigenous knowledge that understands we live within a web of life and an ensouled world where self and other are in dynamic, consequential relationship.

In essence, we are awakening into the profound intimacy of all things, where we directly know that all beings, nature, the earth, and the cosmos are a part of ourselves. Spiritual practice is the process of embodying the reality of our deep interconnectedness. To enter and live these truths, and to sustain ourselves, we need meditative, devotional and prayerful practices and collective ways of entering mindful spaces of ‘being’, ‘presence’, and listening. Sacred Activism, a term coined by Andrew Harvey marries activism informed by depth compassion and wisdom.

We Should Not Do This Alone
We are in the midst of a Planetary Emergency. This is a watershed moment for humanity, where everything depends on how we respond. As we wake to our new reality, it’s incredibly impactful. We feel profound grief, fear, and outrage; a daily kaleidoscope of reactions and emotions. But we are not alone. Let us turn this pain to strength, clarity and focus so we can face this immense challenge together.
The systemic conditioning, underwriting our crisis, Patriarchy, Colonial Imperialism and Capitalism, leads us to believe we must struggle to survive as individuals, that we rise up or fall as individuals, and that it is our fault if we can’t “make it.” The impact of Disaster Capitalism (Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine) is the perpetuation of the slave-plantation economy upon which capitalism was built, manufacturing divisions through race, class, ethnicity, and nationality for its own exploitative ends.
However, with climate breakdown, we determine to shake off the spell of individualism and fabricated division. Instead, we work together to create new ways of being on this Earth that are collaborative, mutually supportive, empathetic, and authentic. Together, we can take courage and move through the fear of speaking out, of breaking rank, and of being disparaged. We speak up and out. We encourage ourselves and others to be mindful of our personal and communal carbon use. Together we commit to becoming more conscious. Together we are powerful .

Find friends, family members, communities, who are allies.

  • Take time together to speak about what we see, what we feel, what we know.
  • Acknowledge the urgency and enormity of what we face.
  • Bear witness to the loss of species, eco-systems, peoples, whole countries.
  • Create space to share our grief, our fears, our outrage, our hopes, our plans.
  • Create space to celebrate life together, to sing and dance and share food, to inhabit the best of our human-being-ness in connection and community, to share successes and good news and resources which uplift and restore us.

Orient Around a Statement of Purpose, e.g., this one inspired by G. Monbiot.
The world has been thrown into climate chaos, caused by fossil fuel companies, the billionaires who profit from them and the politicians they have bought. It is time to confront these oligarchs through massive mobilization, collective moral authority, acts of non-violent civil disobedience and a movement so big and politically dangerous that governments are forced to shut down the fossil fuel economy and restore the benign conditions in which humans and other species can thrive.
In Brief: We will hold unfettered corporate and political power accountable. We join forces to ensure that the sustainable, equitable, world we long for is secured.

The Power of Support Groups
Information doesn’t necessarily translate into behavioral change. We know what we need to do, but can’t always do it. However, working together is very effective. As we get active and engaged, creating support groups is a first step:

  • Join with others to create a plan of action, exploring and going over the details, how to do it, who to approach, materials needed, who is doing what.
  • Ground your action in mindfulness and group process, where everyone is heard, feelings and experiences are honored, and feedback is welcome.
  • While respectful listening is appropriate to those with experience in certain fields, when wisdom and compassion is offered, to those organizing, taking risks, doing more work, avoid power hierarchies and rigidity.
  • Engagement on the ground requires fluidity, communication, openness and agility. Non-violence inwardly and outwardly is a vital spiritual practice.
  • When an action finishes, take time to come back together, process, and support each other. Be sure to follow up with each other and on the outcome of your action.

2. Declaring Climate Emergency: Why & Our Demands
As we face climate breakdown, urgency intensifies daily. We have no time to lose and need governments, city and town councils, state legislatures, religious and educational institutions, business, civil society, leaders, families, and each one of us to respond assertively and swiftly to reverse rapid environmental breakdown.
It is time to break the spell of procrastination, denial and bargaining, and to break silence and dispel all ambiguity, by immediately declaring a Climate Emergency followed by strategies, investment, and radical changes that produce real outcomes.
We must mount a decisive response to our planetary emergency. Only a united national and global demand has the power to focus intention and overcome distraction, overwhelm, helplessness, and denial. The moral authority of collective action has the potential to shape political policy and direct economic resources to avoid further collapse of ecosystems and human civilization. We can each be a part of that.
But only if we act now. 
The reality of our dire situation is made clear by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published October 2018 by 91 scientists from 40 countries who received over 6000 references and 42,000 expert and peer reviewed publications. The report states: “Unprecedented changes are required if we are to avoid climate breakdown.” To avoid devastation and likely extinction, it is imperative we stay under the 1.5 °Celsius target established by the Paris Accord. However, according to a 2017 Nature Climate Change paper from the University of Washington, we have only a 1% chance of doing this and only 5% chance temperatures will be less than 2 °Celsius .

This alarming reality, and what it means for us, needs to be named and discussed on news outlets daily. 
In order to be motivated enough to increase political pressure, citizens need to be cognizant of our precipitous situation. We are already witnessing major tipping points: massive global ice loss, extreme ocean warming, failure of reef systems and crops, floods, droughts, wildfires, the destruction of wild habitat, and the rapid erosion of wildlife, ocean, insect and plant life.

If we continue burning fossil fuels and promoting animal industrial agribusiness, by 2030 a cascade of severe tipping points will begin to radically shift the world as we know it, meaning we could have an unrecognizable world as early as 2040. If we do not act to prevent this outcome, we will be condemning our children, our grandchildren, the generations to come, marginalized and under-resourced communities, low lying cities and lands, islands, most living species, and — sooner rather than later — all life on earth, to famine, chaos, catastrophic migrations, violence, and extinction. Facing up to our possible extinction is an immense shock. Yet, while the pull of despair and resignation is understandable, allowing a slide into chaos and unimaginable suffering is unthinkable. Instead, together, we have the power not only to avert this tragedy, but to build the sustainable, equitable, and more beautiful world of our highest dreams. We start by reducing carbon use in our lives, reaching out to others, and making a commitment to join together to demand governments and institutions Declare Climate Emergency.

Telling the Truth is Essential for Change
We need governments and media to tell the truth. They must state we are in a climate emergency, and that it is time to act. We must normalize a sense of urgency by sharing facts and by exploring radically new ways of living — through non-violent civil disobedience, by being on the streets, by speaking out, and by being part of a fast-growing international movement to drive government, industry, and business to act. We need the solutions — which are already there — to be implemented immediately.

This is the time for boldness, for not holding back.
While we are in a struggle against our own inertia and self-interest — the time and energy-consuming challenges of sustaining a livelihood, of supporting a family, of meeting responsibilities and attending to duties — the greatest threat is from those with immense power who in their utter ruthlessness welcome climate devastation as a means to seize as many assets as they can, plundering whatever is left. They know what is coming, and instead of reversing mass ecocide, they disseminate denial, distort facts, lie and obfuscate. Oil empires like ExxonMobil and entities like Koch Industries have known for decades that fossil fuels would lead to the terror of severe weather events that are now unleashed. Instead of public warnings and consequential acts to defend against climate breakdown, they willfully hide the facts, obstruct green energy and fund extreme climate-denying campaigns while seeking to control and manipulate democratic processes and media messaging through the vast reach of their wealth.

This profound betrayal of life itself has to be defined as a crime against humanity. 
We would be naïve to underestimate the power of those who are in the throes of destroying the collective future of all life on this planet for their own benefit. This is why we must be bold and transform outrage into a united fight for our collective lives. In spite of the malevolent and malicious powers acting against the welfare of the whole, the power of the people, standing up together, has always been greater.

Extinction Rebellion’s Central Climate Demands
Groups like Youth Climate StrikeSunrise MovementIdle No MoreIndigenous Climate ActionClimate Justice Alliance, represent a variety of approaches that share a common focus. Similarly, these demands, from Extinction Rebellion (XR) are an excellent focus.
1. Governments must tell the truth about the climate and the wider ecological emergency, reverse inconsistent policies and work alongside media to communicate with citizens.
Governments must tell the truth about how deadly our situation is, they must reverse all policies that do not align with that position and must work alongside the media to communicate the urgency for change including what individuals, communities and businesses need to do
2. Governments must enact legally binding policy measures to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025* and to reduce consumption levels.
Good intentions and guidelines won’t save the ice caps. Governments must enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and take further action to remove the excess of atmospheric greenhouse gases. They must cooperate internationally so that the global economy runs on no more than half a planet’s worth of resources per year.
3. National Citizens’ Assemblies to oversee the changes, as part of creating a democracy fit for purpose.
By necessity these demands require initiatives and mobilization of similar size and scope to those enacted in times of war. We do not however, trust our Government to make the bold, swift and long-term changes necessary to achieve this and we do not intend to hand further power to our politicians. Instead, we demand a Citizens’ Assembly to oversee the changes, as we rise from the wreckage, creating a democracy fit for purpose.
4.** We demand a just transition that prioritizes the most vulnerable people and indigenous sovereignty, establishes reparations and remediation led by and for Black people, Indigenous people, other people of color and poor communities for years of environmental injustice, establishes legal rights for ecosystems to thrive and regenerate in perpetuity, and repairs the effects of ongoing ecocide to prevent extinction of human and all species, in order to maintain a livable, just planet for all.
* The bind we are in is we need to radically reduce carbon emissions, which if done at high speed could crash the economy resulting in massive human casualties (unless there is a World War II style mobilization and immediate and vast investment in renewables). However, not reducing green-house gas emissions at warp speed will also result in massive casualties, and likely extinction. Whatever happens will be immensely challenging for us all. There is no easy way forward. This is not a document laying out detailed solutions, but rather an urgent call to action, with the understanding that as governments, civil society, business and each of us proactively participate, we will be part of the solution, and will activate an unstoppable momentum.

**The fourth demand from US XR is applicable to countries and peoples who suffered colonialism, slavery, and all ecosystems plundered and animals and species threatened.
Demands 1 and 2The Climate MobilizationBeyond Zero EmissionsRapid Transition AllianceGreen New Deal GroupOne Million Climate Jobs and The Breakthrough Institute.

Demand 3The Sortition Foundation.
What Needs to Happen to Secure the Future
In Accordance with the IPCC Report summary,each country must reduce emissions to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which means, according to Scientific American, carbon emissions need to fall by 50% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. The rate at which nations would need to reduce their emissions each year to reach those targets becomes steeper, and less attainable, every year emissions continue to rise. This means, according to a UN separate report on the “emissions gap”, that if actions to reduce are not strengthened by 2030, the 1.5C target will slip out of reach. This suggests the Paris commitments need to be tripled to reach a 2 C target and increase five-fold to reach a 1.5 C target. It’s important to understand that at 2 C the world radically changes.
Some points below are informed by XR.

  • Transform energy systems, invest in renewables and phase out fossil fuels.*
  • Increase insulation in buildings. Switch to green construction materials.
  • Transform agricultural systems reducing meat and dairy & erosion of topsoil. Invest in local plant-based agriculture, education, & food. End factory farms.**
  • Radically increase tree cover & hemp-based products to absorb C02, methane.
  • Invest in public transport, high speed rail, cut flights through a frequent flyer levy.
  • Countries, particularly those whose wealth is founded in colonial extraction, invest in other countries to develop clean technology.
  • Phase in carbon taxes for corporations & impactful fines for pollution.
  • Transfer government subsidies from the oil industry and animal factory farms to renewable green energy and plant based local agriculture.
  • A draw down of militarization and ending of massive military pollution driving climate and systems collapse. Accountability, from a people’s assembly, for the war industry. ***

*A Note on Nuclear Energy:
We are in the midst of an energy revolution where our relationship to nature is being reconfigured at speed. Because our immediate challenge is transitioning from high carbon producing energy, there is an argument that nuclear is the pathway forward. However, we need to be conscious that nuclear power poses a menacing force that has a poisonous and many-generational impact. The splitting of the atom, a Prometheus moment, heralded a petrifying age of feasible mass destruction that has overshadowed the planet since. Chernobyl and Fukushima are warnings of our inability to control nuclear power, (here.) As we reimagine and regenerate our relationship to the natural world and our energy needs, there is the potential to reassess our allegiance to nuclear power while at the same time demanding a global ban on nuclear weapons.

From Nuclear Energy Information ServiceYou Can’t Nuke Global Warming
**A Note on Plant-based Agriculture & Diet:
Animal agriculture is arguably the most destructive industry facing the planet today, in terms of climate change, deforestation, water use, species extinction, waste, ocean health, and land use (ref). And the harsh reality is that the purpose of animal agriculture in any form (whether factory farms or “happy” farms) is to incarcerate, steal from, and kill sentient beings in a practice of mass violence that is perfectly acceptable to most of society.

Our current climate crisis demands that we look at each aspect of life through the lens of how our choices, individually and collectively, contribute either to accelerating or decelerating climate breakdown. As Dharma practitioners, we are also challenged to look through the lens of how our choices align with the core values of non-harming and truth telling. This document is not proposing particular solutions, but, rather, honors and celebrates that each individual and community will have its own creative path and own particular needs in relationship to the many solutions, actions and choices available for moving forward.

That said, our intention is that part of this individual and collective work includes an honest look at our relationship with consuming animals and their products, and asking the difficult questions around whether this practice is still sustainable given what we know about science, and still ethically feasible given what we know about the harm and death we cause to millions (some estimates say billions) of land and sea animals every single day. This crisis point offers us an opportunity to reassess our current practices to see whether they are consonant or dissonant with a world that must mobilize against climate breakdown and in which violence of all forms must be addressed and healed if we are to survive.
***A Note on the Military Driving Global Warming & Systems Collapse

The Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy, and is among the world’s biggest polluters. The pursuit of imperialistic wars underwrites oil extraction from invaded countries and leaves a colossal and malignant legacy of intractable chemical pollution, like depleted uranium, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange, jet fuel and oil around the world. Military action alone resulted in 90 percent desertification in Iraq. The energy used by bloated militaries, which also perpetuate the arms industry to catastrophic effect, outstrips the oil used by many countries. The release of 20,000 tons of environmental “stressors,” including heavy metals and explosives into coastal waters of the US Pacific Northwest in 2017, and continuing, by the US Navy further destroys an already fragile ecosystem while replicating a pattern of massive environmental destruction around the world.

The unseen impacts of war are not usually discussed in the mainstream, but it’s important to heighten awareness as raising consciousness is a primary instigator of transformation. It is also essential to trace the cause of such massive aggression to the human mind. We are the crisis but we are also the solution. Many who enter the military land up becoming advocates for peace, like the thousands of US Veterans who travelled to Standing Rock to ask forgiveness of the Native peoples for the travesties of the past, and to join in nonviolent resistance to protect the Missouri River. Mni Wiconi: Water is Life.

Reaching Out
When approaching others or institutions to engage around a declaration of climate emergency, it’s effective to start by saying who we are, the terror felt by climate breakdown and the collapse of environmental systems. Be personal and authentic. Speak from the heart. Join together with others to make the case. Present the facts.
If you have a particular affinity and skills set, (religious, business, political, or have a connection by geography, nationality, identity), aim to contextualize your approach with your shared world view. Bear in mind that none of us are experts when it comes to living within the 6th mass extinction and the Anthropocene. We aren’t presenting ourselves as experts, but as citizens alarmed by our planetary emergency while passionate about making the changes we urgently need. We are primarily focused on influencing political power and democratizing and empowering citizens’ assemblies who can act in our and nature’s collective best interest.

We Know the Facts. We Have the Technology. We Need the Political Will
3. Resources
Inspirators of the Movement
Heading for Extinction Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion UK
Wes Clark interviews Margaret Klein-Salamon & Ezra Silk of Climate Mobilization
Interview with Native American Pennie Opal Plant, KPFA Visionary Activist Show.
Greta Thunberg, Youth Activist from Sweden, speaks at World Economic Forum
Greta Thunberg’s Climate School Strike goes Global
Climate Activists Can Learn a Lot from Black Lives Matter
Conservatives & Climate Change
Interview with Katharine Hayhoe Evangelical, Conservative Climate Scientist
Direct Action Everywhere Stop Violence to Animals, co-founder Wayne Hsiung

Declarations of Climate Emergency Are Already Happening
Cities, Councils That Have Declared Climate Emergency
To date over 305 councils have declared a climate emergency in the UK, Australia, Canada, and the US alongside cities such as London, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Bristol, Sheffield, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, Oakland, and Berkeley.

Primary Climate – DCE Sites
Get your Council to Declare
Declare Climate Emergency UK
Climate Emergency Resource Site
Extinction Rebellion
Carbon Offsets Supporting Innovative International Initiatives (& why it’s a temporary solution)

Examples 
Campaign Against Climate Change 
London Mayor Unveils plan to Tackle Climate Emergency
Vancouver Approves Motion to Declare Climate Emergency
Oakland Declares Climate Emergency
LA Council Members call for CE Mobilization Dept
Cities & Local governments that have declared committed 
The Bipartisan Climate Solution (USA)
The International Resource on Climate Emergency
Climate Emergency Meeting
London Borough of Lewisham Declares Climate Emergency
San Francisco Aggressive Game Plan to Tackle Climate Change
Climate Mobilization: Local Draft Implementation Plans

How to Get Climate Emergency Passed in Governing Bodies
Resource Pack from the Green Party UK for Getting DE Passed
Stroud District Council (Gloucestershire UK) Implementation of Climate Change Motion
Also  
People and Planet UK: Students campaigning for climate change, worker and migrant rights.
BBC Tell the Truth re Climate Breakdown
Make Ecocide a Crime Polly Higgins UK, Ecocide Law Expert

Conscious Food
Food is Power: Your Food Choices Can Change the World
Badass Vegan: You can still be cool and be vegan
Happy Cow: Eating out vegan
Vegan Challenge + great vegan starter pack + other great resource

Governments Must Call a World War II Scale Climate Mobilization
They must act and legislate for the survival of all, not just special interest groups, the elite, and the billionaire class.
Climate Mobilization  works with Extinction Rebellion to mobilize on a massive scale

4. Stay In Touch
We can do this. But it will be more powerful if we all do this.
WESAK AWAKENING

Join In: 18/19 May Full Moon 

We invite you to use the auspicious occasion of the full moon of Wesak, the remembrance of the Buddha’s awakening, over the weekend of the 18/19th May to Declare Climate Emergency Now.
Sign up here to stay connected to this initiative. In the coming weeks, we plan to:

  • Offer a guide and resources that you might use for a Declare Climate Emergency Now gathering on or around the Wesak weekend (May 18/19).
  • Announce a live webinar you and your community can join on Friday or Saturday of that weekend (May 17 or 18).
  • Have a community/ Sangha gathering in San Francisco (venue to be decided). If you can’t join us there, join us from your home base.

Join in From Where You Are 
Host a gathering of family, friends, sangha at your home or another’s home local to you. Or at your local sangha venue, or any other venue that is easy to access. If you can’t do the 18/19th May, find a time that works for you and for your community.
What to do? 
Use the guide on this page to explore what declaring climate emergency means for you, your friends, family, sangha.

An opportunity to share 
This is a great occasion to cook, or have a shared pot luck vegan meal, and to strengthen community refuge, which is vital for the times ahead.

Share Your Event 
Do a short write up or video and send it back to us. There will be a landing page on One Earth Sangha to build momentum, support and inspiration.

We Are the Change
We Are the Power
We Are Nature
We are the Earth’s Immune System Rising

Compiled by Thanissara Mary Weinberg, Buddhist Minister, Sacred Mountain Sangha.
Author of Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth
Thanks for feedback, input, edits, from: Joanna Macy, Richard Heinberg – Post Carbon Institute, Jan Boudart – Nuclear Energy Information Service, Charity Kahn & Anita Kline – San Francisco Insight, Mark Ovland – Actions & Logistics for XR UK, Joanna Graham – Green Party UK, Gwen Gordon – Project InsideOut, Sebene Selassie – Sacred Mountain Sangha, Kittisaro – Sacred Mountain Sangha. Yong Oh – Sacred Mountain Sangha. Gayle Markow.

An initiative of Sacred Mountain Sangha in Collaboration with One Earth Sangha
Working DCEN team: Thanissara, Anita Kline, Charity Kahn, Kitty Costello, Kristen Barker.

For more info and to sign up

https://oneearthsangha.org/programs/dcen/ Also, in the final version of the document, http://sacredmountainsangha.org/climate-emergency/, there is more information about the events we are encouraging folks to create, on the weekend of May 18/19.

So many Amazing Earth Wisdom Opportunities

There are just so many Earth-based and Soul-based opportunities, gatherings and circles that I am going to start keeping track of some of them here, as I just don’t know how to otherwise! I find these to be such important initiatives for our times. We all need access to these teachings.

What does it mean to hold council? For me, it means holding space for emergence. It is incredible what can happen when a few minds come together to sink into their hearts.

Holy listening – to “listen” another’s soul into life, into a condition of disclosure and discovery, may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another. ~Douglas Steere, author, teacher & Quaker Elder

Here is a lovely warm video about it.

Ways of Council has begun a list already, but there are so many others I want to add here. http://waysofcouncil.net/posts/circle-ways/

“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that eve has.”
~ Margaret Mead

https://www.treesisters.org/ – “Embracing Life through the Forest and the Feminine”

https://www.pachamama.org/engage/awakening-the-dreamer – The Pachamama Aliiance offers several levels of training, including Awakening the Dreamer, “a transformative educational program that explores the challenges facing humanity at this critical moment in time and the opportunities we as a human family have to create a new future.” The intensive was an incredible primer for me to know what is really going on out there.

https://workthatreconnects.org/ – Joanna Macy is a role model for me.

The central purpose of the Work that Reconnects is to help people uncover and experience their innate connections with each other and with the systemic, self-healing powers of the web of life, so that they may be enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization. ~ Joanna Macy

https://www.contemplative.org/ – coming from a different perpsective, Cynthia Bourgeault had to be included here because she is my favourite author!

…things do not lose spirit simply because they inhabit form… the created world is infinitely precious and valuable in its own right ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three

https://ignatiusguelph.ca/ – A place where I like to retreat to in Ontario, the Ignatius Jesuit Centre is a truly peaceful place where everyone is made to feel welcome and where an earth spirituality is openly embraced, along with an Abrahamic tradition.

Let’s not underestimate the importance of transformational life festivals in this movement. Here are a couple I really want to go to!

Why? Because right now, our whole global community and all the places we live in need healing from collective trauma, first for ourselves to then reach out to our communities, then to our landscapes, to finally contribute to a loving Earth community again, for She sustains our lives on this planet.

Not to say I enjoy healing circles, because I don’t, but I am fascinated by the emergent in well held council. It’s very intentional.

 

(The image above from the Animal Totem Tarot by Leeza Robertson)

Upcoming Meet and Greet, Guelph ON

postcard

This event is being hosted at the Guelph Organic Conference, upstairs from the trade show at the University Centre, University of Guelph, this weekend.

Movie Gathering Sum Up

It was a powerful evening of video and discussion on October 2nd, 2015. It left us with many after thoughts.

Being intentional is a big part of the way the Universe works in delivering abundance, it seems. How we honour the sacred (usually with rituals) is cultural and perhaps it does not matter what rituals are practiced or how we honour the sacred, only that there is intention and a practice for expressing it.

Our first movie of the evening was ‘The Gift,’ an NFB documentary that explores the sacredness of corn to the indigenous people of the Americas. It is my hope that the indigenous tradition can help us name this sacredness so that we can bring it back, make it come alive to us again and speak to us.

Based on the book The Universe Story by cultural historian Thomas Berry and cosmologist Brian Swimme, this inspiring 15 minute film takes one on a journey, from the birth of the Universe, through the arising of galaxies, the formation of the Earth, the emergence of life and finally to the development of human consciousness.
Based on the book The Universe Story by cultural historian Thomas Berry and cosmologist Brian Swimme, this inspiring 15 minute film takes one on a journey, from the birth of the Universe, through the arising of galaxies, the formation of the Earth, the emergence of life and finally to the development of human consciousness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second film of the evening, Awakening the Universe, tells the story of the birth of the Universe to the emergence of life and human consciousness as intentional developments of the evolving Universe. This includes the disturbing destruction we see all around us, because it is this that will wake us up so that we can shift forever into a place of connection, commonality and communion. This is the opportunity of our times.

Our gathering initiated a circle discussion exploring our relationships to the Earth, through land, agriculture, communities, ecosystems, spiritual well-being, and the possibilities for transformation.

I can’t put words to my personal experience on Friday, but from a group perspective, the circle discussion revealed to me that we need to name ‘it’, this sacredness or miracle of life. What are your thoughts?

Then I realized that we need to talk about it, everyone does. Can you imagine the local farmer walking in his/her local coffee shop excited to share the miracle of life they experienced with the birth of another calf (despite having seen hundreds of births perhaps) or to express their awe over a field of baby barleys springing up through the ground?

The image below came out from Bioneers a couple of days before our event on Friday. I’d also like to share a couple of videos. Jason Silva has over a hundred of these 2 to 3 minute videos about Awe. Here are just two: Awe; Life Emergence
the shift
Please feel free to share!

Moving into Phase 2 of Nuffield Project!

sacred-geometry-collageOctober 2nd 2015 Movie Night and Discussion

EXPLORING RELATIONSHIPS IN
AGRICULTURE AMONG PEOPLE,
ECOSYSTEMS AND SPIRITUAL
UNDERSTANDING

Movie showing followed by a discussion facilitated by
Ralph Martin. Join us in a comprehensive conversation
about relationships in agriculture and possibilities for
transformation.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 2nd, 6:30 pm
St. Mary’s, Ontario

Where: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/43%C2%B017’52.1%22N+81%C2%B009’48.1%22W/@43.2978051,-81.1633611,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0

Nuffield Scholars from Around the World Visit Huron County

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Rick Schilbe’s Maple Syrup
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Bayfield Berry Farm

 

 

 

 

The Town of Goderich has a great story to tell about resilience, as told by Susanna Reid from the County of Huron Planning Department. On the afternoon of Sunday, August 21, 2011, an F3 rated tornado tore across Huron County, striking many of the locations we saw on this tour, including the Port, the town’s Central Square, several of its largest industries including the salt evaporation plant, and damaging many homes.

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Salt being loaded at the Goderich Port
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Alan at the Compass Minerals Salt Evaporation Plant (sifto)
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Turning brine into salt for human consumption, water softeners and agriculture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tornado took only 13 seconds to cross the town and hit Sifto’s evaporator plant directly, where 300 Km per hour winds ripped the roofs and siding off most of the plant’s buildings. The $40 million re-build meant meeting critical delivery schedules and getting the workforce back on the job. In six months, the majority of the plant was weather tight and production was back in full swing on 90% of the equipment.

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Checking the crop field trials at Huron Commodities
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Adam VanderLoo telling us about natto soybean products

 

Huron Commodities specializes in identity preserved food grade soya beans, segregating them by variety, size, and protein and sugar content for distribution to different markets in the food industry. We learned about the natto soybean, used to make traditional Japanese fermented food products. We tasted some and yes! it is an acquired taste because of its strong flavor and slimy texture!