Becoming an Eco-Spiritual Guide to Assist Our Relocation from Ego Civilization to Earth's Sacred Community of All Life

Earth is becoming our kiln of transformation. The thermometer is rising toward 2°C and higher above pre-industrial levels, and all species are feeling the heat. Change is happening faster than predicted. Human egos, stubborn and arrogant, are nonetheless cracking under the heat. Civilization, a creation of human egos, shows signs of melting and cracking. Thousands of humans have chosen the hard inner journey to dethrone their egos. Many have gotten far enough on the journey to relocate OUT of ego civilization and INTO Earth’s community of life. This is no small matter! Relocating out of ego control is the core journey of our souls in anyone’s lifetime.

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Patricia St. Onge (Haudenosaune) on Standing Together since Standing Rock

Patricia is an expert on how cultural diversity differs greatly from cultural appropriation, a difference she explains in this podcast. She also explained it to Lee after he invited her to write the “Foreword” to his book, From Egos to Eden. As a result the chapter on Indigenous peoples (chapter 7) was entirely rewritten. All of Patricia’s consulting work is culturally based. It’s deeply rooted in the concept of Seven Generations. “We honor the generations who have come before us, are mindful of those yet to come, and recognize that the impact of the decisions we’re making now will last for seven generations.” The following interview is excerpted from a conversation I had with Patricia, April, 2017, right after she had launched a module on Eco-Ministry at the Chaplaincy Institute, an interfaith seminary and community, in Berkeley, California. You can listen to the full conversation on The Common Good Podcast.

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The Launch of "Eco-Ministry for Life on Earth" Course

Eco-spirituality is a core element in Earth-size living. So it was a special experience to be part of launching the Eco-Ministry program at the Chaplaincy Institute, an Interfaith Seminary and Community in Berkeley, California, this past April. The Institute structures units of learning in 4-5 day modules. The “Eco-Ministry for Life on Earth” module included among its faculty a rich mix: two Indigenous women, three scientists, a theolgian, and a spiritual director. Rituals and interactive experiences add lots of opportunity for our right brains to be engaged.

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Ecological Events Accelerate Despite Washington, D.C.

The current Republican leadership in Washington, D.C., is pulling the nation out of essential and responsible agreements on the global climate whose changes are destabalizing shores, weather, and food supplies. The folly of it has foreign governments immediately stepping into the vaccuum of leadership the U.S. withdrawal is creating. Multiple countries are gaining economic advantage and showing themselves to be reliable friends even as the U.S. loses both.

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Patricia St. Onge, "Foreword" Writer for My Book, and I Will Be at the Same Event and YOU ARE INVITED!

Here’s an invitation I hope you can accept! Below is the official invitation from the venue sponsor, The Chaplaincy Institute, Berkeley, California. I’m excited to be part of this event; especially excited that Patricia St. Onge (Haudenosaune) will be there too. She helped me so much with my new book, “From Egos to Eden,” and wrote an important “Foreword” to it. My presentation will be based in my book. But look at the other presenters! There’s a lot here for us about how to construct courage and hope using spirituality that fits ecologically with our one planet.

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A Table Contrasting Multi Earth and One Earth Worldviews (Part 1)

While teaching a group of bright, second-career students at the Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministries in Berkeley, CA, this past June, one asked, “Can you tell us more what you mean by Multi Earth and One Earth?” I wished, then, that I could hand them a table contrasting the two. But I didn’t have one. Now I do. Below is the first of half a dozen installments that will come along on this blog, not necessarily in succession. It’s a work in progress that your comments can surely improve. 

The table shows that worldviews impact all of our structures and behaviors throughout society. It is not comprehensive, but illustrative. The six contrasting points in the first section give a general “Overview.” Subsections that will follow will elaborate on how the two worldviews contrast with one another.

Multi Earth Worldview	One Earth Worldview
Human species strives for lifestyles that use more resources than available on one planet	Human species aims for lifestyles within the abundant resources of one planet
All systems from food production to finance, commerce, and government designed to extract more and more despite creational order and limits	All systems from food production to finance, commerce, and government designed with a sense of abundance within creational order and limits
Ecological footprint exceeds one planet	Ecological footprint fits within one planet
Emphasis on individualism socially and economically reflects the effort to understand all of reality by finding, separating, and examining every particle of matter in search of the basic building block for the whole; energy, community and spirit/Spirit are in a sidebar to essential reality	Emphasis on the entire community of life socially and ecologically reflects the effort to understand all of reality by observing the interdependence of all things, and the energy and spirit/Spirit that holds all systems in vibrant, evolving interconnection
Timeframes shaped by rewarding those who act most quickly to gain advantages in economics and power	Timeframes shaped by rewarding those whose actions consider other species, future generations, nature’s seasons, and Earth’s eco-region cycles
Technology brings convenience, speed, improvement, health, wealth, and scores of advantages in overcoming obstacles to human life and progress; optimism abounds because of wealth created by new products and how they fix and save human enterprises	Technology brings benefits when it is to scale within the parameters of planetary and species wellbeing; skepticism comes from destruction of the planet and people that result from manufacture and use of many technologies