3

Basic respect and appreciation of and love for the natural environment

Deeper Eco-Spirituality

Comprehension and respect for biodiversity in stability of symbiosis

Comprehension and respect for ecosystems as fragile habitats

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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In the Womb of Gaia: ‘Circle of Nature’*

By Bill Cane

[This is excerpted from a chapter of the same title in Bill Cane’s Circles of Hope (New York: Orbis Books, 1992). Cane directs IF, a non-profit organization that probes creative alternatives and builds people-to-people bridges between the United States and Latin America. He is also editor of the quarterly Integrities, and author of another book, Through Crisis to Freedom.]

NATURE is a nourishing and wise circle. Like babes in the womb, we are being nourished within that circle this very moment, as we breathe in the oxygen the circle provides for us. Outside of this circle we cannot survive. We live not as detached individuals, but as womb-mates—cooperative parts of the Whole.

Just down the road from us there are a number of large greenhouses with sensors sticking out from them. The sensors measure the temperature, the humidity and the light outside the glass houses and give this information to the computer inside. The computer already knows the time of day and the season of year, at what hour the sun is going down and when darkness will fall. With all this information, the computer keeps adjusting the temperature and light inside the greenhouses with one overall purpose – the well-being of the flowers.

Whenever we drive by and see the sensors sticking out of the greenhouses, we marvel at the balancing act going on inside. But it’s nothing compared to the balancing act that is going on where we live. All around us there are gigantic sensors involved in an intricate balancing act. The earth is always busy adjusting its temperature and humidity and oxygen level, so that we can stay alive. The sun and the earth keep their proper distance so that we won’t burn up or freeze to death.

The trees and the oceans and the winds and the rain keep circulating our water so that we won’t dehydrate. Trillions of bacteria and earthworms work the soil so that it can produce lush vegetation. And like the computer’s sensors, the clouds and the trees and the sun and the ocean communicate with each other to keep a relative balance that allows the flowers of life to blossom all over the earth. The trees breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. If there is an excess of CO2 the oceans can absorb a lot of it, and ocean currents can take it down to the bottom of the sea. The clouds and the wind and the trees and the lakes and the oceans cooperate to keep our water recirculating. True, nature can be a destructive force – and there are floods and hurricanes and earthquakes – but all in all, nature provides a balance that sustains and furthers life.

The system has worked for eons. But now it is as if delinquents have broken into the greenhouses and begun sabotaging the computer. The earth’s balancing act is being thrown off. It can’t keep the air or the water clean or the ozone layer intact. It can’t circulate the water adequately because there is so much forest missing. We have been engaged in very subtle acts of terrorism – not against the government, but against life on earth.

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As my childhood horror of spiders and bees and weeds slowly dissipated, I began to see them as part of the marvelous circuitry of nature, part of the swirl through which life flows. I now appreciate the bees pollinating the fruit tree, as they gather nectar and pollen; the spiders, ladybugs and tree frogs eating garden pests; the trees spreading their foliage to the sun; the lake and the trees exhaling mists that return to form clouds that will water the earth. I see the ants carting away garbage, and I listen to the hoot of the owl. And the squawk of the herons that prey on our numerous rodents. The cycles of nature are now an integral part of our lives, and we can feel the seasons circling around and renewing the earth.

We include ourselves as part of the cycle of life. We plant fruit trees, raspberries, asparagus and seasonal vegetables. When we pick things to eat now, we know that the earth is the real source of our nourishment, not the supermarket. We feed the chickens our kitchen garbage as well as weeds and cuttings from the land. They pick out their nourishment and at the same time add their body wastes to make a wonderful compost. Then we put the compost in the garden to nourish the vegetables. When we eat the vegetables, the cuttings and the waste and the weeds go right back to the chickens, and the cycle begins again.

I am slowly learning to live in communication with and nourish the great natural systems of which I am a part. I have begun to love the Whole. Augustine used to begin his prayer with the statement, “Someone wishes to praise You, Lord – someone who is a tiny speck of your creation.” That’s what we are – tiny specks. As parts of the Whole, we will never understand the Whole, but within the Whole we live and move and have our being.

When I meditate now, the redwoods, the birds, the lake, the sun, the moon and the clouds are very much a part of the meditation. We have become a community breathing in and out and giving thanks together. The sap of the redwoods, the scent of the orange blossoms, the hovering of the hummingbird have somehow gotten into my bloodstream. We nourish each other.

The urban scientific mindset I grew up with led me to believe that I was separate from the earth, that I could stand outside and study it, break it down into atoms and chemical constituents and control its processes. I could spray it with poisons if I wished and make as much garbage as I felt like. But now I know I am not on the earth observing it, I am inside being whirled around and receiving nourishment like one of many babes in a giant womb. I can feel the circulation of life and energy flowing through me and around me, just as I can feel my heart and my blood pressure and my breathing. I sense the earth re-circulating our air and our nutrients for us, and keeping our temperature livable. At times I can feel all of nature breathing in and out together. I realize that animals and plants are not “inanimate” or “dumb,” but part of the living Whole filled with wisdom and spirit.

This Whole, which the British scientist James Lovelock has called “Gaia” (after the Greek Goddess of the Earth), is not outside of us: we are all parts of Gaia or “Pacha Mama” as the Quechua Indians call our mother earth. For the Quechuas, the sun is father, the earth is mother, and we are all relatives.

We exist only as part of a living, breathing Whole that is much wiser than we are – a Whole that can nourish and sustain and teach us. By pretending to be separate, I found out that I had been cutting myself off from the wisdom and the lifepulse of the Whole. “The Spirit of God fills the entire earth,” says an ancient Christian hymn. Cut off from the Whole, we human beings are fools bent on our own destruction. “That which goes against the ways of the Tao (the Great Mother),” wrote Lao Tzu, “will not survive.” St. Paul was writing about a community when he declared that we are all members of one body, dependent upon each other. But what he said of the community applies equally well to the living, breathing earth. “Can the hand say to the foot,” asked Paul, “’I have no need of you’?” To amputate one part of t he living sphere sends shivers throughout the rest of the sphere. We are all members of one living body.

The poets and mystics recognized our kinship with a sacred living Whole. Francis of Assisi spoke of brother sun and sister moon; he addressed earth, air, fire, water and animals as his relatives. He spoke to creation in song and poetry and prayer.

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