Mis abuelas y la Teología [My Grandmothers and Theology]
“My abuelas represent not only part of who I am and where I come from, but their understanding and living out of lo cotidiano (the everyday life) is a “communal process” that is critical as a Latina doing theology within the dominant culture.”
- Claudia Herrera-Montero
The Possibilities of Rhizomatic Imagination and Ecopedagogy Amid the End of an Era
César "CJ" Baldelomar is Visiting Lecturer in Religion at Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches classes on religion and ecology. CJ is also an adjunct professor at Boston College, where he is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Theology and Education working on his dissertation. An interdisciplinary scholar, CJ has two law degrees from St. Thomas College of Law (J.D. and LL.M) and two master's degrees from Harvard University (one in education and one in theological studies). He is also working on his first book, titled Fragmented "Theological Imaginings" (Convivium Press).
*Note: This essay is adapted from its original version as a script for a presentation delivered at the Spirituality and Sustainability Conference in Assisi, Italy, on 10 June 2023.
First, a vignette that encapsulates the main themes of the essay.
During early May 2023, just as the weather started feeling like spring in New England, I noticed a dove nesting in my neighbor’s gutter. For three weeks, I observed with fascination and admiration as the dove diligently remained in place, awaiting the next generation to emerge from its shell of comfort. Then one day rain and thunder suddenly interrupted the weather pattern. A flash rainstorm—more common during summer—washed away the nest. The eggs, the very promise of new life, now lay cracked on the concrete ground. The dove would periodically return to where its nest once stood over the next three days or so. Was it hoping the rainstorm never happened... hoping the eggs were there or even hatched? Or did it forget about the deadly rainfall? Or was it mourning? Perhaps all of the above and more.
Tony Cortese, Transforming Higher Education
Dr. Cortese is Co-founder and Senior Fellow of the Crane Institute of Sustainability and the Intentional Endowments Network. He has been actively engaged in public policy and educational transformation on climate change and other large-system sustainability challenges for 40 years. He founded Second Nature, the Boston-based advocacy organization committed to promoting sustainability through higher education, along with U.S. Senator John Kerry, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and Bruce Droste. He served as Second Nature’s president from March 1993-August 2012.
Maddie: What spurred your interest and engagement in public policy and educational transformation on climate change and other large-system sustainability challenges?
Tony: Higher education has a social contract with society to provide the knowledge and the graduates that will lead us to a healthy, just, and sustainable society. Higher education’s primary reason for existence is to advance and maintain civilization. After going through the education system and being involved in the work that I did, I observed that the way we educate people is a major cause of our societal problems. The people that are leading us down an unhealthy, inequitable, and unsustainable path as human beings are coming out of the best colleges, universities, and professional schools. It is not a problem in education, it is a problem of education. Fundamentally, the higher education system is designed to mirror and advance the current way in which society is organized. But the current way in which society is organized IS unsustainable.
M: Education for Sustainability - what does it mean to transform the process, content, and practice of higher education?
T: It is clear that today’s and tomorrow’s businesses, government, and professionals - architects, engineers, attorneys, business leaders, scientists, urban planners, policy analysts, cultural and spiritual leaders, teachers, journalists, advocates, activists, and politicians - will need new knowledge and skills that only higher education can provide on a broad scale.
Higher education has a social contract with society: In exchange for tax-free status, academic freedom, and the ability to receive public and private resources, higher education is to provide the knowledge and educated citizenry to create a thriving, civil and sustainable society in perpetuity. Higher education is one of the few institutions in a society designed for the long-term good of society – the maintenance, renewal, and expansion of civilization.
Higher education prepares most of the professionals who develop, lead, manage, teach, work in, and influence society’s institutions, including the most basic foundation of elementary, middle school, and secondary education. Higher education has been a crucial leverage point in making a modern advanced civilization possible for an unprecedented number of people in almost every important way and will be even more important in a world that is rapidly expanding and interdependent. In addition, college and university campuses are microcosms of the rest of society – they are like mini-cities and communities that mirror society. Society looks to higher education to solve current problems, anticipate future challenges, develop innovative solutions, and model the action and behavior that society must take to continue to evolve in a positive direction.
M: And how could this be achieved?
T: The content of learning would reflect interdisciplinary systems thinking, dynamics, and analysis for all majors and disciplines with the same lateral rigor across, as the vertical rigor within, the disciplines.
The context of learning would change to make human/environment interdependence, values, and ethics a seamless and central part of the teaching of all the disciplines, rather than isolated in programs for specialists, or in special courses or modules.
The process of education would emphasize active, experiential, inquiry-based learning and real-world problem solving on the campus and in the larger community.
Higher education would practice and model sustainability. A campus would "practice what it preaches" and model economically and environmentally sustainable practices in its operations, planning, facility design, purchasing, and investments, and tie these efforts to the formal curriculum.
M: What were your youth and early life like, and why did you pursue this work? What events and relationships in your young life spurred an interest in sustainability?
T: got into this work because I grew up in an inner-city, Italian American neighborhood where everyone was an immigrant. My father was an immigrant from Italy. They all came here with very little education, no money, trying to seek a better life. We lived in what you would call tenement houses. I went to a public bathhouse until age eight because we didn't have running hot water inside the house. Interestingly enough, we never felt poor, because everybody else was in the same boat. The primary goal of our parents and grandparents was to make sure we became educated and got good jobs so that we could make it in society. My father had a 3rd-grade education and worked in a factory making shoes. All my parents wanted us to do were be good, religious people (we were Catholic). I had two uncles one a priest and the other a missionary bishops in Honduras. Both were Franciscans; so when the opportunity came to learn about St. Francis, religion, and ecology with Fr. Thomas Berry and Dr. Elisabetta Ferrero I jumped on it. Jumping back before I understood these ideas as a child, we couldn't go swimming in Boston harbor. At age eight, they stopped us from doing it - the air pollution was horrible because there was so much soot in the air and particles and gasses from industry power plants and automobiles. I was lucky to go to Boston Latin School, the oldest secondary school in the country formed as a prep school for Harvard in 1635, and was eventually the first public high school in the US. After that, I went to university at Tufts. Getting into a good college was was my ticket to a better life. When I got there, I was good at math and science, so I was interested in engineering and the environment. I remember answering President Kennedy's call to public service in 1960 - when he famously said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." I thought, "What better thing could I do than prevent and solve many environmental and public health problems in society?"
M: How did this propel you into a 50-year career in public policy and educational transformation on climate change and other large system sustainability?
T: After getting my first two degrees in civil and environmental engineering, I went to work for the Federal EPA in 1970, to work on the country’s seminal environmental legislation. I also came from a public health tradition and understood that the environment had a negative impact on people's health. I wanted to do research, pass laws, and help people see there are better ways to have a good society that would not cause any of the environmental or social public health challenges. I also got a master's degree from Tufts, and the EPA sent me to get my doctorate in public health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Soon after graduation, I came to Massachusetts to lead The Department of Environmental Protection under two different governors. During that time I was frustrated that I couldn't be more effective in helping people see there were different and better ways for people to live, run the economy that would not harm people's health or the environment, or to live in harmony with the life support system. That's when I began to realize that no matter what laws or regulations we passed to deal with environmental problems, we got the same response from many people that it couldn't be done. It was assumed that in trying to protect the environment, you were going to ruin the economy, that there would be no innovation in industry or the government by trying to think and operate differently.
That led me back into higher education, to transform the way higher education taught, operated, conducted research, and invested money. I felt that higher education should be the model for the rest of society. I ended up doing a lot of this work as a dean at Tufts, where I built these principles into the teaching and operations there. Then, Senator John Kerry and I set up a non-profit organization called Second Nature to bring this work to other colleges and universities He was the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts when I was running the Department of Environmental Protection, and we worked to get the first international agreement on acid rain in 1983, seven years before the clean air act of 1990. That agreement was between the United States and the eastern Canadian provinces because acid rain was such a serious issue, particularly in the eastern half of the United States, and all concentrated in the northeast, from Virginia through Maine and into Canada. He and I decided to found this organization because we wanted to spread the idea of creating a world that would work for everybody.
M: Can you tell us more about Second Nature?
T: Second nature was founded on two things, the first being that the life support system had to remain intact, and the second was that it is our responsibility for future generations to make sure that we are helping people get what they need in the present without compromising the needs of future generations. We created the organization and started working with colleges and universities across the country to help them think about how to change their curriculum, operations, outreach to local communities, and investing. During that time period, I realized that higher education wasn't doing enough, even though there was an explosion of interest in changing the curriculum and doing all kinds of wonderful things on the campuses and in the communities. In 2006 the climate crisis emerged publicly in a big way. I approached a dozen university presidents and other leaders to see if they would make the commitment to being carbon neutral to set an example for society. By 2012, we had 500 colleges and universities that had developed solid commitments to becoming carbon neutral.
The major challenge we had was that the schools were willing to think about modifying their curricula, committing to trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and push all sorts of recycling and environmental programs for energy and water conservation, but they weren't willing to look at how they were investing their endowments. he endowments. In 2013, Bill Mickibben noted author and Middlebury College faculty member made public a strong scientific analysis that demonstrated we needed to get society off fossil fuels, and that about 80% of the fossil fuels already in the ground need to remain in the ground to avert the existential climate crisis. Virtually every college and university was invested in oil, coal, and gas and was investing in companies that wanted to extract all of that. There was a huge student movement to get schools to “practice what they preach” and align their actions for the good of society. As a result, several college presidents approached me about providing some support to schools to help them make a transition in investing for a low carbon, equitable and just economy for all. My partner, Georges Dyer, left Second Nature worked with schools, consultants, the investment industry, and NGO leaders to create the Intentional Endowments Network (https://www.intentionalendowments.org/) in 2014 to fill this need. Today, led by Georges, IEN has over 200 member organizations and institutions in higher education, the investment industry, foundations, and others pursuing an intentional path for investment in a better society. But more must be done. It is time to accelerate this process and it is the reason for participating in the SSGN because the magnitude of the societal challenge demands that we embrace spirituality to drive the individual and policy action to make it happen.
The Critical Importance of Higher Education Leadership for a Healthy, Just and Sustainable Society
Anthony D. Cortese, Sc.D.
October 2020
Humanity and Higher Education at an Unprecedented Crossroads
Higher education now has a challenge bigger than any other it has ever faced because humanity is at crossroads without historical precedent. Because of the extraordinary and exponential growth of population and of the technological/economic system, humans have become pervasive and dominant forces in the health and well-being of the earth and its inhabitants. The sum of humanity and the expansive dynamic of industrial capitalism constitute a planetary force comparable in disruptive power to the Ice Ages and the asteroid collisions that have previously redirected Earth’s history.
The crucial question for all of humanity is:
How will we ensure that all current and future humans will have their basic needs met, will live in thriving, just and secure communities, will have economic opportunity in a world that will have nine billion people and that plans to increase economic output 4-5 times by 2050 on a planet whose capacity to support life is more precarious every day?
This is not just an environmental challenge, it is a civilizational and moral challenge bigger than the Manhattan Project, the Marshall Plan for Europe, the Space Race, and the attempts to eliminate or cure cancer, AIDS, and other chronic illnesses – combined. It is not about saving the planet. The planet has survived 5 major biological extinctions, the last being 65 million years ago in the age of the dinosaurs, and it will survive the 6th being caused by humans. It is about saving civilization by remaking the human presence on earth in a way that allows all present humans to have their health, social and economic needs met while ensuring that future generations can also meet their needs. It is also built on the understanding that all human activity and survival is completely dependent on the earth for all of its resources and key ecosystem services including converting waste products into useful substances.
How Did We Get Here?
The routine business of our civilization is threatening its own survival, and by putting Earth’s living system in jeopardy, it also risks foreclosing the conditions for any civilized life. How did we get here? The cultural operating instructions of modern industrial society are that if we just work a little harder and smarter and let the market forces dominate society, all these challenges will work themselves out. In the industrialized world, we are guided by a myth of human separateness from and domination of nature for our purposes. This myth says that because it has worked in the last three centuries, continued physical-economic growth will increase the quality of life for a significant portion of the world’s population. It contains an implicit assumption that the earth will be the gift that keeps on giving — providing the resources and converting our wastes into useful substances — ad infinitum. This myth assumes that human technological innovation will allow us to ignore planetary limits.
Moreover, we are dominated by linear short-term thinking that makes it difficult to recognize the magnitude of our cumulative actions and the danger of their impacts. Our collective impacts are now global, intergenerational, and prone to rapid, unexpected shifts. For example, greenhouse gas emissions released today will begin to have their most serious effects in 20-30 years and will continue for several centuries. Witness the interdependent, COVID pandemic, disruption of the climate and the economy, the racial and economic injustice, and global political destabilization that has occurred in 2020. Through economic globalization, we are spreading this cultural and economic paradigm even while its hyper-interdependence makes our societies more vulnerable to the growing instability of natural or human systems. Finally, in western industrialized culture, we tend to view increasing material consumption as the principal measure of success, despite its negative effects on health, society, and the environment.
We need a transformative shift in the way we think and act. As Einstein said, “We can’t solve today’s problems at the same level of thinking at which they were created.” We currently view the array of health, economic, energy, political, security, social justice, environmental, and other societal issues we have as separate, competing, and hierarchical when they are really systemic and interdependent. We have a de facto systems design failure. The 21st-century challenges must be addressed in a systemic, integrated, and holistic fashion with an emphasis on creating new and more desirable ways of helping society succeed.
The current state of the world is a prima facie indicator that the current higher education system is reinforcing the unhealthy, inequitable, and unsustainable path that society is pursuing. As David Orr has said – “It is not a problem in education it is a problem of education”. This is not intentional. The structure of higher education and its evolution in the last one and a half centuries is based on and is reinforcing the deep cultural (and therefore hidden) assumptions referred to above. The guiding myth of humans as separate from nature, nature as primarily a source of resources to be utilized and controlled for human purpose, combined with the disciplinary structure of learning and purpose in higher education, is the dominant paradigm in society and in higher education.
The Current Reality in Higher Education
There has been unprecedented, exponential growth in distinct academic programs related to the environmental dimension of sustainability in higher education, especially in the last two decades. Exciting environmental (and now sustainability) studies and graduate programs in every major scientific, engineering and social science discipline, business, law, public health, behavioral sciences, ethics, and religion are abundant and growing.
Progress on campuses modeling sustainability has grown at an even faster rate. Higher education has embraced programs for energy and water conservation, renewable energy, waste minimization and recycling, green buildings, and purchasing, alternative transportation, local and organic food growing, and ‘sustainable’ purchasing - saving both the environment and money, witness the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment with 500 colleges and universities committed becoming carbon neutral and transforming education of their students.
The student environmental movement in the U.S. is the most well-organized, largest, and most sophisticated student movement since the civil rights and anti-war movement of the 1960s. And higher education environmental efforts have become publicly visible to a degree that was unimaginable a decade ago. These developments represent one of the most encouraging trends in higher education innovation since World War II.
Unfortunately, higher education is doing a poor job on the health, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. The overwhelming majority of graduates know little about the importance of sustainability or how to lead their personal and professional lives aligned with sustainability principles. Moreover, a large number of the excellent and exciting sustainability-oriented innovations in higher education have been led by (1) individual groups (students, a subset of the faculty, a subset of the business and operations staff - often working together), (2) have primarily focused on the environmental dimension of sustainability and (3) have largely focused on educating environmental and sustainability professionals within the framework of existing academic disciplines. Few have been integrated with social efforts such as civic engagement, social justice, economic development, poverty alleviation, and human rights. With a few exceptions, sustainability, as an aspiration for society, has not been a central institutional goal, or lens for determining the success of higher education institutions.
Higher Education’s Future Role
It is clear that today’s and tomorrow’s businesses, government, and professionals - architects, engineers, attorneys, business leaders, scientists, urban planners, policy analysts, cultural and spiritual leaders, teachers, journalists, advocates, activists, and politicians - will need new knowledge and skills that only Higher Education can provide on a broad scale.
Higher education has a social contract with society: In exchange for tax-free status, academic freedom, and the ability to receive public and private resources, higher education is to provide the knowledge and educated citizenry to create a thriving, civil and sustainable society in perpetuity. Higher education is one of the few institutions in society that is designed for the long-term good of society – the maintenance, renewal, and expansion of civilization.
Higher education prepares most of the professionals who develop, lead, manage, teach, work in, and influence society’s institutions, including the most basic foundation of elementary, middle school, and secondary education. Higher education has been a crucial leverage point in making a modern advanced civilization possible for an unprecedented number of people in almost every important way and will be even more important in a world that is rapidly expanding and interdependent. In addition, college and university campuses are microcosms of the rest of society – they are like mini-cities and communities that mirror society. Society looks to higher education to solve current problems, anticipate future challenges, develop innovative solutions, and model the action and behavior that society must take to continue to evolve in a positive direction.
What if higher education were to take a leadership role in helping to make this a reality?
A college or university would operate as a fully integrated community that models social, economic, and biological sustainability itself and in its interdependence with the local, regional and global community. In many cases, we think of teaching, research, operations, and relations with local communities as separate activities; they are not. Because students learn from everything around them, these activities form a complex web of experience and learning.
All parts of the college or university system are critical to achieving a transformative change that can only occur by connecting head, heart, and hand. The educational experience of graduates must reflect an intimate connection among curriculum and (1) research; (2) understanding and reducing any negative ecological and social footprint of the institution; and, (3) working to improve local and regional communities.
What if the educational experience of all students is aligned with the principles of sustainability outlined above? To achieve this…
The content of learning would reflect interdisciplinary systems thinking, dynamics, and analysis for all majors and disciplines with the same lateral rigor across, as the vertical rigor within, the disciplines.
The context of learning would change to make human/environment interdependence, values, and ethics a seamless and central part of teaching of all the disciplines, rather than isolated in programs for specialists, or in special courses or modules.
The process of education would emphasize active, experiential, inquiry-based learning and real-world problem solving on the campus and in the larger community.
Higher education would practice and model sustainability. A campus would "practice what it preaches" and model economically and environmentally sustainable practices in its operations, planning, facility design, purchasing, and investments, and tie these efforts to the formal curriculum.
Conclusion
Many inside and outside of higher education argue that achieving climate neutrality and sustainability as a society and getting higher education to lead this effort is impossible. But we must make that which seems impossible, inevitable. If we continue business as usual, today’s students and their children will experience the worst effects of climate disruption and other large unsustainable means of meeting human needs and will find themselves in a world with greatly diminished prospects for a good quality of life, peace, and security. We are also faced with the greatest intergenerational equity challenge in modern history. The earth does not recognize how hard it is for us humans to change. It will respond to the physical changes we cause on its own schedule and in its own ways. It doesn’t have the cognitive ability to decide to wait for us to figure out how we can change to preserve our way of life and ourselves.
The opportunity is for us to have a vision for the kind of healthy, just, and sustainable world and mobilize to make it a reality. To quote Benjamin E. Mays, former president of Morehouse College and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King said: "The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal, the tragedy lies in having no goal to reach." Richard Cook, who retired in 2008 as president of Allegheny College — one of the founders of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment — wrote:
“I liken this pledge to President Kennedy’s promise to get men to the moon and back within the decade. Neither he nor a cadre of engineers and scientists knew exactly how this would be accomplished or if, indeed it could be. But making a bold pledge to accomplish a strategically important end spurred attention, resources, talent, and urgency to a lofty goal that would be difficult to attain. In much the same way, the Commitment to becoming climate-neutral institutions will spur development and accountability, and will surely, in most cases, produce more and better results in a shorter period of time than something short of a specific target. The collective voice of higher education can spotlight our sincere concern and commitment to action in ways that few if any other sectors can. We have largely provided the research that has highlighted the climate concern; we also can provide many of the solutions. If the colleges and universities don’t lead, who will?”
Anthony D. Cortese, ScD
Co-Founder, Intentional Endowments Network, Second Nature, AASHE
https://www.intentionalendowments.org/anthony_cortese
617-549-4736
*Excerpts from publications and speeches of the author.
Footnotes:
"Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial." Morehouse College. Web. 15 July 2010. <http://www.morehouse.edu/about/chapel/mays_wisdom.html>.
Arthur Kane, A Life Devoted to Social Justice
“…you've got to get out and be involved. You've got to give. Things don't happen if people don't get involved. It's as simple as that.”
Maddie: Can you tell us more about your roots and young life, and how that inspired your work in spirituality and sustainability?
Art: I am the oldest of eight and lived in various places in the north when I was very young, but mostly in Syracuse, New York. That is where I went to high school, and where the family lived when I was in college. After graduation from Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA, I entered the Jesuits. During my years in the Jesuits, I did studies in various places, including Belgium, where I completed my theology studies. After ordination, I went to Jamaica. I had taught high school there during my course of studies. Upon my return, I became the director of the Social Action Center in Kingston, which was involved with cooperatives and their development. Utilizing a grant, we formed cooperatives among the sugar workers on four large estates, which went very well until the government was pressured by the World Bank to cut funding for social programs. These were known as "structural adjustment programs" that the World Bank and IMF imposed in the 80s on all countries dependent on the organizations to get urgently needed loans. After quite a few years in Jamaica, I turned a page, moved to Florida, and married Pauline, who was from Jamaica. We've lived here in Florida for over 40 years. Here in Florida, I became a Vice President of Norwegian Cruise Lines, back when it was the number one cruise line, and worked in the industry for over ten years. Subsequently, I had my own consulting company for many years. While doing that, I also began teaching part-time at St. Thomas University before eventually becoming full-time. Altogether, I spent 20 years teaching philosophy at the university, also founding and directing the Center for Ethics.
M: What is the Center for Ethics?
A: The whole purpose of starting it was to be an outreach service to the community from the university. I served as a participant or consultant on ethics issues with various groups, including chambers of commerce, the school board, and the local county ethics commission. We held workshops on specific ethical issues, such as Ethics and the Law and Ethical Issues in Youth Sports. Although the Center never expanded to the extent planned, it did go on for 20 years. The Center for Ethics was a co-sponsor of the Assisi conferences.
M: Did you feel that one job was more aligned with what your purpose is?
A: In my life, I have enjoyed three different careers, working as a priest, cruise line executive, and philosophy professor. I'd say that's a pretty good mix. I can easily think that the cruise business was least important, but that gave me financial footing and provided for my family in a good way. It also put me in touch with a lot of people. Though quite different, each of my roles was very challenging and fulfilling.
M: I think many people have the idea that you have to pick one thing and do it for the rest of your life, but everything you do enriches whatever else you're going to do, making you more well-rounded.
A: Actually, very few people stay with what they started. The average career, statistically, is only 7 or 8 years today. The nature of jobs changes so often, and you have to change with them. I used to tell my students that they could look back on the 20th century and see the things that happened were just unimaginable at the beginning of the century, such as airplanes or computers. We can't even begin to fathom what will happen in this century. Technology is changing so many things and not all for good.
M: Can you tell us more about what being a Jesuit means?
A: The Jesuits are the Society of Jesus, a religious order. It is a very mission-focused organization, which is why I chose Jamaica to work on social or community development programs. I was involved in programs around the Caribbean as well.
M: What called you to do this work? Not every person of faith has a passion for sustainability.
A: I've always been very conscious of and involved with social justice issues. Besides my work volunteering with the SSGN, I've also been chairman of a Pax Christi group for the past 20 years. Social justice issues of all kinds have always been what I've cared about. I've carried the basic philosophy that you should always give of yourself to help others. That passion probably came from my parents because they were that way. Wherever we lived, my father was deep into community service and fundraising efforts, and my mother had eight children! So she served in another way.
M: Since you have worked in social justice for so long, what do you think is important for people to know, moving forward? What would you tell someone who wants to commit their life to social justice work?
A: Look at it from the standpoint of the church for a moment. Many people attend church, and it's something they do, not something they are involved in. In particular, they aren't involved in actions on justice issues. I've given talks on justice issues, trying to get people to think outside just coming to church. There's more to it, and you've got to be involved. Things don't happen if members don't get involved
M: And you've been very involved, your whole life. It's inspiring. I think that's so important, and it's given to you, too.
A: Keeping going pays off. One of my biggest concerns, particularly looking at my children and grandchildren, is that the years coming down the road will be serious and heavy. It's not a basic idea, but basically, it comes to this: Every great nation in history has eventually lost its prominence, and I fear that our greatness will not last forever. What bothers me most is that people in places of influence do not recognize that their actions are tearing us apart. It's very sad. Looking at sustainability from the standpoint of the country, we've got big challenges. Sustainability of the earth and our role as leaders requires an effort, from the national level, all the way down to the local level, beginning with seemingly small things like recycling. Educating people about their responsibilities empowers them. I'm pressing the local city administration to reeducate the citizens on proper practices for how to recycle. The current system is not working and contributes to serious environmental problems.
Devon Mearns, Making Choices That Make A Difference
This interview was originally published in the March 2020 SSGN newsletter.
Devon is a 24-year-old adventurer, runner, traveler, cow enthusiast, and advocate of the planet living in Denver, Colorado. She works as a Development Assist at Trout Unlimited, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of freshwater streams, rivers, and associated upland habitats for trout, salmon, other aquatic species. We spoke to her about her career in conservation and passion for the earth.
What does your position as Development Assistant entail?
At Trout Unlimited, our goal is to raise money to fund projects that conserve, protect, and restore North America’s coldwater fisheries and watersheds. As a development Assistant, I help our fundraisers get out the door and connect with individuals and foundations who can support our mission. I plan events to bring our donors together and coordinate communications between our field and office staff. I report on our successes, and help spread the word of our great work across the country!
Why are you passionate about caring for the earth? When did this passion start?
I am passionate about caring for our earth because I want the world to be a beautiful place for my kids, their kids, and their kid’s kids. I feel I have to leave the world better than I found it! This passion started at a very young age. I was always outside enjoying nature and it would upset me when I’d see litter on the beaches I played on, or people throwing away items that could be recycled. Little things like that would get to me. It wasn’t until I was nearly 18 that I realized I needed to do more than just pick up some trash and recycle my cans. I wanted to make a career out of it. I made firm choices in my own life to align with these values—from the clothes I bought, to the foods I ate, the way I traveled from place to place, and now the organization I work for. These choices are a reflection of my passion for the environment and I feel proud to be able to continue to do good for our planet!
How has the current world state impacted Trout Unlimited? Has the organization observed any positive changes in rivers and streams across the country?
I think more and more people are starting to feel a responsibility to give back to protect our planet. People are becoming aware of their effect on the environment and making choices big and small to make a positive difference. Trout Unlimited has steadily grown over the past several years. We now have over 300,000 members and supporters who contribute each year! This allows us to work on more restoration projects, hire more staff, and protect more streams across the country. With the current administration, we have experienced some setbacks though. Government funding of the EPA has been slashed, Clean Water Act regulations have been weakened, many mines that put the health of our rivers and streams at risk have taken steps forward to begin operating. We have a dedicated team that works tirelessly on Capitol Hill to help protect our public lands, and fights many projected mines across the U.S.
Despite the few setbacks we’ve faced, overall I’ve noticed an incredible gain in momentum from the anglers and environmentalists in our country to take charge!
What can you tell us about the future of sustainability for America, and the world as a whole? Are you hopeful?
I am incredibly hopeful! I firmly believe that more people are starting to take steps toward living sustainability and conserving our natural resources. There is more awareness among the population; we can no longer pretend not to see how our world is being impacted by our actions and choices. Like the choices I made in my own life to live more sustainably, I believe many people are also supporting businesses that align with these values and making changes in their lifestyles to reduce their impact on the planet.
Why Ecological Spirituality?
The following is an excerpt from a reflection by Sister Kathleen Deignan, CND, Ph.D. on the eco-spiritual vision of Thomas Berry. She presented this reflection as a keynote for the Spirituality & Sustainability Global Network Zoom Reunion Conversation on 22 May 2021. The Network is reproducing this except because we judge that the deep root of Industrial Civilization's global ecological devastation is the Modern World's loss of consciousness that our garden-planet Earth and our beauteous Cosmos are sacred. For example, prior to Modernity, the mainstream of Christianity, like the mainstream of many religions, held that everything in creation is sacramentally sacred because it reveals the sacred presence of the Creator.
Eco-Spirituality in a Time of Crisis, Remarks by Kathleen Deignan
Remembering Thomas Berry in Assisi
Remarks by Kathleen Noone Deignan, CND
22 May 2021
I greet all of you in the Spirit of the living Earth
Which we convene to ponder together this day
Spirit of life
Spirit of cosmos
Spirit of God
Spirit inspiring you and me
Spirit conspiring with you and me
To sanctify and save us
To set us free for the Great Work before us
May the life-breath of our Mother Earth – be breathing us,
May her peace be upon us,
Her wildness be within us,
Her wisdom guiding us,
Her creativity flowing from us in this age of crisis
for all her creatures.
In this Spirit may we enter into dialogue and discernment today.
Let those gather be willing to say Amen.
First let me thank our conveners, the founders, and directors of the emerging Global Network of those engaged in supporting the cultivation of a vibrant spirituality to fund the great work of laboring for the sustainability of our common home.
And greetings to all of you who have chosen to engage in what we hope to be a deep and fruitful conversation on the creative relationship between spirituality and sustainability and - most urgently - how to support and accelerate movements for creation care especially among generations to come.
The conversation about the tensive relationship between spirituality and sustainability that we continue today began decades ago in Assisi, in the Umbrian region of Italy when a humble, soft-spoken prophet ascended a hilltop near the Temple of Minerva in the ancestral hometown of the renowned nature mystic Giovanni Bernadone, known to the world as saint Francis of Assisi.
Francesco is celebrated for composing a Canticle of Creation that echoes still throughout the valleys of his region and indeed throughout the world these 8 centuries since he intoned it,
enchanting all who have ever heard or sung it with new insight into the sacred commune of creation we are blest to become in our one living common home.
Indeed, this sacred song of praise to the One who continues to birth forth the glorious universe has become augmented for our time as another Francis, Pope Jorge Bergolio, takes it as the anthem, the work-song, of the greatest labor movement humankind will ever undertake: to remake our human selves and our civilizations in the image of the mysterious generosity and vitality that gave birth to us and all.
Pope Francis’ letter to the peoples of Anthropocene – Laudato si’ – sings il Poverello – the Poor One’s canticle in a new key,
in polyphony, inviting the choirs of humanity to enter into its poetry and prophecy, its rhythms and cadences intended to bring new harmony to a planet deafened by the bombast of machinery – of drills and horns and blasts and noise that crescendos to cacophony – silencing the choirs of creatures singing their God-given songs.
And so, the canticle of creatures, Saint Francis hymn of Earth, resounds again throughout the world as choristers learn the tune and the text of the manifesto Laudato si, and sing it loud in resonance with the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. One outcry that sets the tempo and sounds the key of this urgent of incantation.
Francesco’s canticle – Brother Sun, Sister Moon sung for Mother Earth – becomes humankind’s ultimate chorale, a song to save us if we will. A song to save us if we will compose new verses so it may be at once a lament for a passing age of terrestrial vitality– the dying Cenozoic - and a birthing song for the gestating Ecozoic – a new age for a new Earth now being dreamt – a waking dream.
But the voice summoning us today belongs to the one who came to Assisi to sing his own rendition of the song in the interval between the first and second Francis, in the 20th century, invited by a daring cohort of professors from Florida’s Saint Thomas University.
They wished him to teach them over several summers how to sing once again the terrestrial harmonies of this ever ancient ever new song as only he could.
But this composer scored the canticle differently letting modern dissonance remain of what was unfolding all around us and within us and we so dangerously unaware.
In post-modern fashion he let us to hear the din muffling the terrestrial harmonies – the deafening clash and clatter of machines and bombs, the blare, the blast and clamor of a planet being pummeled into submission, extracted into ruins.
He let us hear the babble of a civilization gone mad.
How sad was this prophet’s song and how glad we were to hear it,
be challenged to transform it into a new key, a new set of harmonies.
I refer of course to the patron of so many of our endeavors, Thomas Berry, the echoing voice still summoning us and
why we are all assembled here now today.
Though I was not fortunate to have been in Assisi those magical summers when Thomas intoned his own canticle to the cosmos, we can still hear the reverb of his spoken-word poetics of a new cosmology, an integral ecology, rapped in themes of wonder and wounding, speaking of ages and stages of a universe unfolding about us and within us.
And so, his incantation had the effect of revelation that awakened his hearers to a divine mystery spelling itself out in living code: the life-forms of every creature.
Thomas told the original story originally, lyrically, critically, familiarly, archetypally, scientifically, poetically – one might say religiously.
A still unfolding story though it is, he dared to tell it in the integrity of its materiality and of its inherent spirituality – not as two but as one in his saying. A psycho-physical unity from the start with all things woven on the singular loom of divine invisibility.
He foreclosed all boundaries and all hierarchies in the myriad singularities of an ineffably fertile infinity. He blew our minds. He set them on fire. With him it was always “in the beginning, is now and ever shall be…” mystery without end.
Say Amen somebody.
It was the story of everything and how it all began and how it all begins again and again in every instant of ineffable Being, being as it is, Being’s way of being: being cosmos, being this our living Earth, being everything we hear and see, being you and being me. What a story.
Thomas remains for this Anthropocene a rare and singular sort of teacher, a story-teller par excellence, a living seanchaí, servant to the one and only story within which all others find context and meaning. Find their glamor and their glory.
During his life like all shamans and prophets he cried for a vision and received one – of the sacrality, the sacramentality of the emergent universe laboring to sing its song in everyone and everything – and in an urgent way especially through you and me.
As the magic of the cosmic song sounds in us,
the singer begins to behold, believe, and belove the MORE we rarely see and it transforms us, it evolves us.
But as we noted earlier the song now sounding on Earth is a rhythmic eulogy, a lamentation for lost worlds we were meant to protect, and so a searing, weeping elegy.
The song of Earth now tasks us with the Great Work Berry was so gifted to notate in detail of what we must do now in the ravages of the great beauty and how to undertake the work
and what might be the greater energy to fund it beyond our incomprehension and lethargy...
And so, we ask of Thomas today, what would you say to us now?
What would you say today as the great Climate Clock says we’ve got about 8 years to turn this crisis around.
As our spiritual ancestors made their way to deserts in search of masters to bestow a word for salvation.
So what might you say to us today who come to you FROM our deserts seeking a word that will empower us, inspire us, ordain us to awaken our moribund species to the peril and the promise that lies before us for global salvation?
Because you have told us that the Great Work will be arduous demanding all our energies to undertake:
Once upon a time, over a half century ago, one of Thomas Berry’s most faithful students, Sister Miriam Therese mc Gillis, invited him to bring such a word to her Dominican community
asking him to address the theme of “contemplation and world order.” To which he replied, “well that all depends on what kind of “world order” you are contemplating.”
That signature inversion / a kind of cheeky koan is typical of the way Berry teased at breaking apart formulaic ways of thinking into a dialectical and new mind way of thinking.
That is how I imagine Thomas approaching the theme of our gathering: eco spirituality in a time of crisis.
Tossing it about, turning it upside down adding to the ferment needed to create contemporary spiritualities that can bring us to the Eozoic age he inspired us to with him envision.
The question of ecological spirituality was never ancillary for Berry regardless of the audience attending him – scientific, secular, multi-generational, multi-faithful, Nobel laureates, rich, progressive eco-entrepreneurs – no matter. There can be no right doing without right seeing, right intention, right action flowing from right might we call right “contemplation.” We shall not technologize our way out of this crisis.
For, Father Thomas says,
There is a certain futility in the efforts being made – truly sincere, dedicated, and intelligent efforts—to remedy our environmental devastation simply by activating renewable sources of energy and by reducing the deleterious impact of the industrial world.
The difficulty is that the natural world is seen primarily for human use, not as a mode of sacred presence primarily to be communed with in wonder, beauty and intimacy.
To be celebrated in new liturgies of communion …
He refines our understanding to perceive that In our present attitude the natural world remains a commodity to be bought and sold, even to be “protected and cared for” as if she were not our living suffering mother, a living corporate incarnate being,
As if she were not a sacred reality to be venerated.
A deep psychic shift is needed to withdraw us from the fascination of the industrial world and the deceptive gifts that it gives us…
Eventually, only our sense of the sacred will save us.
Thomas Berry, Foreword, When the Trees Say Nothing (Notre Dame: Sorin Books, 2003), 18
From the start and in the end, Berry will insist that the cultivation of a vibrant ecological spirituality is the primary and fundamental labor of The Great Work of our time without which all our efforts will miss the boat completely, miss the saving ark we are tasked to build expansive enough to gather and carry all beings with whom to make our way to the other Ecozoic shore.
If all this sounds really dreamy, it’s supposed to.
Berry says we have to dream our way out of this nightmare.
Dreaming is a psycho-spiritual work, a spiritual work.
If it sounds gloomy and depressing, it isn’t – it is the great game of our time – a win or lose challenge we only get one chance to play.
If it sounds like curious prophecy or poetry – it is.
This is the speech of the world to come by our labor and our love.
A speech beyond the jargon of so-called commodities or the calculus of commerce by which we sell our souls, sell the innocent nations of our world for silver and for gold.
And if it feels religious only more so, it is – in Thomas’ term it is the germination of a metareligious movement that will bring us into a viable, flourishing future – the smallest steps of an epic journey we take again today in this assembly.
Once upon a time Thomas set fire to the minds and hearts of a young generation of Eozoic seekers and his word went viral – inspired scholars and artists and teachers and nuns and nones and, I like to say, the Berrian School of Eozoic Wisdom began to be.
What happened in Assisi in the Berry Summer School was no small part of this emergence as we can see.
By now that school is a global university with curriculum and pedagogy all spelled out –a virtual school unlike any other, not just a training program for environmental action, but a school of wisdom for Eozoic transformation.
it even has a website, www.thomasberry.org
The bell rings, the wisdom school is now in session.
Let us enter in. Let us listen deeply and do the dialogue of discovery again, as it happened in Umbria with him.
Let us go to Assisi again today, together, imaginally.
To hear a word and be blessed by Thomas again,
and as if he were here, let the conversation begin…
Moving Forward to America’s Spiritual Renaissance
May 2021
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
“The thoughts of worldly men are forever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain. There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or in the stars, for their reading. They are like some wise men, who, learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal Love, and Mercy, although they shine by night and day so brightly that the blind may see them; and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book-learning…
“It is curious to imagine these people of the world, busy in thought, turning their eyes towards the countless spheres that shine above us, and making them reflect the only images their minds contain…So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.” Charles Dickens, 1841
The Premise
If one wishes to clean a polluted river, and the contamination originates upstream, then any attempt to do this by first trying to clean the downstream presents an unachievable goal.
When a society is suffering from increasing social ills and health crises of both a physical and psychological nature, which appear resistant to traditional solutions or cures, it may be time to consider an innovative approach. That new approach might be to look at society’s condition from an objective spiritual viewpoint.
As with the example of a polluted river, perhaps the solution for many societal ills may lie in the spiritual upstream.
With that assumption, we may be on the verge of finding innovative keys to unlocking many of our intractable and seemingly insoluble social problems.
If we were to conclude that “purifying the upstream” is a key to positive change and sustainable improvements for our nation, then what steps might we initially consider taking?
Some traditions believe that spiritual weakness in an individual is related to negative karma. If we accepted that assumption, could we not assume that the same principle might apply to societies and nations?
The Weight of America’s Past
The next question which may arise is: what is the negative karma of America? If it may be assumed that the nation’s karma is the collective karma of all the individuals and families since early times, that presents a rather overwhelming prospect. As a major factor, wars dramatically escalate karma with the massive numbers of violent deaths and injuries. This is then compounded with the negative emotions multiplied through networks of families and friends, their ancestors and their descendants.
Another factor from America’s past is the slave trade. Millions of family lives were horrifically disrupted, millions of souls suffered and died in dungeons and the revolting cruelty of slave ships; an endless life of slavery awaited those souls who survived. All of this contributes to a great karmic burden.
Yet another negative factor adding a terrible historic burden to the sub-conscious conscience of the nation is the genocide of Native American tribes.
The reckless destruction of America’s incredible wealth of nature and the extinction of many species of flora and fauna is also a collective responsibility of breathtaking proportions. Blowing up mountaintops and wiping out delicate eco–systems by filling in pristine valleys with toxic mining waste in West Virginia is just one of countless examples of the cruel destruction continuing today. After reforms in the early 20th Century to restrain some of the excesses of the meatpacking industry, after the heyday of the Robber Barons in the late 19th Century, we now have the regulatory agencies dominated by the interests they were intended to supervise. This applies to all State and Federal regulatory agencies, with few exceptions. This is referred to as “regulatory capture”.
The consequences of the relatively recent act of unleashing the atomic bomb’s technology upon humanity and the earth should give us pause to consider the spiritual implications. The original dream of “atoms for peace” has been far outweighed by the risks unleashed.
If there is a causal connectivity to all these karmic challenges, one might understand why social, health and environmental ills may be so serious and why institutional dysfunction is increasingly intractable.
Moving Towards Solutions
So how do we attempt to solve these problems? How do we purify the upstream of America in order to generate sustainable improvements in the quality of life? The problems seem insoluble, at least through the application of human wisdom.
Of course, if each one of us tries to purify our spirit, mind and body, we would gradually transform our nation in a gradual and organic manner. We would create the synergy for an emerging virtuous circle and cycle. Accomplishing meritorious deeds individually and collectively would all contribute to this in a positive manner. To paraphrase Maimonides, writing in the 12th Century, “Each person should see themselves as though the entire world is on a delicate balance, and with one deed, including prayer, he or she can tip the scales.”
There are enlightened individuals and groups throughout the United States who might be envisioned as “points of light”. Is there a way in which we, as a society, can collectively make a quantum leap forward towards America’s spiritual purification, and, at the same time, connect the “points of light” across the nation? The critical mass of enlightened individuals needed to leverage positive change seems to be insufficient, but perhaps this is due to their being disconnected.
Is there a way to progress towards a New Eden, the Pure Land of Buddhism [Appendix A: The Chuson-ji Dedication] and the Peaceable Kingdom envisioned by William Penn (1644 – 1718) and as expressed in the painting of that name [Appendix B: Edward Hicks (1780 – 1849)]?
However brief, it has been possible to achieve periods of peace and enlightenment in history such as Chuson-ji in the 12th Century and the Pays d’Oc, prior to 1209. Here in America, in addition to Quaker communities, the Shakers reached a high point of 18 model communities in 1836, prior to the Civil War.
America cannot achieve a firm basis for material prosperity or physical health until it first achieves a spiritual renaissance. A possible new beginning on the path to cooperative progress may be opened up through the power of a sincere national prayer of apology for past and present errors. In theory there is a national day of prayer on the first Thursday in May of each year. If offered with humility, a unified and sincere prayer may move us forward more quickly towards our spiritual rebirth. If many different religions and spiritual traditions join together in a common prayer, we could amplify the power of that prayer and progress towards the spiritual renaissance of America.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” Let us take action so that justice may be tempered with mercy through our voluntary contrition.
Appendix A.
Lord Kiyohira of Oshu Fujiwara in the early 12th Century established a large community of temples that were based on the principles of Buddhism. An excerpt from the Dedication Pledge indicates the purpose of the community which was to manifest the Pure Land ideal. All travelers were to be greeted affectionately and receive blessings.
Excerpt from the Dedication Pledge for Chuson-ji (1126)
“The tolling of this bell resounds throughout all worlds, removing pain and comforting all people equally…how many have fallen in battles in the history of time? And not just humans. Animals, birds, fish, shellfish – uncountable life forms are still being sacrificed for our living…Their souls have all departed for the Next World; but their bones, having crumbled to become earth’s dust, remain on this land, filled with resentment.”
Appendix B.
The vision of an American “peaceable kingdom” envisioned by William Penn was expressed by Edward Hicks (1780 – 1849), the Quaker folk painter and minister. Hicks used his paintings as a way to define the quest for redemption. He was influenced by the Quaker belief referred to as the Inner Light. Hicks depicted humans and animals to represent the Inner Light's idea of breaking barriers to individuals working and living together in peace. This concept is also exemplified by showing Native Americans meeting William Penn and the Quaker community. The Treaty of Pennsylvania with the local Native Americans created a state of peace desired by the Quaker community founders, as a matter of principle. This treaty was one of the very few that were ever honored, even though only during Penn’s lifetime.
Jim MacLellan is Deputy Director of the Forum 21 Institute
He was an attendee of the Spirituality and Sustainability Conferences held in Rome and Assisi, Italy.
Joe Holland, Art for Regeneration and the Power of the Female Imagination
Maddie: Let's talk about the issues we're facing as a world, politically, ecologically, and economically, and why the intersection of spirituality and sustainability is so important.
Joe: I believe that ecological spirituality and ecological philosophy together form the foundationally intellectual pathway out of the global climate crisis.
Something went wrong with the classical and modern spiritual-philosophical roots of Western Civilization. That is why modern Western technoscience, now globalized, is devastating our garden-planet Earth's beauteous but fragile community of life.
I wrote my 2017 book Postmodern Ecological Spirituality to address the spiritual side of this great problem. Now I am writing another book to address the philosophical side. It will be titled Ecological Failure of Modern Philosophy in the Anthropocene.
Our eco-spiritual and eco-philosophical roots are deep, but today they are too often forgotten. To tap those roots, ecological visionaries across our garden-planet Earth are creating a global intellectual renaissance networking spiritual, philosophical, theological, literary, and artistic ideas for global ecological regeneration.
This renaissance is already birthing powerful eco-spiritual and eco-philosophical energy. It will provide the visionary pathway that is essential for our global human family to journey toward a new and ecologically postmodern global civilization.
M: It's almost a whole reimagination, which is why it makes sense to have artists and intellectuals and those kinds of people involved.
J: We certainly need philosophical clarification. Again, that is what I'm now working on. But the deepest and most energizing level is the artistic one. Art comes first, followed by spirituality, and then intellectual areas like philosophy build on that deep artistic and spiritual ground.
Philosophy works like an x-ray machine, allowing us to see the structural logic. But philosophy doesn't give life. Art, including images, poetry, and music, does give life. Again, art comes first. Therefore, ecological art is the foundational ground first of ecological spirituality and then of ecological philosophy.
M: I think art gets to the heart of people, too, the heart of everyone. Obviously, the intellectual movement is important, but not everyone is going to connect to that. Not everyone is going to connect to philosophy.
J: We need to realize that the heart is cognitive and that our whole body is cognitive. For example, cognitive scientists now tell us that the second most intelligent organ in our body, after our brain, is our intestines.
Classical European philosophers traditionally associated our emotions with organs of the abdominal cavity and the heart. But, those classical European philosophers, most famously the Stoics, wrongly thought that emotions impeded the mind. They thought we had to repress the emotions to clear the mind.
Also, in an unfortunately related manner, classical European philosophers wrongly portrayed women as over-emotional and as not rational, indeed as not fully human.
But we now know that emotions are highly intelligent. There is even sometimes more truth in emotional intelligence than in mental intelligence. Our rational mind can lie to us, but our intelligent emotions more often tell the truth.
Further, our emotions tap into the deep intellectual power that I call mythic-symbolic. The mental-rational dimension is only an abstraction, albeit a valuable one, of the deep mythic-symbolic ground, which is profoundly emotive.
M: In the four webinars that you gave for the United States Association of Catholic Priests, you spoke about the hyper-masculine society and its dangers. Can you speak more to that, I hadn't heard anyone explain it that way before.
J: Expanding on the thought of Thomas Berry, I have been investigating four great eras in our journey of human evolution. I call them the Primal, Classical, Modern, and now Postmodern Eras. But I use the word "postmodern" in an ecological sense and not in its typically academic sense of philosophical Nihilism.
Further, I don't see these four great eras in a modern way as linear stages but instead as concentric circles like the rings of a tree. The old eras never go away but always stay with us, like the DNA in our biology.
When we all lived in tribes (the Primal Era), women's intelligence primarily created the human journey beyond the primates. Women provided the creative artistic-intellectual foundation for human development and human civilization. Women shaped the foundations of the human journey in powerful ways.
Remember that, from its Greek roots, the word "philosophy" (philia-sophia) means "the love of wisdom," and that Athena was a Greek goddess of wisdom. (Plato tells us that she was earlier an African-Egyptian goddess, called Neith whose temple lay in the Egyptian city of Sais.)
Women are still publicly powerful for indigenous peoples, who have never lost our human family's primal spiritual-philosophical foundations.
For example, within the ancient and democratic Native-American Haudenosaunee Confederation (Iroquois League), founded by Hiawatha more than one thousand five hundred years ago, only women could traditionally vote to elect chiefs.
The founders of the United States of America learned about democracy's separation of powers from leaders of the Haudenosaunee Confederation. That Confederation has for all its years been based on three separate branches of government: judicial, executive, and legislative.
At the time of the United States' founding, the separation of powers did not exist anywhere in Europe. It was still ruled by kings and queens. The concept came from the Haudenosaunee tribes in the northeast of the North American continent.
Also, the Haudenosaunee have always had a fourth branch of government. It is called the Council of Grandmothers. This Council can accept or veto any decision of its Confederacy by using a single criterion: "How will it affect the children seven generations from now."
Along with the separation of powers, this long-term "seven-generations" thinking has been central to the Haudenosaunee government. (You may have seen the line of ecological paper products with the label "Seventh Generation." That's what the label refers to.)
For indigenous people, human spirituality is rooted in Nature, of which we humans always remain a part. In this ancient but still relevant ecological spirituality, the plants and animals are our sisters and brothers.
Classical European civilization looked down on our primal and still foundational eco-spirituality. But they did not eliminate it. Rather, they patriarchally subordinated it.
The higher 'masculine' spirituality of the classical West's elite-male aristocratic class claimed to "transcend" (rise above) Nature. But that elite-male aristocracy could not prevent the primal "immanent" and 'feminine" Nature-based spirituality from continuing among women and the rural peasantry, over whom they ruled.
However, when we come to the Modern Era, we have something worse than classical patriarchy. We have modern bourgeois hyper-masculinity.
Following that spiritual-philosophical paradigm, modern bourgeois elite-males designed modern industrial-colonial civilization to technoscientifically conquer and plunder "Mother Nature." They set out to "penetrate" her interior in order to extract her "natural resources" for human "utility." (Fossil fuels soon became Modernity's primary "resource.")
That was indeed something new!
At the deep mythic-symbolic level, bourgeois Modernity has held up the hyper-masculine symbol of a deformed male warrior conquering and plundering 'feminine' Nature's community of ecological life. (By contrast, the traditional noble warrior was to defend and protect the community of life).
Thus, in bourgeois Modernity, technoscience gets designed exclusively out of a one-sided and imbalanced elite-male imagination. That is why it's so difficult for women to make advances in "hard" scientific fields like physics and engineering.
Before bourgeois Modernity, however, women's imagination had always remained central to shaping society, even when subordinated in the classical period.
By contrast, in bourgeois Modernity, women's imagination was no longer allowed to influence technoscientific design. Only the hyper-masculine imagination was allowed at the 'higher' elite-male technoscientific levels. (It was quite late in the Modern Era that women were finally admitted to the 'higher" educational level of the university.)
The founding 'visionary' of the modern hyper-masculine mandate for technoscience to conquer and plunder Nature was Sir Francis Bacon, an English lawyer, philosopher, and chancellor of England around the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Bacon is considered by many to be the founding visionary of modern technoscience.
The distinguished eco-feminist historian Carolyn Merchant has documented Bacon's foundational but negative contribution to modern technoscience. She did that in her magisterial 1983 book The Death of Nature; Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution.
Bacon wrote a famous essay called The Masculine Birth of Time. In it, he defined Nature as "feminine" and technoscience as "masculine," and he directed modern 'masculine' technoscience to conquer and plunder 'feminine' Nature.
Bacon's mandate for modern technoscience was to force Nature (in effect, torturing her) to reveal her divinely embedded secrets of how she operates. Then, according to Bacon, modern technoscience could use Nature's divine secrets to extract her hidden "resources" for human "utility" and for building a new "modern" world.
Influenced by his mother's intense Puritan Calvinism, Bacon apparently also thought that the modern technoscientific conquest of Nature would restore the great knowledge supposedly lost by Adam in the "Fall" and bring about the Eschaton preached by Jesus.
But the long-term result has been the technoscientific construction of modern hyper-masculine industrial-colonial civilization, which we now know is ecologically unsustainable and which before long will collapse.
I describe Bacon's cruel 'vision' in Asian yin-yang terms as repressing yin (the Asian feminine symbol) and promoting only yang (the Asian masculine symbol). Modern industrial-colonial civilization has indeed been yang-warrior civilization.
Carolyn Merchant explicitly described it as waging an anti-ecological "war against Nature." It is also warring against rurally rooted peoples across the planet and against the urban poor and peoples of color.
Most fundamentally, it is trying to force women into the hyper-masculine mold.
Doing all that produces a hyper-masculine technoscientific society that is not cyclical or regenerative, but instead linear and degenerative. For example, steel and plastic cannot reproduce. They only wear out.
Again, modern technoscientific production is linear and degenerative, whereas Nature's economy is cyclical and regenerative. For that reason, the bourgeois economy of modern technoscience has become ecologically unsustainable, will certainly collapse, and perhaps do so in the near future.
Thus, late-modern industrial-colonial civilization, both in liberal-capitalist form and in scientific-socialist form, is hyper-masculine, linear, and degenerative. Its bourgeois paradigm of technoscientific production is devastating our garden-planet Earth's symbolically 'feminine,' cyclical, and regenerative community of ecological life.
In deep mythic-symbolic spiritual terms, modern bourgeois industrial-colonial civilization has lost consciousness of the ancient primal symbol of the divine feminine, which was often called the Mother Goddess.
Classical Catholic Christianity had kept that feminine symbol partly alive with its veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus. That happened especially through the artistic image of the female Madonna and her male child (Jesus) – a divine mother-son symbol which we now know is thousands of years old and originally African.
Now, for contemporary global Christianity, the Holy Spirit is re-emerging as the divine-feminine symbol. In that regard, we also now know that the ancient Syriac Christian Church called the Holy Spirit "God the Mother."
By the way, Antioch in Syria was the place to which the original Jewish followers of Jesus first fled when they were persecuted in Jerusalem, and where they were first called "Christians." They also spoke Aramaic, which was the primary language that Jesus spoke. So their naming of the Holy Spirit as "God the Mother" is foundationally important.
M: There is something I thought of when you were speaking about that, which also relates to the "seven generations", and it's the idea of sabbath, having the natural rhythms of renewal and rest baked in right from the beginning. I wonder if the idea of seven relates to the moon cycle, a woman's cycle, both twenty-eight-day feminine cycles.
J: Maybe that was it, the twenty-eight-day feminine cycle broken down into four weeks. It would be interesting to discover whether that cycle of seven came from women's exchange of information across ancient cultures.
Once again, our human family's ancient mythic-symbolic heritage of eco-spirituality and eco-philosophy, like the ancient cycle of seven with its sabbath, remains foundational for postmodern global ecological sustainability.
Trying to overcome the climate crisis by political legislation is good and important. But unless we dive down to the deep and ancient mythic-symbolic ground of eco-spirituality and eco-philosophy, I fear that our legislative-political efforts alone will ultimately prove shallow and therefore will fail.
Joe Holland, A Regenerative Vision for Christianity
Maddie: Let's start with your background. I want to hear about your life in general, and you as a person. You were formerly a catholic priest, correct?
Joe: Yes, I was ordained in 1965 and worked in Connecticut and Puerto Rico. I grew up in Connecticut and New York City in a very Irish Catholic home. My grandfather was the head of the Saloon Keepers Association in New York City. He had two Irish pubs in Manhattan, one right off Broadway's Times Square and one in Chelsea. My father was a commercial real-estate attorney, and his office was also on Broadway near my grandfather's pub. So I grew up on Broadway, hanging out at my grandfather's bars with my cousins as a little kid. It was like going to McDonald's, you could get hamburgers and coke and french fries, and all for free! It was right next to CBS, so the actors would come over, and they would bring us over to the studios. Then we moved to Connecticut, where my mother was from. That was a much different, rural experience. There I grew up hunting, fishing, and camping. So I had two sides in my youth - the urban and the rural sides. In Connecticut, I attended seminary after high school. I was going to go to Yale but decided on seminary instead. After that, I did undergraduate and graduate studies, first studying classical languages, then obtaining an undergraduate degree in philosophy, followed by four more years of theology. In my master's degree in biblical studies, I did a dissertation on the gospel of Mark in the original Greek. That was my first major writing project.
Maddie: Why did you choose Mark?
Joe: Mark is the oldest and earliest gospel. Clearly, in Mark, Jesus is not the figure that we often hear about as "Christ the King". Rather, he's a prophet like Moses. In the Old Testament, we have these two central figures - David and Moses. In the case of David the king, the word of God comes through the king and to the people. In the case of Moses the prophet, the word of God comes from the bottom up, from the people against the king, the pharaoh of Egypt. The two are very different. Western Christianity lived since the time of the Constantinian turn in the 4th century in what I call the Davidic mode. Christianity was appropriated, in the Catholic case, by the Roman Empire. Later, in the Protestant case, it became identified with national governments. It was all top-down. In Judaism, because the Temple had been destroyed and leveled by the Roman army, Jews in the diaspora identified with Moses more than David. Judaism in the diaspora became Mosiac, while Christianity in the Holy Roman Empire became Davidic. Now, we're at the collapse of the imperial age, the end of colonialism, and the rise of liberating movements, including Liberation Theology. Prophetic sectors of Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, are shifting to the Mosaic mode and becoming critical of society. It's a different movement in Christianity. I think the Holy Spirit is leading us to this regenerative and prophetic form of Christianity. Also, in the Mosaic mode, the covenant links together the Creator, the people, and the land. So there's always an ecological dimension in the Mosaic covenant.
Maddie: It's interesting when you think about the Jewish tradition. They have a lot of practice being the outcast, and it would make sense that they wouldn't connect as much to the Davidic tradition. In America, we were founded on the idea of being religious exiles who are building a new government.
Joe: Yes, but the early white European settlers said, "This [America] is a new Jerusalem!" And then the black slaves listened to white preaching and, in disagreement, they said, "Oh no, this is not a new Jerusalem, this is Egypt land! We're slaves like the Jews were in Egypt. God is going to liberate us, and the white slave owners are Pharaoh." Those are two entirely different interpretations - white Christianity in the Davidic mode, and black Christianity in the Mosaic mode. In the black spiritual hymns, you get a very strong sense of Moses. In past European Christianity, you get king David and Christ the King.
But Jesus's first sermon was all about liberating the oppressed and the poor, freeing the captives and the prisoners. It was all in Moses' language.
Also, in the Hebrew Torah, there are lots of ecological legislations. The idea that the Bible holds nothing ecological is nonsense. In fact, the Hebrew word adam in the Book of Genesis is not a person's name. It means the earth-creature, who comes from the adamah, which in Hebrew means the Earth - almost like the earth mother brings forth the earth creature. Despite what some Western Christians may think, it is an ecological story. And the whole story happens in a garden.
Ensign Cowell, Daring to be Hopeful
Ensign hailed from northern New Jersey and settled in Cleveland, Ohio working for several public companies in corporate finance and strategic planning. Following that he joined a fledging investment/wealth management company and stayed in this field for almost forty years. His avocation and passion for environmental activism galvanized in 2012 after attending an acceptance talk by Canadian naturalist, David Suzuki. Since then, he has participated in founding environmental entities to advance major systems change initiatives and personal/spiritual consciousness through transformative learning.
Maddie: You don't hear about a lot of people coming from the business world of Standard Oil, and then becoming so passionate about the environment. I'd love for you to share more about your background and that transition in your life. It's inspiring.
Ensign: I've done a lot of reflecting in the last few years about environmentalism, and one of the things that I've come to realize is that we all grow up with a narrative. For me, the story was that the man was the head of the family, a wage earner (in my family at least), and the wife was the support person, child-rearer, and homemaker. My sisters were very accomplished and my mother was a part-time teacher. They were very capable people - I never thought of women as being less capable, but it did seem like they had roles. When I look back, I realize my whole personal narrative was, "You grow up, you go to school, you try to get good marks." My sister did well in school, so I was supposed to do well. I did okay and got into Dartmouth. I majored in chemistry for 2 years, but when my dad took me down to a factory to meet some chemists, I thought, "I don't want to be a chemist at all!". I loved the subject but learned I didn't want to do it professionally. Quickly, I switched to economics and then went to business school for the next 2 years to stay out of Vietnam. After that, I went into the National Guard. My narrative was the three boxes of life - learning, labor, and leisure. In other words, you would "learn" by going to school, you would "labor" to earn a living and take care of your family, and you would save enough so that when you retired, you could enjoy "leisure". I thought that life would go on like that forever, that there would not be any existential threats to human beings and the ecosystem. The word environment wasn't even around, the concept of Gaia, the idea of the earth as a living, breathing organism - these are relatively new concepts. I never conceptualized the environment other than my local stream and woods. Our son in law studied environmental science, environmental ecology, and sustainable development. I didn't even know what the heck that meant! It all changed in 2012 when I heard David Suzuki give an acceptance talk for the Inamori Ethics Prize. When you boil the talk down to two sentences, he essentially said, "We have seven billion-plus large mammals on the planet, and we're having too much impact on the whole system - too many chemicals, too many machines, too many roads, too much water pollution. We're just making too much impact." He cited a letter from the Union of Concerned Scientists (written 20 years earlier) as a warning to mankind. I thought, "Wow, this is real". This is near-term, and it calls me as a person who has business experience and who cares - this is something I should be involved in! When I got to Florida and came to know the Climate Action Team at a unitarian congregation, I found a place where I could attach and be active. Then we went to Assisi in 2018, where I met Drew Mearns. Now we have a Cleveland cohort and a Florida cohort through the Capra Course, and with the Climate Action Team, we formed another non-profit here called Reset. I've got tentacles in a lot of places and am constantly trying to figure out - what is mine to do? What is my special niche? What can I bring to the party and what do I bring to the party to really try and have impact?
Maddie: What does impact mean to you?
Ensign: Impact, to me, is visualized in total transformation - socially, economically, ecologically, racially - it's all tied together. You cannot think of a sustainable, peaceful, spiritually fulfilling place without a total transformation. It will look more egalitarian, you will either have tyranny or authoritarianism or you will have a much broader democracy. Take the example of flattened organizations in some modern companies. They're much more transparent and have a flatter management style. I'm trying to be a player, an agent, and a helper. I see it as a need for total transformation to not just a sustainable, but a regenerative and enriching human presence on the earth. That's the heart of it. It's a practical utopianism.
Right now, we have rampant mental health issues with young people, people are very unsatisfied - even in a wealthy country like the United States. We're in a cockeyed place in our evolution. For people like us (in the middle class), we have great material comfort and safety. I'm reading a book called The Divide, it's a myth-buster about how the developed countries are still, in effect, draining capital and are disadvantaging the global south. It's a big, hairy problem. Sustainability is important in everything we do.
Maddie: How does this passion and advocacy for sustainability play out in your life and conversations with people of varying beliefs?
Ensign: One day, I had a discussion with a friend about water rise, and he didn't have any belief in it. He said, "You know, an ice cube, when it melts, doesn't create any excess water than what already exists". I asked him if there was any ice over land, like the Greenland ice sheet. If you had snow at the top of the mountain, and it melted and went into a lake, would the lake level rise? The ice isn't icebergs in the water melting. It's land-based ice that will melt and will raise the water levels. He's a smart guy, but he'd never thought about the reality of that. I believe that man is impacting the environment and the climate. Even if that were not true, we've got only about 100 years left of carbon defined fuel, we'll have to transition away from carbon anyways. The idea of needing to deal with systems that we believe are sustainable is important. Technology has to be part of the answer. There are so many broken systems. Take the food system, for example. So much waste comes from it, and we're not even taking care of the third of the population that goes undernourished. I see it as a worldwide problem. We've never really cooperated on a worldwide basis, but you see some of that with covid. The good thing about covid is that it shows us we're all in one system. That's the beauty of the virus. Everybody has experienced it in one way or another, and they may have experienced it quite differently because of their circumstance. For us, it's been an inconvenience. For others, it's been an absolute disaster. We're all aware of it, all over the world. While it has been detrimental, that awareness is a good and unifying thing.
Drew Mearns, Acorns and Oak Trees
Part 2 of a conversation with Drew Mearns. Read part 1 here.
Maddie: I've been reading a lot of Richard Rhor and also the gospel of Luke, and I feel that a strong message in both is the story of embodiment. Just as you've talked about with coaching, making everything physically and spiritually connected, that's essentially the story of Jesus, that spirit is embodied and connected to everything physical.
Drew: That's essentially the theology of the incarnation. Again, I risk my own ignorance of theology, but it's the idea that God so loved the world that he came down and literally embodied himself in the person of Jesus, and in some way in all of us. I talk about that in the sense of entelechy, which is the idea that inside of an acorn is the oak tree if all the things and relationships surrounding are able to bring that greatness out of him or her. If that's in a runner, that person knows deep inside that he or she has a place and a future and can be a better runner or person. I see it and help to bring it out. I think that's what the best teachers or pastors or lovers do in and through their relationships.
Even Gurdjieff talks about that. He asks one of his students how many acorns he believes are in the oak tree out the window. The student says he doesn't know, so Gurdjieff asks again. The student answers, "Probably thousands." Gurdjieff asks, "Well, how many do you think will become a tree?" The student replies that maybe 5 will, and Gurdjieff asks, "What if it is only one?" All those thousands of acorns, all of us human beings…some of us will mature in one way and some in another way. Even the acorns that die will fertilize the lives of the others. It's a beautiful thought, not only the Aristotelian idea that inside of us and inside that acorn is an oak tree, but also Gurdjieff contributing that we might not all be oak trees or Olympic champions or financially successful. We're here to become that, or maybe in our love become part of the fertilizer for someone else to achieve a kind of greatness. We're in this all together. It's beautiful to think about.
Maddie: It's amazing. The more I look at the sciences and natural world and discover how they work, I realize so much more about the spiritual world, the soul world. Maybe they aren't so different. They both display the same patterns, like that story you just told.
Drew: Yes. And it comes back to the one thing that the great ones, the mystics and writers and saints, talk about. They see that connection, that we all are intertwined with everything else. Nature helps us understand that, the examination of trees and how the roots of one tree interact with another. We're all part of the same thing. Joe Holland has talked about that too regarding the future of our world, of humanity - that we're going to build this from the ground up again. It's a natural idea, that we're always growing. That's why I called my project Growing Runners, to influence the young runners early and connect them with the older ones before they're gone. So often, we forget even the names of the champions before in our focus on the present. We forget that our roots are in something that might not be with us but may still be feeding us.
Maddie: It helps you see patterns, that maybe this has happened before in a different sense. Everything that happens has happened before. Maybe that makes the world a little less overwhelming. For everything to reconstruct, it must be deconstructed. That's been a comforting thing for me to think about in the midst of this. For things to get reorganized, they have to be disorganized first.
Drew: I was at a conference with Michael Murphy, and one of the important points he made was that evolution meanders. It doesn't go in a straight line. So many kids want to get a personal best every time they run the race, but they don't understand that there's a build-up period, a season, a cycle. There's a process. Every day is not going to be your best. There's also the idea of entropy, that the world is heading for a kind of destruction and everything falls into evenness or death. But syntrophy is love. Love is the organizing principle that fights the idea of entropy, that looks backward. It's a very theologically Christian idea, that there's an end that is a wonderful reunion, almost like the reversing of our universe's time. There's a big bang at the start, a massive expansion that peters out. But love seems to be the organizing, energetic force that not only slows entropy but begins to reverse it. It's a beautiful thought. Evolution doesn't go straight, and there will always be a bit of degradation. The fertilization of a massive tree happens by the death of many other seeds, branches, and roots. I think of the gifts we have as former seeds planted that make us into who we are. I can imagine that Jesus or Saint Francis had something in their head that didn't exist yet where they were. They saw it as a reality, that the path they took was towards something they knew would happen at some time.
Maddie: This has been such a beautiful, enlivening, uplifting conversation. Is there anything else you'd like to say?
Drew: I feel so fortunate to be part of the SSGN, whose purpose and mission are directed towards building on the tradition and history of the Rome-Assisi conference, St. Francis, Thomas Berry, and all the people before us. We're then recruiting young people into an integrative movement, connecting nature with spirituality, connecting the kinds of things that we do with spirituality in a way that is not authoritarian or didactic, but experiential. I'm happy to be involved, learn more, and contribute where I can.
Drew Mearns, Leading with Listening
For more than 20 years since retiring from the management of elite, professional athletes, Drew Mearns has helped parents, coaches, high school teams and club programs improve performance, attitudes, and college opportunities for young distance runners. Through proven principles, programs and practice strategies, Drew has developed and grown runners (including five of his own children) into some of the top youth and high school distance runners and teams in the country.
Maddie: When we've talked about teaching and leadership in the past, we've talked about how you approach teaching from a coaching perspective. Can you tell us your thoughts on that subject and your background in that work?
Drew: Of all the different things that I've done, from coaching and teaching, being an aggressive big-firm lawyer, being a sports agent and owner of a sports management company, becoming involved with Q-Link, and also working as the theology department chair of a top high school, sport has been a common piece and a constant part of my life. Sport for me is running - not only running as an athlete and being a part of an athletic family, but also running in high school and college and professionally at New York Athletic Club. This continued into my professional life when I coached and taught at the University of Kentucky as well as at the University of Virginia, where I was the first head coach of the women's program after Title IX. I've been a runner all my life. I now have a professional program in D.C., and a youth program here (in the Williamsburg area) called Growing Runners. I've always connected sport and the mind-body-spirit aspects of physical performance to the things I've either been studying, teaching, or professionally working on. Running has been a constant theme in my life.
I like to connect the things that I'm studying, learning about, reading, and teaching and apply them to areas of human physical performance. For example, you can connect people like Huxley, Gurdjieff, Sartre, or Emerson (to name a few), not because they were athletes or coaches, but because those principles apply to my coaching and the relationships I have with young runners and their parents. That has been a really interesting part of my life, integrating the various pieces. That is what connected me with the Spirituality and Sustainability Global Network, particularly the Rome-Assisi conference, which gave birth to the SSGN.
Maddie: How did you initially get connected with the group?
Drew: A few years ago, I was invited by my friend Ken Kitatani to go to the most recent Rome-Assisi conference. I was actually born in Naples, Italy, and lived there with my parents and 7 younger sisters. At 10 years old, I went to an Italian school and learned the language. Later, when I was at Yale, I studied intensive Italian. When I graduated, I won a Fulbright scholarship to teach in Italy at the University of Bologna. The Italian government collapsed, and I never got to take advantage of that particular education opportunity. But because of my background, I've gotten to represent Italian clients, organize sports events in Rome, and was even at the first world championships in Rome in 1987. I loved my connection and my parent's connection with Italy and the fact that my sister and I were born there. My religious connection, having grown up in the Catholic church, and my love of Saint Francis, also connected me on a level. Ken, Joe Holland, and Elisabetta Ferrero allowed me to speak about sports and spirituality at a conference, so it was a unique thing, bringing that world to the group. There is so much I have learned from them.
Maddie: You're taking the world of the body and marrying it to the world of the mind. It's an interesting, important mix. Especially when it comes to running. Running is such a mind game.
Drew: Running is a sport of life, a sort of lonely physical activity that you can practice by yourself. There are many pieces to it, not only the performance and health components, but the practice of spirituality within the sport is important, too.
Maddie: It's a very contemplative thing, the only physical sport where you're not thinking about the next move or strategy. It's full of repetition.
Drew: That's kind of interesting, because, from the standpoint of coaching, it's not only the repetition. There are 3 'R' words I use in terms of athletes who are participating in the sport and desiring to improve themselves. The words relate to the future, the past, and the present, and I say it like this.
Everything we're doing today is a rehearsal - why am I doing this particular activity? That word is about looking forward, that everything we do today is preparing us for something down the road. The next word is reflection. I ask my kids or whoever is working with me to look back at what they did and what they learned from what they did. The most important of the 'R' words is relationship. My mantra is that "workouts don't work, relationships do". Nowadays, if you go online and search for information about how to improve your 5k time, you get 5 million answers. If workouts worked, then everybody would be fast.
What really happens is that I see something in an athlete, and because of our relationship of curiosity, openness, and acceptance (if a relationship is based on those things), that person hears, understands, and practices with much more effectiveness than if they just read and practiced a workout in a book. I love that part of what I do, and probably get so much more out of coaching than the kids who are coached by me.
Maddie: How would you explain your approach to combining sports and spirituality?
Drew: It's not denominational, but it springs off the word relationship, which is the idea that relationships with each other, even relationships with your adversaries or competitors, are something to consider and use as energy that powers your performance. It's the question, where should I be paying my attention? For example, G.K. Chesterson, who wrote a special biography of Saint Francis, talked about Francis's ability to mix his thoughts with thanks. As a coach, I try to get my athletes to mix their thoughts with what they're doing physically and emotionally. It's the idea of combining things. When I was growing up, we didn't talk about that. We went out to run and tried to do what the coach told us. When it came to mental training, the truly gifted athletes probably developed it themselves or had an instinct for it. It wasn't as studied, taught, or worked on like it is now. In a race, there are certain things that an athlete should be thinking about at different times in that race. It's not how you feel - "this is hard, these guys are too good for me". It's another directive, like in Saint Francis's great gift of thinking about running after the beggar or doing it for somebody else. Early in a race, it might be focusing on the plan that you developed with your coach. Later in the race, it may be emotional, trying to win for your team, or doing the best you can do. It's never focusing on how bad you feel.
The idea of a coach is not authoritarian. It's a partner in performance, a support person. The word itself comes from the idea of a carriage that carries a person towards his or her goal. I think of myself as that kind of coach, someone who can support and help someone in what her goal might be, as opposed to what I want. I want to be somebody who listens more.
Maddie: Thinking about growing up in running with different coaches, a lot of the models put fear in you to make you listen. Yours is one of inspirational leadership. It's even similar to religion, how many people believe or do because they're afraid of the wrath of god vs. wanting to enter into a transformational relationship. For a certain amount of time, being afraid can make you do something, but it's not lasting.
Drew: It's the difference between an authoritarian and a co-active coach, one that says we're in this together. You're going to be out there on the track, but I'm going to support you in what YOU want. That means I should be listening more than telling.
In the sense of entelechy, inside of an acorn is an oak tree - if all the things around and all the relationships and all of nature can bring that out of him. If it's a runner that I see something in, that person knows deep inside that they have a place and a future, and I see and help to bring it out. I think that's what the best coaches, teachers, pastors, or even lovers do through their relationships.
Rev. Dr. Gregory Simpson, Science and Spirituality
"Essentially, I got to meet the humanness in the problems I was dealing with. All along, I was just measuring things. I could tell you how many parts per million of an antibiotic was in milk, and I knew this was wrong. I wasn't looking at it through the human suffering associated with it, I was looking at it through the numbers. When I started to see the numbers in their humanness, through the struggles and the loss of life and the oppression of people, that painted another picture for me and made the different issues become a whole."
Dr. Gregory Simpson is the Pastor of Nauraushaun Presbyterian Church and Co-Founder & Senior Education Consultant of Learning for Life Solutions LLC. He is an active board member of the Spirituality and Sustainability Global Network.
What are your origins - where was your upbringing and what was it like? How have these things informed your passion for the work you do now?
I was born in Glasgow Scotland, where my parents studied at the University of Edinburgh. My dad studied electrical engineering my mom studied food technology. When I was 2, my family moved back to Jamacia, and most of my young years were spent there. At about age 6, we left Jamacia and came to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where my dad studied hospital engineering. We later moved back to Jamaica, where I finished all my schooling and got a doctorate in organic chemistry. I worked in Jamacia for four years and came to the U.S., where I worked as a post-doc research fellow for UMass medical school. After that, I moved to New York City, and have lived there since 2010. That's the big picture. My adolescent years in Jamaica specifically oriented me towards issues of the environment. After my Ph.D., I started working in the Ministry of Agriculture as a food safety laboratory manager, where I managed a national program, and that was when I started focusing on issues of the environment. The role opened my eyes to what contaminants can look like, from heavy metals, to industrial waste contamination in the soil, to pesticides and antibiotic residues in milk and eggs. That was when I started understanding the significance of environmental issues. Jamacia is predominantly people of color, so I didn't have to wrestle with issues of race - it was just an issue of the environment. When I came to the U.S., I got a different sense and flavor of what the race issue meant as it related to issues of environment and ecology, dealing with issues systemically. By the time I arrived at seminary, I was focused on 2 things - issues of environment and issues of education. Both of them go hand in hand.
Why did you decide to move from working as a scientist to studying theology and becoming a pastor?
There are a couple of reasons. After a while, you do things so often that you become very competent at them and comfortable with them. After that post-doc, I realized I could somehow explain (with science) any problem that was thrown at me - I could usually figure out what was going on and why it was happening. Later on in my post-doc, the question that bothered me was WHY things were happening. My focus at that time was pregnancy-induced hypertension, and I studied the physiology of pregnancy. It blew me away. All my life, I'd studied plant chemistry. When I got to UMass medical school, it was the first time I'd engaged in physiology and anatomy, and I was astonished when I began to understand all the genes that were involved in regulating the pregnancy process. I could figure out how things were happening, but that never answered the question of why. That question of why couldn't be answered in a lab. It had to be answered somewhere else, and that is when I started inquiring about the spiritual instead of just the scientific. That experience prompted me to do a deeper study in theology and lead me to walk away from the laboratory perspective of my scientific work to studying theology, the bible, and connecting with religious groups. That was the biggest shift that took place in my life, in terms of my mindset and how I thought about things. I was focusing on why things happened as opposed to how. The more I studied, the more I realized there was a parallel track between the sciences and theology.
During the discussion panel you hosted on climate justice and environmental racism, activist Mustafa Ali said - "Whether it's the Bible, Koran, Torah, etc, no matter which book it is, they’re all leading us in the right path." How can we approach faith and spirituality from a place of unity rather than opposition?
The first step is having respect for humanity, for life, because all traditions that seek to identify a connection between the lived experience and god, a deity, strive to out of respect for that diety. In all of these traditions, the Abrahamic traditions and the non- Abrahamic traditions, there is sanctity that is related to life, valuing life through the lens of the diety. Once you have that framework in mind, if you follow those tenants, it is very difficult to dismiss another. Whatever diety you are identifying with is reflected in humanity in its broadest sense. The holistic nature of our response to God (a deity) is that the diety takes care of us and we take care of ourselves in worship to that deity. For that to happen, you must have respect for the other. It doesn't work like that in reality. People have biases, prejudices, and differences. These differences in behavior, culture, ethnicity, and religiosity all weigh into how we interact with each other. Someone will say, "I cannot be supportive of Jews/ Christians/ Muslims/ Buddhists." You can't do it because you can't see it through the ubiquitous experience of god shown through humanity, not in groups of individuals. It's a principle that is problematic for most of us.
I want to hear more about environmental justice and climate justice. How did you become involved in this work, and can you talk about the issues?
Moving to the U.S., I was very clear on issues concerning the environment, especially concerning contaminants, whether it be heavy metals in the soil or antibiotics in the milk. I understood that this was a problem. I came to the U.S. and ended up in seminary, which exposed me to the difference between biology and chemistry and the human suffering that went along with it. It also pointed to the systemic issues that we're now seeing defined as environmental racism, where communities of color are contaminated, they live beside petrochemical plants, dumps, fossil fuel refineries, or fracking sites. What I got exposed to were the social justice aspects of why that was wrong. I knew why it was wrong scientifically, but I didn't have an understanding of the social justice components and the activism that flows around it, and why it flows around it in that way.
Environmental racism, environmental justice, climate justice - these are all functionally related not just to civil rights issues but also to scientific issues, education issues, civil responsibility issues, and social contract issues. It's tied up in a very human experience, in our religiosity. You can't separate the science from the lived experience or the theology from the science. They're all intertwined. You can't see that easily unless you go and experience something in a certain space, you do the mapping. Once you see the maps, your life has to change. You'll either reject it as a fallacy, or you see the truth in it and act differently. That's where I have landed with my work.
Geraldine Patrick Encina, A Journey with the Wind
Geraldine Patrick Encina is executive director of Earth Timekeepers, an organization that promotes a way of living in sync with natural cycles, inspired in the ancestral philosophy of time-space and calendars, especially from Mesoamerica. Raised in the Canary Islands from Chilean parents with Scot-Gaelic and Mapuche ancestry, she settled in Mexico twenty years ago to start a family next to Mindahi Bastida. They have two children, Xiye and Danzaki.
1.What was your upbringing like? Where did you grow up, and how did your early experiences of life inform what you do now?
I was raised in Gran Canaria, one of the islands of the archipelago off the coast of Morocco. Together with my sister, we would go to the beach every single day, both in the summertime and in the school season. My connection to the sea, sand, Sun, and sea-life was profound, and it was enhanced thanks to the practice of Yoga that my Mum instilled in us. In that state of mind, she would bring to us the consciousness that we are all connected, and she would read to us poems of her grandfather who was raised with the Mapuche love for nature.
At the age of seven, while feeling the gentle breeze by the seashore, I started to wonder how I could take kids my age on a journey about how the wind came to be created. I came up with a story about the Lord of the Wind, in charge of sending out to the four directions the gasp that was blown by the creature of Mother Earth’s whose birthday it was on a certain day. There were two siblings (a girl and a boy) in charge of keeping close track of the onomastics that were shown in a special calendar that they had in their bedroom, and they would go to collect the animal or plant to be celebrated so to take it in a special vessel to the Lord of the Wind who dwelled on a very long and flat cloud in the deep sky, together with his helper beings.
2. Can you tell us about your work and research in Mesoamerican Timekeeping? What makes you passionate about this cause?
When I met Mindahi (whose name means Lord of the Wind in Hñahñu-Otomi, one of the most ancient languages in Central Mexico) it happened at the top of a hill in Quito, Ecuador. He was leading a beautiful ceremony for us, young environmental leaders coming together from every bioregion of the West Coast of the American continent. He was guiding us so that we would connect deeply with Mother Earth and ask her for forgiveness as we kneeled, touching her grassy, moist skin. That ceremony connected him and me to the next one, two years later, at the Otomi Ceremonial Site in Temoaya, Mexico State. There, he told me “You see how we greet the four directions, and the heart of Father sky and the heart of Mother Earth, and our own hearts, at the center. How can it be, then, that anthropologists and archaeologists say that our conception of time and space is not orderly enough, because our calendars cannot stay on track with the solar year, and so keeps lagging one day every four years forever?” That question echoed in my mind when I was studying Ethnoecology of ancient cultures in Mesoamerica, where the understanding of time-space philosophy and practice is of the essence. Why was a 360-day part of the 365-day calendar divided into 18 twenty-day segments called Zäna (‘Moon’ in Hñahñu-Otomi) or Uj (‘Moon’ in Yucatec Maya), and how did those 365 pa or k’iinoob (‘day’, respectively) enable the year-calendar to stay in sync with the Sun? These became two central questions in my postdoctoral research at the Ethnoecology Lab of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As my studies advanced, new questions arose: Why was there such fascination around Venus and its multiple appearances at dusk and dawn? And why did governors of most prominent dynasties have to guise as Deity GI (Venus) to re-enact the installation of orderly time-space as happened in Creation time, precisely on a date when evening Venus was in its first rising, preferably with the new Crescent Moon?
I have come to learn that the observance of Venus, Moon, and Pleiades were—and are—crucial to forecast weather conditions and prepare the community accordingly: cornfields, waterways, and wetlands are extremely susceptible to rainwater regimes. Unfortunately, the capacity to develop agroecological and ecological strategies based on those observations is something that very few communities can do with certitude nowadays. This reduces the resiliency of the socio ecosystem as a whole, so it becomes more vulnerable to extreme weather events—which are becoming more frequent as ocean surfaces and the atmosphere accumulate more heat.
Working with colleagues from communities in the Yucatan Peninsula about the Original Maya Calendar has been mutually enriching. They, as Yucatec language and culture teachers and chroniclers of their regions, are being able to refresh the ancestral memory and knowledge about natural events characterizing the seasons throughout the year cycle. For instance, according to scholars of the Maya and school books, twenty-day month Kéej (‘deer’) has no fixed articulation to a specific time of the year—as neither do the rest of the Maya months. On the contrary, when using the Ethnoecological framework I have developed, local promoters of Maya culture have come to understand that the role of month Kéej is to mark with precision the opening of March Equinox, which, according to bioregional lore, is the time when the newborn deer ‘spring’ to life. When they are able to link the long-forgotten Maya months to an actual event in their ecosystem, three things happen: they come to realize that seasonal patterns have been around for thousands of years, which explains why month name ‘deer’ made as much sense back two-thousand years ago as it does now; they recover a sense of pride for the intellectual product of their ancestors, i.e. the Maya calendar, the Ja’ab; and they become more open to talking about the problems they are facing now due to climate change and the ongoing destruction of their delicate ecosystems as a result of unsustainable projects. Re-signifying time-space as a practice is empowering local people in the Yucatan Peninsula to protect and defend their territories.
3. What else are you currently working on and advocating for?
I have always advocated for the healing of biocultural territories. Whether in Chile, Mexico, or other countries in the American continent, I believe that territories can be healed when human communities are permanently cultivating their spiritual connection to the land that hosts them. This kind of practice is only possible when the cultural philosophy of time-space is well known and has been maintained. It is a philosophy that has given symbolic meaning to time-space entities to the point that they are considered the legitimate caregivers of mountains, caves, forests, creeks, springs, wetlands, and seashores. It is them to whom we, as mere passers-by, owe respect and acknowledgment, and we express it by giving payments or spiritual food at their dwelling places. This mostly means music, songs, flowers, fruits, and incense, being delivered at certain times of the year through pilgrimage and traditional ceremonies.
Ever since 1492, when the Otomi-Toltec cycle 13 Reed was closed and a new one commenced, that philosophy was shattered: it was literally burnt to ashes, and its holders were brutally eliminated. The Elders said that Father Sun would depart, and that no light would shine for the People of the Corn for a long time; that during all that time ceremonial centers would remain covered, books hidden and sage people quiet. Five hundred and twenty years later, in 2012, as we entered a new 13 Reed cycle, we knew that the Sun would start to shine: right now, the People of the Corn are awakening to the dawning of Father Sun. All of us who are living in (not ‘on’ or ‘off from’) Turtle Island— the same turtle land that the Maya conceived in their creation story, when thirteen lordships were installed—have the responsibility to advocate for the healing of biocultural regions and territories. Whether our family’s root is deeply sunken in these lands or whether we have only recently been welcomed to them, we must be sure that all our actions are enabling the healing of rivers, lakes, and oceans, the restoration of forests and jungles, and, most importantly, the protection of sacred sites and holy grounds by the local people themselves.
4. Is there a personal, spiritual dimension to your life and work? Is that practice important to you?
I have always been very connected to the four elements of life and to the fifth, which, to me, is love-light emanating from Great Spirit. I try to stay connected to Great Spirit at all times; for this, I pay attention to the small details that moments bring. Every moment unfolds teachings—sometimes difficult to interpret due to our short-sightedness or because expanded information is veiled to most of us. Nevertheless, just like we can train ourselves to remember dreams—or fly in them—we can train ourselves to capture those instants that make life experience more meaningful. To me, it’s not about an individual achieving control over life events, people, and processes, but about a collective person developing the mastery of flowing like water in a stream, where moments—time-space entities—are those multi-colored pebbles, stones, and rocks that add mystery to our passing-by in this life. It’s a passing-by which “is not for long, just for a little while”—as an ancient Otomi-Toltec phrase reminds us when talking about human being’s humble and impeccable existence.
As we see the rage with which the four elements are acting in the wild and in urbanized areas, it may feel impossible to honor them, because there are so many emotions related to their destructive manifestation. However, it is more than ever that they need to be honored as living entities, as entities with consciousness; it is more than ever that we need to humbly see that they are doing the work of purification and release of toxic human behavior that we humans never did for thousands of years. For Catholics and Christians, Jesus’s main mission was to release toxic human behavior in the (past and forthcoming) history of humankind. For earth-based religions, elements are the ones playing that role. Each religion, in their own framework, has come to interpret the deluge that happened back some eight thousand years ago. Among very ancient cultures, the myth of a naturally-occurring event that shakes humanity’s consciousness and shifts human behavior is essential, and it can cycle back. My interpretation of Jesus is that he came to remind people they should equally love friend and foe, and that we should love, honor, and protect all mother figures, including nature and Earth. If today’s Christians focused on that basic mandate instead of whether salvation is achievable after having sinned, Earth would not have gone through the vandalization, exploitation, and desecration that has led her to the severe condition of instability that she is in today. Her atmospheric and ocean chemical composition and temperature, her geological and plate tectonics configuration, and her ecological and biological conditions are all evidence of a kind of involution that the universe had not yet registered. To many readers, Earth is not a ‘she’. Vanguard environmental lawyers pretty much have committed to represent Earth and nature as a legal entity or as a person. I, as many colleagues and young adults, am eager to support new court cases where rivers and other ecosystems come forward to demand their rights to exist and thrive. Surely, if and when they are in all their splendor, ecosystems would help mitigate the destructive effects of phenomena caused by greed-led human activities. But, ultimately, the only thing that humanity should be doing now, is to save herself from herself. And that is done by loving one another, loving life, and loving the biggest, unconditionally loving mother of all: Mother Earth.
5. Your daughter is a prominent young climate activist. What did you teach her about conservation as a child, and what are you learning from her now? What advice would you give to someone hoping to instill those values in their children?
There was not much that I had to teach Xiye. She brought to my consciousness the principle of love when she was in my womb. In a dream, she said to women members of our family: “You must love yourselves and love others, it is what humanity needs most at this time, and you must do it mindfully.” She was raised close to the family food garden and cornfield, participated in a traditional dance called ‘Cuantepecos’ at the yearly Fiesta of her community, and loved to “teach herself” to cook next to Grandma and to weave ‘Tule’ next to Grandpa. She went to a few public schools and, half-way through middle school, we made the effort to send her to one that enhanced the kind of Earth-based values and practices that we instilled at home. Four significant practices there were: to take on the responsibility of being a water protector; to give thanks to the people harvesting the vegetables, fruits, and cereals and cooking for lunch; to do Yoga and have music-making sessions, and to listen with empathy to every classmate's feelings and emotions in a circle whenever they needed it.
Cooking next to Grandma while listening to her life story, taking long walks in mountains and forests, observing the kind of unconditional dedication earth-people put so that life may continue unfolding and thriving; those were precious moments that we as parents intentionally enabled in her upbringing. Children learn from example. To live life with commitment, responsibility, and in service for Mother Earth requires that children enjoy connecting with water, earth, fire, and air in a sacred and loving way—and also in a reciprocal way. To thank them for their nurturing is as essential as to acknowledge plants and animals for their giving themselves in—to us or other beings in the web of life. Those small rituals are usually very well taken by children as they grow. I would advise people to put aside the fear and burden that brings the thought of an unlivable Earth, and to offer children these sacred moments of authentic connection to Mother Earth and her most pure expressions of love for her kin. So be it.
Claudia H. Herrera-Montero, Co-creation and the mystery of God in relationship with all that is created
Claudia is a Catholic practical theologian and educator and served as a lay pastoral leader in Catholic higher education for nearly the past ten years of her life. She was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia where she pursued her undergraduate studies in International Relations and Political Sciences at Universidad del Rosario. Claudia holds an M.A. in Pastoral Ministries and a Ph.D. in Practical Theology from St. Thomas University in Miami, Florida. Her doctoral work with College-age Latinas in South Florida has expanded her research on participatory-action with Latinx communities in the classroom and ministerial settings, as she explores on their faith identity and social locations. She serves as the Secretary of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS) and this Summer, she joined the board of the Spirituality, Sustainability Global Network. Claudia lives in South Florida with her husband and young daughter.
Maddie: What was your religious upbringing like? How have your personal faith and spirituality changed throughout your life? How has this impacted the work you do now?
Claudia: I grew up Catholic in Bogotá very closed to my abuelas (grandmothers). Their fierce and tender motherly figures created a significant impact on my life. I also attended all-girls Catholic school with the Piarists and Salesians sisters. My abuelas (grandmothers) and the Madres (Sisters) taught me about God through their love and care for their families and the poor. My faith, particularly a closer devotion to Jesus and La Virgencita (Mary), as well a passionate heart for service and justice was not an option or a component throughout my life. It is inherent to who I am and to the social context where I come from. When my family and I came to the United States, we learned to be the other. We encountered a place in which the social categories of language, immigration status, and ethnicity were new and difficult to avoid. I did not anticipate that we would be reminded of these categories not just in the academic enterprise or the classroom setting, but within the social spectrum of our everyday life. Throughout my life, I learned to appreciate the scriptures. My lived experience as an immigrant Latina in the US has shaped my spirituality and my work in the church and the academy. It is naturally at the core of who I am and my relationship with God and others. The language, Spanish, that once I used naturally in the public spectrum, became part of this in-between space of two worlds that I constantly negotiate and call home.
Maddie: We’ve been speaking about the idea of co-creation during many of our recent board meetings. What does the term mean to you, and why is this an important way of seeing the world?
Claudia: The study of theology has opened my lenses to reflect deeper into the mystery of God in relationship with humanity and all that is created. When I started studying theology, it was eye-opening - like those aha moments - to reflect on the meaning of participating in God’s ongoing creation. I affirmed my belief that I was not only created by God in God’s image and likeness, but I learned that I was an active participant and collaborator in God’s dynamic work in the world; visible through my ministry work, scholarship and teaching. Later on, I started to understand that my relationships with the world and all that surrounds me become a reflection of the ongoing collaboration and co-creation with the divine. During the past couple of years, I have been reading Pope Francis’ writings on integral ecology, particularly in his letter Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. I correlate this work with our ongoing discussions in our recent meetings. The concept of integral ecology or ecology of daily life moved me to reflect that everything is interconnected and therefore my daily actions and practices have a greater impact beyond myself, particularly in those who are more vulnerable. When I consume (for example, when I brew a rich cup of coffee in the morning), I impact significantly a network of relationships that are involved in the process of producing coffee (and I mention coffee for example is because I love coffee/Cafecito…smiles). The same dynamic happens when I take my students to learn and serve with the migrant farm-working community in Immokalee. This experience opens up the space for dialogue and communal learning and transformation. I have found profoundly transforming how my students’ active participation ultimately calls for justice and a more humane way of living as much as how the marginalized contexts they encounter have transformed their relationships with others, and ultimately with God.
Maddie: What are your favorite courses to teach? What subjects and topics do you get the most excited to talk about? What makes you so passionate about exploring participatory action in the classroom?
Claudia: I have found it profoundly transforming to teach undergraduate students in the areas of faith and spirituality. Each course and classroom community is very unique. I challenge my students to reflect on their very unique narratives and social contexts as a critical component of their spiritual journey. In addition, I have been teaching pastoral ministry in Spanish (particularly in the areas of Catholic Social Teaching and Pastoral Planning) for the past few years to pastoral leaders in South Florida. I have the opportunity not only to facilitate theological reflection in the classroom, but I also get to listen to how intentionally they correlate their pastoral work with class material, and we do this by departing with initial assumptions and a pastoral question. I call this journey the ministry of teaching beyond the classroom. Every time we meet, I see just a little piece of God’s work in their communities. I see myself as a facilitator and conversation partner who serves them as they make meaningful correlations and discover new insights as they collaborate with God in the world.
This dynamic connects directly with participatory-action. I believe my students are active agents of learning and new knowledge in the classroom, not just mere receivers of theories that do not always connect with the particularities of the contexts they come from. I have discovered this through my pastoral and teaching experience with Latinx and Caribbean students in the context of South Florida. I believe that when students are empowered to name their particular social location and claim the particularities of their communities, they can make meaningful connections in the process of learning and naturally bring new insights. Even though I facilitate class material and classwork plan, I will never anticipate the dialogue and the new knowledge that will spring up. I always remember the words from Dr. Elisabeth Conde-Frazier when I walk-in a new classroom for the first time: “Ultimately, one carries out participatory action research with fear and trembling because it depends on God’s Kairos and the movement of the Spirit.” and then, she goes: “It requires living in the borderland between God and the people…one learns to observe…think critically, imagine…in order to come up with insight and action.” (Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, “Participatory Action Research” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology).
Maddie: I read your piece on Mary Salome and was deeply moved. How have studying stories like hers inspired your role in the church?
Claudia: During the past years I have been deeply interested to read and research about the early women of the church. I recently concluded an extraordinary journey of serving as a lay female pastoral leader in the ministry of campus in Catholic Higher education. What an incredible, life-giving, and challenging journey of finding my voice every time I felt moved by the Spirit to preach the gospel and announce the Resurrection! I feel that this is an ongoing journey and challenging task for women who serve in communities of faith, the public, and the academy. Women disciples and apostles such as Mary Salome, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene ultimately transformed their communities with love, care, and fierce spirits and are remembered by many as powerful leaders. I am honored to be part of this journey.
Maddie: What shifted your academic interests from political science and international relations to theology and ministry?
Claudia: Each academic journey was very unique and brought significant encounters that led me to the next one. Thus, instead of “changing careers” I believe these fields were and are all interconnected. When I was in college, my faith moved me to work with the least fortunate and marginalized of society. At the end of my undergraduate studies, I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico City and do an internship with vulnerable families. Through this experience, I discovered my call as a Catholic to action and justice and this led me to learn later on about the social teachings of the Church. Then, when I came to the United States, I was invited to apply to the Pastoral Ministry Program at STU and bring both areas together. This is how the story started…
Maddie: What are you working on and writing about at the moment?
Claudia: I recently published a book chapter on “The practical theological journey of Participatory Action Research: Building the Bridge Between the Classroom and the Field.” I look forward to continuing to work in this area for the rest of this year.
Learn more about Claudia and her work here.
Cesar Baldelomar, A Conversation About Conversation
Cesar "CJ" Baldelomar is currently a second-year doctoral student in Theology and Education at Boston College. His research blends critical theory and decolonial thought, exploring how knowledge production and consumption inform identity formation and the development of ethical paradigms. He holds two law degrees (LL.M. in Intercultural Human Rights and a Juris Doctor) from St. Thomas University School of Law and two graduate degrees from Harvard University. CJ is co-founder of Learning for Life Solutions, LLC and a former legal intern at the Southern Poverty Law Center. He a board member and the new secretary of the Spirituality and Sustainability Global Network.
Maddie: What are you working on and writing about at the moment?
Cesar: I have always been interested in reading and writing. Growing up, I was always thinking "what is a person's outlet?". I've always been very creative. At 13 I used to freestyle, rap, and write poetry - I still write poetry. I went to law school and worked and taught high school for a bit, but then realized I needed a job that would allow me to have a creative outlet. I could think of no better profession than being a professor, writing, researching, lecturing, and meeting other people with different ideas. I'm all about divergent opinions. I really think that is something we have lost as a society, accepting people with different opinions without trying to change them. Lately, my research is focused on the imagination. What is the imagination? What do we mean when we talk about religion, when we talk about spirituality, when we talk about politics? Ultimately, it all comes from someone's imagination, whether collective or individual. To me, the best thing we can do right now is to shake up the imagination and envision what never was. My research is focusing on that, especially religious imagination - how to dislodge thinking from what is called narrative logic. In my work, the fight is in academia because the world of ideas still matters. I think that's where professors and students can work together to dislodge the normative scripts that we all operate under, that have gotten us to the point we're at now - the breaking point. It's time for fresh thinking. My work takes into account scholarly work, but also play, music, art, street performance, street theater.
Maddie: I've been listening to a book about Saint Francis over the past few days, and it's interesting because I'm discovering that the ideas the SSGN is talking about have been around for thousands of years. They aren't new ways of thinking.
Cesar: That's a good point. Sometimes it's a simple recovery of things that have been in the tradition. For example, Harvey Cox, a theologian from Harvard, wrote a book called when "Jesus came to Harvard". In the '70s and '80s, he taught a class on Jesus. One of the things he highlights are two events - one where Jesus turns the tables at the temples, and one when he marches into Jerusalem on a donkey. Harvey Cox says that these are both perfect examples of street theater or street protest. Riding a donkey into Jerusalem was the equivalent of mocking the emperor, who used to ride into conquered cities on a white horse. Here, you have a poor Jewish guy riding in on a donkey, mocking the emperor.
Maddie: I didn't know the context of that story, but it adds to the meaning.
Cesar: Exactly! Because the emperor used to march in on a horse, he had people waving palms at him like a savior, a conquerer, a mighty king. And what did Jesus do? He said, "Cool, I'll ride into Jerusalem on a donkey to mock the Romans." Harvey argues that this interpretation has been lost because people prefer to think of Jesus as a personal friend, a savior, instead of having this side concerned with public and social justice. You're right, sometimes it's all about digging into the resources of the tradition and opening them up for reconsideration for the times.
Maddie: I think that contextual elements are important - you could read the story about the donkey and put the personal friend spin on it very easily. But if you don't know where it's coming from and what the tradition of the time was, it becomes a different story.
Cesar: That's where knowing the facts, knowing what the historical context was, comes in handy. That is my vocation, to open people's minds, not necessarily to change them. That is where I think many people go wrong, in trying to change them. It becomes a remorseful activity. I believe in giving people the facts, opening up their minds a little bit. I think they'll reach a conclusion eventually. As an educator, I believe in making sure that everyone can voice whatever they're feeling because that's also the best way to expose biases. If I'm a professor coming into the classroom and initially divulging my point of view, then I will silence many voices in the process. Then those people will live with those biases and never be heard and those biases will never be judged. Normally, what I do in a classroom is slowly divulge who I am as the semester goes on. It is a gradual kind of disclosure, and by that point, I hope I have offered enough comfort that all of us can disclose some part of us.
Maddie: It sounds like it is important for you to create an environment of conversation.
Cesar: Absolutely. That is what I do in my work as a scholar too, not just in the classroom. I have a business partner, we co-founded a business called Learning for Life Solutions. We network people from all walks of life and bring them together to foster interactive learning. We try to foster an understanding of what education is, we try to foster divergent opinions and bring them together to not necessarily agree, but to at least open up a conversation and dialogue. For me, it's very important to get the conversation going. That is probably the most essential thing we can do right now.
Maddie: I'm a firm believer in that, in all areas of life. Conversation is so important, and we don't often seek out opportunities to converse with people who are different from us. But it's the best way to learn! You need to learn how someone is feeling, what their experiences are, that is what will empower you to do something and make change - not hearing a fact.
Cesar: Hearing about experiences, what people are going through, learning to empathize and sympathize - all of that takes imagination, to be able to say I will never be in your shoes, but let me try to imagine a little bit what it is like. Then you gain some understanding. That goes for everyone - we all have our biases, our assumptions that need to be challenged. It takes a lot to say that you are wrong about your perceptions. That's where the work begins. I believe it's Cornel West that said it best - "It takes more courage for someone to dig into the recesses of their own soul than it does for a solider to be on a battlefield."
Maddie: What are your favorite courses to teach? What subjects are topics do you get the most excited to talk about?
Cesar: Definitely any topic that deals with philosophy. I'm a philosophy junkie, I love to think about how we know the things we know. That digs into the assumptions. I also love to teach theological courses, especially historical ones. You start to see people's eyes open. People's perceptions change - they read scripture passages completely differently when they learn about the context. I enjoy teaching any courses from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Maddie: I read a book about the historical context of the bible, and it was so fascinating. It changes everything.
Cesar: Right. They tell you about the three worlds of biblical interpretations - the world behind the text, the world of the text, and the world in front of the text.
Maddie: There are so many layers. Why would you say that a creative, imaginative approach is so important, especially in the context of the classroom?
Cesar: I think artistic expression is one of the best ways to be heard. When I ask students to write poetry, perform skits - they come alive. When they're writing papers? Sure. But to encourage a classroom approach that is multidisciplinary and multifaceted - I think that's where you start to dislodge stagnant imaginations. Creativity frees the mind of any rubric, any taxonomies or categorizations that come with paper writing. When students don't have to worry about a grade or doing an assignment within the confines of academic discourse, they become different people.
Maddie: It's coming from a place of curiosity, wonder. Is there a personal spiritual dimension to what you are doing? Is that practice important to you?
Cesar: Yes. As much as I don't talk about it, I would consider my spirituality to be mystical. I don't have a set ritual, but I do leave myself open to experiences, and I do see spiritual significance in things. Of course, that's the challenge. Sometimes that clashes with my reason, and sometimes I think to myself "do these stones really mean anything?" or "do my beads really protect my energy?" But in a way, it's more tangible than other spiritualities. I think to myself "these things come from the earth, they are charged with energies from the earth, from the cosmos." I do feel spirituality in terms of an interconnectedness with all of creation.