Japanese Red Maple Photos Courtesy of Shinnyo-en
This summer GPIW organized a virtual event in partnership with ITRI-USA and DDMBA, a conversation with Dr. Daniel Christian Wahl, the author of Designing Regenerative Cultures and Dr. Mirian Vilela, Executive Director of The Earth Charter International and Daniel Abreu, a young ecologist, activist and author of Kai y a Cancion de la Madre Tierra (Instagram @kaielcuento). Below we share the video recording for those who missed the program as well as a few highlights from the speakers.
When Daniel Wahl was a young, bright-eyed ecologist, he and a friend learned of the Earth Charter. This was 22 years ago. (Read it here.) Exhilarated and hopeful after reading such a document, they printed postcards with the Earth Charter principals and researched the home addresses of many heads of state and influential institutions around the world, spending their summer mailing them out. It was the start of the new millennium, and they believed that more important than celebrating with fireworks and parties, was a genuine reflection on what the new era might bring for humanity, asking where we are heading as an Earth community. The Earth Charter was authored with the input of many from around the world and drew upon other notable documents. Daniel hoped that the Earth Charter would be endorsed globally and ratified by all nations. Before this conversation with Dr. Mirian Vilela, Daniel Wahl reviewed the Earth Charter again and felt it still to be an impressive document, the best values-based global framework for moving forward. “We must make the decision as to whether we will pull together as one humanity in ONE community of life as The Earth Charter spoke of so long ago."
|
|
“We don't need one large global ecological civilization, what we need is tens of thousands of place based human cultures that understand themselves again as custodians and expressions of the healthy ecosystems they inhabit.” - Daniel Christian Wahl |
|
Dr. Mirian Vilela has put her heart and joyous effort (much work!) into the life of The Earth Charter, providing the means for its message to be shared with the world and providing quality materials so that millions of people could put the Earth Charter into action. She spoke to us from the beautiful campus of the University for Peace in Costa Rica. When asked about regenerative culture she spoke of the need to view regeneration in a broader sense to include regenerating our relationships to one another. “This helps me to envision a flourishing of life on Earth.” She felt we suffer from a form of visual impairment and that we might broaden our vision through education, formal and informal – a learning that expands consciousness and works toward ecological integrity. We must ask ourselves from the deepest place ‘what kind of world do we want?’ She quoted article 16F of the Earth Charter: |
|
“Recognize that peace is the wholeness created by right relationships with oneself, other persons, other cultures, other life, Earth, and the larger whole of which all are a part.” - The Earth Charter |
|
Ven. Chang Ji Fa Shih and Dr. Mirian Vilela, The Earth Charter International Secretariat, Costa Rica |
|
Dr. Wahl added that “We would not be here had we not had regenerative cultures everywhere. Regenerative culture is not something new, it is not some utopia we need to create. It is an ancient pattern of evolutionary importance that we veered away from ten to fifteen thousand years ago when humanity began to create nation states and told a story of separation”. He added that, “there is much to re-learn, and re-learn rather quickly with 8 billion of us on a damaged planet, to fit back into this pattern of regeneration”. He said that to become humble healers of this place we may need to get out of the way of our intellect in which much of Western culture is trapped in and begin to intuit other ways of knowing.
|
|
"When we protect and heal life and our living systems, we will find that life creates conditions for more life to flourish." – Daniel Christian Wahl |
|
Participation in complex dynamic systems that are fundamentally unpredictable and uncontrollable is all about feeling, sensing, and intuiting. It is not about crunching more data with more powerful algorithms and super computers. It is about coming home, into our bodies, into our communities, into our places to sense what life wants. Then we re-discover that as life, we have the capacity to be humble healers in the social, economic and ecological systems WE created. It is a balance between humility and audacity – the audacity to step back and say we ARE life – we interfere and change the future every day in all we do, and we can choose to do so in ways that further the health and vitality of the community of life. That is the great rite of passage I feel we are on now.
A document such as the Earth Charter can help us find that higher ground of agreeing on some core life values and ethics in all our diversity, and celebrating this diversity -- then we have a better chance to navigate the next three decades of disruption in a way that is hopeful.
|
|
The panel spoke of the qualities needed to re-calibrate our relationship with nature and culture; gratitude, offering, humbleness before the majesty of life, reverence and a genuine asking of forgiveness. Daniel Abreu who was facilitating the conversation shared a recent experience he had of traveling to Colombia to stay in the mountains with the Wiwa Nation of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region, an unusual and rare opportunity. When someone enters their sacred lands, one is first asked at the entry portal to visualize offerings and gifts of gold to Mother Earth. Daniel was also struck by their ability to communicate directly with nature, “a direct WhatsApp” to the natural world, asking and receiving her messages in various ways, one of which was to read the patterns in bubbles of water. He was also captivated by what they shared was the greatest offering we could make to Mother Earth – it was not physical offerings but offerings through the mind. They would gather in circles and sit in silence visualizing beautiful gifts to offer, clear running waters, delicious foods, abundant banquets of fruits and soothing herbs, fragrant flowers in all colors, all that we hold precious returned in love through the heart and mind. Such indigenous knowledge brings a deeper wisdom and right relationship, not by the “solutioneering of tech solutions but by humble re-habitation of the places that brought us forth”. This can bring a real dialogue in a spirit of gratitude and reverence with the ecosystems we inhabit, asking for forgiveness and asking to be allowed back into the community of life in full membership.
If we fall in love with place, with each other, and with life again we are re-aligning with a much deeper and much more ancient pattern that has been put into the Earth for far longer than our western culture has told the story of separation and domination. We are capable of being custodians of nature’s ecosystems and capable of healing them.
|
|
The Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW) was founded in 2002 to mobilize those of great insight, wisdom, and compassion. Those who are working quietly for the upliftment of the world to come together in dialogue to address the critical issues of our present time. A major focus of GPIW’s work in the last decade has been to nurture and assist young ecology leaders working on issues related to climate change and the ecological crisis. GPIW explores the root causes of the great imbalance we are experiencing by working on the inner levels and asking how we can reclaim our deepest living connection to Mother Earth and to one another.
This work is under the stewardship of a small group of women who work with many others around the world to help manifest the special qualities of the sacred feminine, which enables the inner transformation needed for us to meet the challenges facing Earth’s community of life.
Please consider making a gift in support of this work.
|
|
Your copy should address 3 key questions: Who am I writing for? (Audience) Why should they care? (Benefit) What do I want them to do here? (Call-to-Action)
Create a great offer by adding words like "free" "personalized" "complimentary" or "customized." A sense of urgency often helps readers take an action, so think about inserting phrases like "for a limited time only" or "only 7 remaining!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
