Vision of Unity | Summit Take-aways
May 7, 2019 Kosmos Community News
Heartfelt thank-you for a beautiful and powerful gathering! On Sunday morning at the summit I knew and felt that something opened up deep in me. – Participant
Dear Reader,
It has taken some time to reflect on all the richness of the recent 4-day Climate, Consciousness and Community Summit. We arrived as champions of our individual organizations and causes. What emerged was a vision of unity, positive possible futures, and resolve to reach that distant shore together.
Attendees loved our small thriving Transition Town, Media, PA, a living laboratory for building resilient, diverse communities. Our presenters, panelists and facilitators offered compassionate, actionable insights, and the stream of wisdom we received from Findhorn brought inspiration and clarity.
My heart felt very full at the Closing Circle, and weary too. I took refuge for a week at Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush where members of our order, the Order of Interbeing, met to Stop, Rest and Heal. Until our bodies and minds stop running, it is impossible to rest. And without rest, we cannot heal. This is good advice for all activists. Please take time to nourish your body and your spirit so you can remain strong and calm in the face of current challenges.
For now, here are some specific take-aways from two participants, along with photos from Media, Pennsylvania and Findhorn, Scotland. Also below, a few relevant articles from Kosmos, to keep the conversation alive! You can also find more Summit resources and the start of a Working Group, here.
In loving gratitude and peace,
Rhonda Fabian, Kosmos Editor
Summit Take-aways, by Alan Levin, Author of Crossing the Boundary
Last weekend I went to an inspiring conference on “Consciousness and Climate” sponsored by Kosmos Journal. It was held in the lovely little town of Media, PA., a town that is working to put many of the ideas that the conference brought to light into effect. I came back very moved and inspired. I want to call your attention to just three of the many individuals and groups that the conference brought together.
Drawdown – https://www.drawdown.org/ Based on the best selling book by Paul Hawken, this group has the optimistic view that the human causes of climate change can start to be reversed by 2050. They have researched the causes and solutions of climate change with some surprising findings.
Transition U.S. –http://transitionus.org/ This network supports people to organize in local communities, villages, towns, and cities, to be resilient, prepare for the expected difficult times ahead and do what we can to mitigate them. They offer a treasure chest of tools gathered from the experience of groups all over the country and world.
Pachamama Alliance – https://www.pachamama.org/ Pachamama makes a deliberate alliance with the indigenous Achuar people of Ecuador to change the human consciousness in relationship to nature, AND to take actions that support the people of the Amazon in their struggle with oil developers and the like.
What these three have in common is a focus on the inner dimensions of the human experience and how this relates to what we are doing and what we need to do. All too often, the prescriptions for change offered by environmental groups leave this out and I was very happy to see the depth of awareness of the psychological and spiritual addressed here, what I have referred to as ‘holistic activism.’”
Please explore these groups’ websites when you have time. There is really a wealth of information and exciting programs there. It may give you hope and inspiration and help you take the steps you can for the benefit of yourself, your family, your community and all life.
Summit Take-aways, by Sari Steuber of Transition Town Media
It was a pleasure, an education, and a moving experience attending the Summit. It made me proud to be part of TTM and of Media, PA – to host all those visitors and see how much they enjoyed the Summit and our town.
Here are what I considered the highlights and take-aways of the Summit:
Bill McKibben: |We don’t have time to convince people that climate change is real any more. We need to take action to divest and go on strikes, disrupting ‘business as usual’.
Vandana Shiva | The industrial food system is based on 200 years of wrong action, displacing farmers/humans for “productivity”. 80% of our waste is food. In nature, there is no waste – everything is food for something.
Charles Eisenstein: Climate change is a symptom of our de-sacralization of Mother Earth. The revolution of our time is not fighting climate change, it’s loving a living earth.
1st step: Protect every ecosystem that’s still intact.
2nd step: Regenerate, repair & heal what’s damaged.
3rd step: Stop poisoning the earth.
4th step: Reduce greenhouse gases.
Judy Wicks | Judy is a local activist who spoke about many things- her visit to Standing Rock where she learned of the Prophecy of the Black Snake that says only if we unite will we be able to avoid destruction; she also spoke of Lancaster Against Pipelines, the Lancaster County movement against the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline, a movement “built on love, not anger”; and her newest project, Proud Pennsylvania, “A Campaign for Energy Leadership, Community Prosperity and Democratic Governance”, building regional alliances to create local resilience and self-reliance (one example she mentioned was having each municipality handle their own waste rather than shipping it to China or burning it in a poor neighborhood – what an awesome idea!)
Eve Miari, George Alexander, Malinda Clatterbuck – The Pipeline Panel | Malinda talked about Lancaster Against Pipelines, Eve and George gave an overview of the Mariner East 2 pipeline resistance. Eve was particularly eloquent about the MCCS coalition and how it evolved as more and more local communities got involved – that it wasn’t just fighting the pipeline, it was giving voice to and empowering citizens about their rights and the rights of nature, it was about protecting what they love, their children, their community, their environment.
Special thanks to Martin Pepper for his talk on personal resilience and preparedness (presentation will be available on the website), and for the members of the TTM panel who joined me in representing what we’re up to: Donna Cusano (Media Eats Local), Julie DiRemigio (Media FreeStore), Skip Shuda (Media Circle of Aunts & Uncles), Joni Carley (Inner Resilience), and Laura Philon (Wilmington in Transition, speaking about the regional & national network of Transition Towns in the US).
The Closing Ceremony led by .O, a North Philadelphia spiritual activist and community builder was especially moving. She evoked the transformational essence of the Summit in a powerful closing circle. Thanks to Pendle Hill for bringing .O to us.
There was so much more that it hurts not to include. But let me just summarize the main take-aways for me:
Protect what you love, remembering how much you love the Earth and everyone and everything on it.
Build alliances with all like-minded folks; together we can do anything.
Take bold action, we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.
By Della Duncan and Mark Phillips
In Kosmos Quarterly | SPRING 2019
What is ‘right livelihood’?Traditional economists assume work is a disutility that people try to do as little of as possible. Right livelihood reframes work as something that is beautiful and valuable and comes from a shared desire to contribute meaningfully to the world.
Via Green America
Paul Hawken and the Project Drawdown experts thought they knew what to expect when they modeled and ranked 80 solutions that could reverse global warming. But the data had some surprises in store.
Most prominently was that even when the solutions are modeled in terms of what they call a “Plausible Scenario” — a conservative measure of projected solution implementation that is “reasonable yet optimistic” — society still makes great strides toward achieving drawdown, the point where greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere begin to decline.
By Victoria Price
In Kosmos Quarterly
Two Communities Stand Up for Pipeline Safety
“I’ve realized that, as a pretty well-educated, privileged person, I need to use my resources and skills more wisely and become more aware of how my actions and choices affect the ecosystem I’m a part of. When I started to see what was happening with Standing Rock in South Dakota in 2016, that was a wake-up call. I began to consider the safety risks associated with pipelines and the environmental destruction and water contamination that was happening near me in the Philadelphia suburbs with the Mariner East II. That was how the responsibility started to awaken in me.” – Mallory Rose Spencer