THE EARTH

 

This page is about change - healing - learning -

it's about how to live on our precious earth home

 

 Our earth is but a small star in the great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory.

 

-- Prayer read by Franklin D. Roosevelt to the United Nations on Flag Day, 1942

 

 

Take a look at what Rabbi Miichael Lerner has been doing - click on the green Tikkun icon above to see what he has been doing in Israel, and now here for a page following his current work to develop an interfaith group of what he calls spiritual progressives - an alliance of earth activists, starting by issuing an invitation to his "people" to join a 3-day conference of peace activists in DC, in September, 2006. His report on the conference follows.

Click here for a group page - "Healing the Earth" - for some inspiring accounts of people and programs that are making a difference, offering hopeful projects of healing for devastated people and lands on this earth of ours, now grown so dark with war and violence - or here for a discussion of health and healing in family and school, or here for an account of a school that runs on these principles.

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Click here for another on weather, inspired by Robert Frost's apocalyptic poem "Fire and Ice" - and here to look at my son Tom Leue's astounding biodiesel project, which is beginning to burgeon with the spring flowers! 

I believe that mankind is facing a devastating catastrophe in the all-too near future that threatens our very existence as inhabitants of this earthly paradise, our own planet. It is very much up in the air which way we will go from now on - gradual escalation into a widening areana of killing and destruction ending in nuclear holocaust - or only an slightly less precipitous plunge into ecological disaster through drastic disruptions of our global weather patterns. The immediacy of these dangers call for immediate interventions - but in the long run, if we survive, issues concerning the welfare and sanity of the survivors will determine whether or not our earth will continue to provide habitat for life.

I believe that the central task facing us today is educational preparation for the spiritual healing of the planet, a healing which will require a fundamental transformation of our personal, economic and political lives - in the family and in society. It calls for the development of strong inner lives, starting in early childhood - and a lot of that can be accomplished through spiritual education - by which I mean, education for LIFE. Such education can take many forms - home schooling, democratic education - Waldorf or Montessori education - but the most important ingredient for learning that will enable us to make the cultural and political changes we need to survive is awareness on the part of parents and teachers alike of how precious are the lives of our children! John Dewey said it years ago - education is NOT preparation for life, it IS LIFE ITSELF!

Thus, it is a matter of the spirit we are really addressing here, the human spirit in a universe that is much more than we know with our literal ideas about reality. Shepherd Hoodwin, who calls himself Shepherd Summerjoy and channels a being named Michael, has a clear idea of what needes to come first! He says - they say - we first need to heal our SHAME!

Click here to take a look at a chatroom teleconference they gave on the subject in early September, 2007:

Write me at maryskole@aol.com