In the beginning is the spirit

At the Burning River Fest here yesterday afternoon, environmental guru David Orr, in his rousing speech suggests that, “We don’t have an environmental problem as much as a political problem.”

To which I would add that the chicken of our politics mirrors the egg of our spirituality. Authentic and sustainable transformation, from this view, then begins with spiritual transformation. Maybe this is why all of my early years’ gurus - Gandi, King, Merton, Berrigans - were all about political change grounded in spiritual change. This lesson came home again after spending a weekend earlier this year with 30 of North America’s top organizational and community change practitioners, witnessing the palpable core of spirituality that infuses the core of anything political for them.

If we want a different relationship with our environment and all the ways it does and can support our dreams, we need to, as so many aboriginal cultures have done for eons, practice an according spirituality.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2005 at 10:09am and is filed under Open Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.