"Here We Are, Earth!"

 

Workshop Participants at the Confluence Center

In a time in which all too many see the earth as mere mechanism, which we humans can all too freely tinker with to our heart's delight, the question of whether the earth herself might have a view of our interactions with her is one that is not easily broached.  Precisely at that moment when we are in need more than ever of a meaningful conversation with our earthly domain, all too often the very possibility of that conversation is denied. 

How then might we here and now hear anew, as the Psalms might put it, the voice of the earth?  This timely and weighty question was recently wrestled with by a diverse group of participants in a workshop sponsored by Confluence, a local community of radical hospitality that engages in practices of sacred story telling and contemplative prayer.  The event took place on November 8th in the appropriately named Confluence Center, located at the Headwaters Foundation office in downtown Missoula.

Gathering together to share our love for the earth and all earthly things, the participants included a cross-section of perspectives and vocations: ministers, chaplains, rabbis, land conservationists, graduate students in environmental studies, nurses,  psychotherapists, spiritual counsellors, neuro-biologists, and even a wayward philosopher or two, including your truly.  We were particularly grateful that several members from the state board of Interfaith Power and Light Montana drove up from Bozeman to share in our deliberations. 

The morning began with a meditation, inspired by Joanna Macy, on the interaction of one's own breath with those of all other breathing beings.  Rabbi Laurie Franklin then began our discussion by sharing her thoughts on the Biblical story of Jacob falling asleep on a pillow of stone and then dreaming of climbing a ladder stretching from the earth to the heavens.  Her remarks probed at what might be involved in a call to faith that is earthly in its bearings, that envisions our spiritual thriving as taking place in a particular locality.  Participants then broke up into small groups to share reflectively a teaching drawn from their own lives that sustains faithfulness to our earthly home.  In a time when many in the environmental movement look askance at the very notion of faith, we were searching to articulate ways in which this virtue might be recuperated, providing new, unanticipated, even provocative openings in the work of earthly caretaking.  The thought was that we all engage in our own respective traditions of faithfulness, whether they emerge from a particular religious affiliation or in some other way.  Part of the work of the morning was to entertain and embrace a more expansive and complex view of our very notion of faith, so that we might more readily and richly share the call with others to a faithfulness framing and guiding our shared caretaking for the earth.

After a delightful vegetarian lunch provided by the local Five on Black Kitchen, the afternoon session became a lively round robin in which each freely shared in turn what had been personally gleaned from the morning discussions.  Participants were invited to engage in the practice of Lectio tierra, of focusing on, pondering and then sharing their reflections on a single sentence from a reading that related to their own developing sense of earthly faithfulness.  Some referred as well to images that provided inspiration for their witness. 

The gathering ended with a ritual in which, after our singing The Centering Prayer, the waters abiding with us in a crystal bowl during our conversation were brought outside and poured back into their earthly home.