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Sunday, 01 October 2006 06:00 |
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Being in Family, in Community, in Country: Waging peace and coming home
As Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" hurtles around Australia and generates long-awaited public discussion about global warming, climate destabilisation and the part humans have played in creating these crises, long-time US environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben ("The End of Nature") is simultaneously shedding more light on the situation, and particularly on the activities of the environmental movement.
In a couple of recent articles McKibben has stated that there is just one atom of difference between the environment movement of today and that of the 1960s - the difference between carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
McKibben writes "The carbon monoxide problem could be solved by the technocratic solutions that fit so well into the existing system. Add some catalytic converters here, smokestack scrubbers there, and it's solved. Carbon dioxide is much more difficult because it challenges all of our lifestyle choices. It's not a matter of finding a new technology, it's a matter of finding a new life."
And so we come to the rub and role of the green movement. How might we better support a transition to new lives? McKibben calls for a new idea and a kind of cultural and convivial environmentalism that asks deeper questions than we're used to asking - questions that deeply and seriously consider people's aspirations for good and secure and durable lives. Questions that interweave the practicalities of food and transport with the human yearning for community, celebration and conviviality.
This is a notion that was explored in theory and practice at the Ethos Foundation's recent 5-day Courageous Conversation called "Waging Peace: Relationship, Ownership, the Earth, Community" and the discussion of McKibben's writings is a long introduction to reporting back what the Foundation and all who attended Waging Peace (some 70 folks in total) are becoming extremely curious about.
For five days on the edge of Lamington National Park's moist sub-tropical rainforest (it rained gloriously all week) we collaboratively unfolded a most surprising journey, which for many brought us profoundly back home to our families, our communities and the land beneath our feet.
Through dialogue, deep listening, singing, making music and other creative arts, eating, drinking, walking, reflecting, laughing and crying we remembered what it is to live in community. To trust. To listen. To create.
It's easy to write all this stuff off as touchy feely fluff. And yet, as we face the consequences of our gluttonous fossil-fuelled lives and global warming comes home to roost, I'm recognising that the hard technology, the hard economics, and the hard-won intellect have not and will not give us the silver bullet we're searching desperately for.
It seems we also need a change of heart to change a life or six billion lives.
The Ethos Foundation's work feels like a tiny grain of sand on an endless beach, and yet up here at Binna Burra we're learning to stand up and contribute heart to the puzzle - alongside head - in an effort to engage hands. And we're doing it In Country with the greatest respect for our Aboriginal Sisters and Brothers. We're learning.
By coming home and waging peace in our own lives, perhaps we can weave a softer, stronger communal fabric - a new life.
The Waging Peace program was an extraordinary, life changing experience for me. Yugambeh Woman Diane Watson invited us into Country so gracefully and deeply that I at last feel I may legitimately walk on this land. What could be more profound than this?
The Ethos Foundation thanks all who were part of Waging Peace and all who support our efforts to help grow another piece of the deep sustainability puzzle.
Sally MacKinnon
Executive Officer
Ethos Foundation
"We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart" Martin Luther King
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