Ecology as Spiritual Practice

Workshop Number

Leader(s)

Robert

McGahey

Audience

Who may register:

Open to All (adult & high school)

full-time attenders only

Time breakdown

Experiential Activities:

55%

Lecture:

Discussion:

15%

Description

Short Description:

Ecology as spiritual practice lessens the boundaries between the perceived separate self, the Creator and the earth. We will acknowledge the Presence throughout Creation during experiential exercises, worship-sharing and small groups emphasizing forgiveness and affirmation. With practice, we’ll re-awaken prophetic justice, yielding a fierce desire for survival seasoned by love.

Long Description:

The purpose for the week is to unleash a fierce desire for survival, both of the ecosystem and our species, seasoned by compassion. Drawing upon the deep ecology model of Arne Naess and the despair and empowerment work of Joanna Macy, we will work in small cells of 4-6 to share deeply our mistakes, fears, and hopes. As a whole group, we will go through a series of experiential exercises designed to progressively broaden our boundaries, moving from egoic identification through an experience of the “ecological self” to one of participation in God’s mystical body (the earth revisioned). The leader hopes that participants will be empowered to go home and create cells of their own - ideally diverse enough to contain the “other” - to ground continued practice in societal healing of our division from Creator and Creation.

FORMAT: DAILY PATTERN 1)Check-in; brief worship; devotional readings from Bible, Orthodox Fathers, Quaker ecological witness; divide into practice cells. 2)Regroup and share insights and problems. Whole group experiential exercise, followed by discussion. 3)Close with worship sharing, song, dance.

Format for HOME GROUPS (“cells”of 4-6) 40 minutes
20 confession and forgiveness 15
15 affirmations (attention to leadings)
5 closing worship
There is another side to the confession, an unflinching moral inventory of shortcomings in our care for Creation, affirmation of the things we have accomplished. The inventory changes through the week because our consciousness deepens, and if we follow its nudge(so that it does not stultify from within), we must change our behavior.

MONDAY: Detailed WORKSHOP INTRO (20). 1) GRATITUDE circle, intro/ sharing from a natural object (40) 2) DESPAIR WORK: a)Joanna Macy exercise on children’s, grandchildren’s future. (45) b)Matthew Fox has said that the Crucified One today is the Earth. Do we love the earth, in her intricate wholeness, her particulars? How is that expressed in our lives? Where do we contradict that love? What is the relation of our love for earth and love of family, community, and the wider human world? DISCUSSION (20) 3) MEDITATION, breathing in an image of ecological suffering and breathing out healing. Imagine that your are in rhythm with the earth, with the plants who are giving you O2 as you give them CO2. Take one example of personal excessive CO2 use. Breathe that in. As you exhale, let go of the practice and forgive yourself. (15)
CLOSING SONG: “Walk in the Garden”

TUESDAY (Outdoors). Cell-work. Boundary-stretching, exploring the ECOLOGICAL SELF a) “Web of life” guided meditation 20 b) Intro(Review Arne Naess): Love and moral responsibility (guilt) “We won’t save what we don’t love.”(25) c) EXERCISE: Mutuality of perception (experiencing ourselves as objects of natural subjects, outdoors), journal about it.(60) Closing DANCE: the Elm Dance

WEDNESDAY “Council of All Beings”
THURSDAY 1)GLOBALIZATION GAME: role-play each part of the web: the corporate and government leaders; the indigenous farmers and fisherfolk, the urban poor; environmental refugees, the wealthy, burdened by their wealth, specific threatened species and bioregions. Ourselves and our families, mired in stuff, expected material gifts, fear of old age and health and security. Pray to heal our place in the web, not just generally but in specific ways we can envision. 2) Expand the ecological self, experiencing the earth as God’s garment, the mystical Body of Christ. From this perspective, who is family, neighbor, enemy? Read: Corinthians 12 passage
Closing Song: “Earth Might Be…”

FRIDAY ECOLOGY and ECONOMICS: the bigger circle, as William Blake says, is the earth's own economy. Fitting the smaller circle back into its proper context, we will brainstorm transforming routine economic behavior into an agent of biospheric preservation.(Keith Helmuth). EXERCISE; “The Double Circle” (Joanna Macy). In closing, we will each commit to a life-change that will move us closer to this transformation, asking for blessing and support from the workshop community.

ADVANCE READING:
REQUIRED: The first four chapters of Macy, Joanna and Molly Y. Brown. Coming Back to Life, New Society, 1998, Seed, John, Macy, Fleming, and Naess. Thinking Like a Mountain. New Society, 1988.
SUGGESTED: one of the following books on climate change: Flannery, Tim. The Weather Makers. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005; Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe, New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2006; or Monbiot, George, Heat. New York: Penguin, 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Astyk, Sharon. Depletion and Abundance.
Berry, Thomas. The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York: Bell Tower Press, 1999.
Baker, Carolyn. Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse
Lovelock, James. The Revenge of Gaia. New York and London: Penguin Books, 2006.
McFague, Sallie. The Body of God: an Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.
McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York: Random House, 1989.
Roszak, Gomes, and Kanner. Ecopsychology, (esp the chapter on addiction, "Technology, Trauma and the Wild").

Leader Experience:

Experience in Leading Workshops: I have led interactive groups for over twenty-five years: offerings at Celo Summer Institute, more recently among mainstream churches, and several FGC workshops, three on my own (Are We Keeping God's Garden; We Are the Flood; Ecology as Spiritual Practice), one as a co-leader (with Mary Coelho) and served one year as Karen Street's elder in "Changing Climate, Changing Selves."