Driftless Spirituality

“I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures
in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings.
To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, planktons, corals, algae, and all living creatures   . . .  I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you. ”

At the Franciscan Spirituality Center’s annual summer program on June 25, we were joined in a communal prayer about the suffering and power of the earth when an attendant received the above prayer via her Blackberry.

By Masaru Emoto, famous for his book “Messages from Water,” this prayer has been making its way around the internet in recent months. The quote seems to be giving many another way to channel their sorrow for the most recent Gulf tragedy.

I don’t know where her dream will go.

But a couple weeks ago, a woman stopped by the spirituality center to chat about water. Like many, the oil leak in the gulf has stirred something in her. Like many, she has heard other voices wanting to respond in some way. Like many, she does not only see it as a tragedy somewhere out in the the news, but an event that she is involved in.

Here in La Crosse, we live on the Mississippi River, she pointed out. The water flows right into the gulf. How might we respond? How might we gather with people to pray, to become more aware of our need to heal with the earth, to apologize to the water and ask her forgiveness?

We didn’t come to any conclusions, and I don’t know where her dream will go. But I do believe that where it goes — and where the dreams of all the people longing to respond to the mess in some way — will reveal a lot about where the story of humans and the earth is going.

Here is one of the icons of “Elijah the Prophet” completed by a retreatant at last week’s icon retreat. Notice the raven from this passage in 1 Kings 17:

“Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: ^‘Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.’”

And even more spectacular than the icon, here is Sister Constance Walton, who created the icon you see above. It was her second time writing an icon. Beautiful work, Sister Constance!

A group of retreatants are spending this week at the Franciscan Spirituality Center writing (a.k.a. “painting”) icons.

I’m coming to love the times when Sister Joan Weisenbeck holds these retreats here. I haven’t written an icon myself, but what a joy it is to pop in the room across the hall to see splotches of color evolve into works of sacred beauty.

This week’s retreatants, led by master iconographer Philip Zimmerman, are working on the icon “Elijah the Prophet.” Right now Sister Malinda Gerke is playing harp while they write the icons. Can you imagine a more pleasant work environment?

Keep your eye on this blog to see how the splotches of color become sacred images by week’s end.

“There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.”

So begins Derrick Jensen’s book, “A Language Older than Words.” I became aware of Jensen a few months ago when he spoke at a local film festival in Minnesota. For anyone not familiar with him, he is an author and speaker who radically exposes the destructive illusions of the Western worldviews. Like a prophet, he grabs you at the shirt collar and forces you to look at the insanity that has become normal life in this culture. Reading him can be utterly gloomy.

But it can also be richly inspiring. He offers a vision of a world in which humans stop pretending they are the center of life, and instead reclaim their role as one part of the symphony of being.

He writes: “As is true for most children, when I was young I heard the world speak. Stars sang. Stones had preferences. Trees had bad days. Toads held lively discussions, crowed over a good day’s catch. Like static on a radio, schooling and other forms of socialization began to interfere with my perception of the animate world, and for a number of years I almost believed that only humans spoke. The gap between what I experienced and what I almost believed confused me deeply. It wasn’t until later that I began to understand the personal, political, social, ecological, and economic implications of living in a silenced world.”

The book reminds me of what a spiritual director once suggested to me. When she sees a pelican flying in the air, or a tree budding, or perhaps a star falling, she asks, “What can you teach me about God?”

Then, she listens.

Jensen’s book compells us to do the same.

Whenever I am fortunate enough to take a hike with my friend, Chuck Hatfield, through the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, I leave with a renewed sense of awe and love for the land of our Driftless Region. He is one of the great ambassadors between land and people here.

This past weekend, Chuck took me to see this…

The photo was taken from within a shallow cave, where centuries ago, a family might have made a temporary home. Water from above flows over, and creates the majestic sculpture in winter. Standing and admiring this beauty, I remembered all of the hours I wandered through museums when I lived in New York City, and how this sculpture made by water, air and earth is as spectacular — more spectacular — than anything I saw in those museums.

What I love about this ice sculpture is that it seems so delicate and at the same time so strong. Gazing at it, I pondered how nature is much the same way — such a powerful force, and yet so vulnerable.

Unfortunately, these photos don’t allow you to hear the drops of water falling from the ice and making wintertime music. I guess you’ll have to go find an ice cave for that.

At our Pax Christi meeting this week at the Franciscan Spirituality Center, a member told us about a column in the National Catholic Reporter about President Obama’s confusing agenda on the nuclear weapons front.

He says he is pursuing reduction of arms.

At the same time, he approved three new nuclear weapons facilities.

The column, by Jesuit non-violent activist John Dear, says this:

“New Mexico is abuzz with the news. Soon from our austere landscape will rise a spanking new, state-of-the-art, plutonium bomb factory. Setting pen to paper and thereby blessing the project was President Obama, who had announced a year ago in Prague the goal of a nuclear-free world, but with his recent budget, will actually increase nuclear weapons production more than any other president since Ronald Reagan.”

Read Dear’s “Obama and the works of death” here:
ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/obama-and-works-death

So I have been engrossed in a very powerful book these days called “Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World.”

The author, Helena Norberg-Hodge, arrived in Ladakh in the mid-1970s to find a people living as they always had: close to the land, with sustainable systems of agriculture and reproduction, in harmony with each other. When Helena tells one that some people in the West are so sad they have to see a doctor, the Ladakhi individual is shocked.

Then, India opens the region to tourism and Western industrial development, and the people, land, culture and economy of Ladakh are bulldozed.

What is powerful is that as I read this book, I am talking to my fiance, who lives in a village in Nepal, and she reports the exact same things: Fish no longer populating the irrigation canals. People being embarassed of their traditional culture. A young girl who wants to be “busy, busy, busy.” Chemical agriculture. Roads tearing through the village.

Such development raises profound questions, including whose is it to say what is good and bad for the people of “developing” nations. Right now, it seems the corporate monoculture is having the say, and the people suffering the effects are not able to perceive all of the devastation and poverty behind the glamor of modernization. As Helena writes:

“…the pressures that lead to cultural breakdown are many and varied. But the most important elements have to do with the fact that people do not and cannot have an overview of what is happening to them as they stand in the middle of the development process. Modernization is not perceived as a threat to the culture. The individual changes that come along usually look like unconditional improvements; there is no way of anticipating their negative long-term consequences, and the Ladakhis have almost no information about the impact that development has had in other parts of the world. It is only in looking back that any destructive effects become obvious.”

The book ends in a hopeful key. With the Ladakhis, Helena begins to work on counter-development projects that both bring to awareness the ills of modernization and also build community around more holistic, sustainable principles.

It is also a call to action, as what is happening in Ladakh because of development is in some ways just a raw reflection of what has happened here.

“I have a craving to live in the pre-industrial era — pre-electricity even.”

This is what a woman said to me after a recent meeting here at the Franciscan Spirituality Center. The meeting wasn’t anything about this topic. With other committee members, this woman and I had been hashing out how we want to build a long-term structure for an inmate re-entry program we’ve been developing for a year and a half. But as she and I continued talking after everyone had left, we found our conversation gradually shifting to where so many conversations seem to be shifting these days: a desire to live on the land, be more self-sufficient, grow food, share resources, be less busy.

Like this woman and myself, it seems more and more people I talk to are naming this strong desire to step away from city life, or from cubicle life, or from life that relies on businesses to provide for so many of our needs, and to make a go at living in the way the vast majority of our ancestors lived — rural and interdependent on the people and earth nearby.

In recent months, I can quickly think of 10 people who I’ve had this conversation with. They come from a variety of ages and professional backgrounds. Their motivations and philosophies are not the same. Not everyone wants to go pre-electricity.

The obstacles to these dreams are many — like the cost of land — and so it’s hard to say where they’re leading.

But perhaps it’s part of what Richard Heinberg described in his 2006 lecture, “Fifty Million Farmers.”

“One way or another, re-ruralization will be the dominant social trend of the 21st century,” he said. “Thirty or forty years from now—again, one way or another—we will see a more historically normal ratio of rural to urban population, with the majority once again living in small, farming communities. More food will be produced in cities than is the case today, but cities will be smaller. Millions more people than today will be in the countryside growing food.”

To read more, go here.

More than a year ago, a Pax Christi chapter started meeting here at the Franciscan Spirituality Center. The international Catholic peacemaking group promotes non-violence as a tool for personal and societal transformation.

In La Crosse, our group has engaged in several activities: studying non-violence, dialoguing and eating with the local Muslim community during Ramadan, and exploring how we might get involved in immigration reform.

The latter is slow work, but with the efforts of people across the country, a new bill is being introduced into congress: HR 4321 or the Comprehensive Immigration Reform ASAP Act of 2009.

In La Crosse, Pax Christi members have joined with the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration’s Justice, Peace and Integration with Creation committee to promote this bill. Together, the groups are gathering postcards to bring to Congressman Ron Kind, Senator Russ Feingold and Senator Herb Kohl, urging them to co-sponsor HR 4321.

And in the coming days, look for a crystal clear, concise description of the issue in an op-ed from Liz Deligio in the La Crosse Tribune.

As if to bring the issue home, late last night I saw two Hispanic workers cleaning a car dealership after hours. It was dark outside. The scene reminded me of how hidden this part of our population can be, and the need to bring this issue into the light.

You can read the bill, or more likely scan a few parts of it, here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.4321: