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These days we’re being confronted on all sides with a wide variety of human grievances. We’re even being urged to re-examine the very words we use, to become more “woke” to systemic discrimination and oppression.

As a relatively privileged white woman, I can’t imagine the trauma of centuries of oppression and mistreatment of Native and Black people, and their justified outrage about that. But one way I can get close to understanding it is when I contemplate the violence and aggression long perpetrated by men on women and girls. I can certainly resonate at times with the temptation to dismiss all men as arrogant, destructive, and hopelessly ignorant, if not downright complacent, about the vast male-supremacist ocean in which we all swim. (This despite the fact that in my own life, I enjoy close and respectful friendships with men who honor the Feminine in the world and themselves.) [Read more…] about Becoming “Woke” on Behalf of Gaia

The other day a friend and I were having a discussion about the future of this planet and of humanity. She asserted that since humanity is of Planet Earth just as much as any other lifeform here, all the human-caused disasters that are happening—forest fires, floods, droughts and heat waves, air and water pollution, even extinctions and climate disruption—are “natural.”

Well, on one level that’s hard to deny, unless humans were dropped off here long ago by an alien spaceship (a theory that I don’t find so far-fetched sometimes!) But, nevertheless, I felt myself resisting the idea that the heartbreaking mess we’re in right now, with the biosphere near collapse all around the globe, can be excused as merely natural. If natural means acting according to our true nature, can we really say that humans are “naturally” unconcerned about our impact on the planet; that we’re naturally uncaring and even hateful toward our fellow creatures? [Read more…] about What is Natural?

A familiar metaphor refers to the fish not perceiving the ocean even while she swims in its all-pervasive waters. Similarly, we modern humans usually have no idea of the ubiquitous anti-Nature, anti-Earth beliefs and assumptions we “swim” in as part of the human-created world.

One of the most pernicious human supremacist ideas—reflected in science and technology, spirituality, and everyday life—is separation. We’ve been conditioned to consider ourselves separate from and external to the rest of creation. We believe we possess both the right and the ability to use and manipulate everything on Earth for human-defined ends. But even when our intentions are good, we would do well to heed what plant ecologist Frank Egler said almost 100 years ago: Nature is not only more complex than we think; it is more complex than we can ever think. [Read more…] about Undoing Our Separation from Gaia