“Reimagining and Reinventing Bodily-Spiritual Health” by Tucker Nichols for Pando Populus. Artwork copyright (c) 2015 by the artist. Do Ideas…

I don’t know Who—or what—put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something.

Cyril said that water is the sign of the Spirit because it adapts and transforms into all living things. Christians need to reclaim the embodied spirituality that suffused early Christianity, as a way to feel part of nature and thus committed to its preservation.

It would not surprise me now, however, if 2020 turns out in fact to be the peak year for consumption and population.

The legal system is based on a “design” mentality that was doomed to fail from the start, due to the dynamic nature of human systems. It is impossible to engineer systems like we would program a computer; they will always evolve beyond the purposes they were designed for, and it is impossible to predict what they will become.

The Laudato opens with St Francis’s prayer, “Praise be to you my Lord, through our sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.” It resonates with the Indian philosophy of Vasudhaiv Kutumkan, with the contemporary movement for the Rights of Mother Earth, with cultures and faiths across the world.

On a day when the nation’s press was preoccupied with the appalling racist murders in Charleston, our task of redirecting the world away from massive suicide became more difficult.

If fossil fuel companies had to pay the full cost of their production, one wonders whether they could compete with solar energy.

Pando implies a fundamentally different way of understanding the world – and places a symbol of ecological relations at the heart of things.

This is a truly historic event. It is possible, just possible, that June 18, 2015 will be remembered as the turning point, when humankind began to come to its senses.

“Ecological Civilization” by Tucker Nichols for Pando Populus.  Artwork copyright (c) 2015 by the artist. What Can We Hope For?…

I have imprinted on my mind something Cobb said to me when I was a student, on a walk, here–35 years ago,: “what we need is enough ecological catastrophe that people wake up, and not so much that it is too late.” Still true? Catastrophe can be a catalyst.