“In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us.” Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway
Regenerative is a word that comes out of my permaculture classes and experience. One of my permaculture design teachers, Joel Glanzberg, encouraged us not to use the term sustainable, for that holds agriculture and the earth at the level of sustaining itself, or surviving. It isn’t enough when working with a piece of land to sustain it. It’s better than degrading it, certainly, but if you sustain something you keep at the level at which you find it. Most land in the world today has been degraded by human contact in various ways and is need of renewal, that is, regeneration. The same can be applied to much human culture, in my opinion. My personal faith journey, for example, is in need of not only sustaining, but of regeneration. It’s to be rebuilt in a new way from my fairly traditional Christian roots. Our vision of how to live on the earth doesn’t only need sustaining. If we sustain the earth as we have maintained to this point, we have a badly damaged eco-system heading toward severe climate change and species destruction. We need to make it better. If we sustain ourselves at the current systems of gardening, agriculture, industry, energy production, military and nationalism and spirituality we will not survive. I believe that I, personally, as well as the human community and the earth community are in need of regeneration. I am not even close, myself, thus the name of this blog: “Seeking a regenerative life”. That’s what I am doing and what I hope to write about.
I do a lot of gardening these days, primarily on my own land where my wife Laura have 2 acres we are developing with gardens, fruit trees, a passive solar greenhouse, chickens and bees. I also grow food a with a group, “Earth’s Table”, growing food on donated land around Boulder County and donating the vegetables to food pantries. Our land was used for cattle ranching, suburban living and later a home with horse stables. It is mostly clay with a wetland in the back, which is the end of a ditch with water coming off the foothills. It has been degraded by buildings, scraping off of topsoil, an old septic system, pesticide and herbicide use and planting of non-native species. Regeneration is a big part of my interaction with these two acres: working to enrich the soil (compost, manure and mulch), holding water on the land through use of swales and water retention from the roof, green manure and not using pesticides and herbicides.
Regeneration is also a part of my everyday life, working to recycle, reuse and reduce my use of the earth’s resources. This is an ongoing process and project, as I imagine many of you who are reading this will agree. I am constantly challenged to live in a more responsible, minimalist and loving way toward other people, the earth and other creatures. iI is not enough to sustain myself at the level of resource management where I am now, but need to be improving and learning how to regenerate as well as sustain life.
In my spiritual journey I am on a path of regeneration. I served churches for 30 years in Chicago, Cleveland, Bay City, Michigan and Boulder, Colorado. Christianity is my original language of faith, but I am a universalist in my understanding of different paths of spirituality having been influenced by Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Celtic and Native American spiritualities. I am non-dualistic in my understanding of God and believe that all life and all beings are connected and that God is in all things. Over the course of my ministry I have been evolving in my theology and have come to understand God through process theology: not as a being, separate from creation, but as the evolving process of creation – part of all creation and all beings. I relate to the name Black Elk, a holy man of the Lakota, referred to God: “The Great Mysterious”. Science has become for me a way of discovering more about God, more about the created order and the way things work. Science and spirituality for me are intertwined.
I believe the different spiritual traditions need to be regenerated by rediscovering their connection to the earth, the process of creation and becoming more earth-honoring. Christianity, my spiritual path, has a deep connection to the earth beginning when humans (literally “earthlings” in translation from Hebrew in the book of Genesis) were created out of the humus: the clay, the earth. I don’t think it is enough to see our role as spiritual beings to be sustaining our faiths and our concept of God as they are, but we must be regenerative – remembering and re-inventing our faith and our religious structures in relation to the earth (and the cosmos), non-duality and process theology. All spiritual paths can learn from each other.
The last application of the term regenerative that is important to me is with the relationship of different faith traditions. To sustain the present dialogue and relations between the world’s spiritual paths will not lead to peace and understanding, in my opinion. John Crossan talks about fundamentalism as the “genocidal germ” in religion. He notes that if a person of faith believes that they have the truth and people of other faith paths do not, then if those other people die, the original person will still have the truth and others can die and the that person will still have the truth. This kind of thinking simply leads to more misunderstanding, violence (genocide) and oppression. Fundamentalism is an extreme example, but all people of faith must work toward regeneration of dialogue. Sustaining the current relationships between the world’s faith traditions is not enough, and is, in fact, counterproductive to peace. We are all one, all connected to each other, to God, all creatures and all of the cosmos. God is part of all human attempts to connect to the ultimate. Our spiritual paths need to be regenerative – remembering, rediscovering and reconnecting to our original connection with the earth, all creatures and other spiritual paths. We are all one and our spiritual paths are ultimately one.
