Third Annual Reverential Ecology Retreat at Zaca Lake
by Bob Banner
It was time to get out and hear some scholar activists speak about their new projects, insights, ongoing wisdom and perhaps even hope. I needed some hope. I had been experiencing doubt, despair and the usual plethora of negative feelings that surround the incredible problems challenging us — whether global warming, over-population, war in Iraq, oil depletion, over-consumption, destruction of prime ag land for mall and housing development, neo-con infiltration of our government to turn the country into a Christian nation (along with its Rapture Index) and more. Usually I’m more upbeat, since I often surround myself with positive, hopeful and inspiring stories..., but the despair grabbed me with its ugly claws. And if this occurs to me, I thought, imagine how other people who aren’t attuned to the solutions out there: how are they coping with despair? In these moments, I experience somewhat of a compassion for those who desperately eke out a living while feeling the urgency of our times. So many people don’t take the time to reflect on their lives, let alone the life of the planet. They inundate themselves with mainstream media, which suppresses or simply ignores the inspiring stories because its not their business to EMPOWER people but to dumb them down.
So, it was with this attitude that I entered the gates at Zaca Lake (just north of Santa Barbara) in need of respite, to hang out with like-minded people, catch up with the thinkers on these subjects and listen to the many students who attended the Third Annual Reverential Ecology Conference (to read about the second annual conference go to http://tinyurl.com/dwtsu).
Zaca Lake is a beautiful place, with a lake deeper than 1,000 feet, with cabins and large houses that include bunk beds, kitchens, large living rooms. Since there were nearly 200 people in attendance, there was a make-shift tent with heaters during the presentations. During the day, the tents would open their flaps and we gravitated to the sunny areas of the park-like grounds.
I applaud Phil Grant for working with the ESLP [Education for Sustainable Living Program] students and CSSC [California Student Sustainability Coalition] as well as the IRE [Institute for Reverential Ecology] in order to get the caliber of scholar activists to come to Zaca Lake for a few days. You probably have heard of Vandana Shiva, Francis Moore Lappe, Ocean Robbins, Satish Kumar, Charlene Spretnak, Elisabet Sahtouris, Michael Tobias....
For me, even though often the presentations were about subjects that I’m already familiar with, it was healthy to be in that environment of positive solutions, like-minded people, knowing that most of us were struggling with similar issues of despair, how to communicate effectively, how to be more influential telling our stories. I heard many stories throughout the weekend from UC students who dealt with social justice and sustainability issues who were passionate and courageous about making changes on campus. One student (who will be writing about what he and his cohorts are doing for the next issue) was telling me that since the groundwork of communication with the administration had been established, it became easier to speak to them about specific changes, whether it had to do with energy, transportation, food or waste. And since the administrator knew from experience that the students actually performed, actually did what they promised they were going to do, they became more attentive to the next projects the students presented.
For example, when the students spoke to the food department about food waste, one of the administrators was thrilled, since the policy change was on her to-do list for a while but she didn’t have time to work on it. When the students approached her with their willingness to help she eagerly went along with the project.
Also inspiring were the students at some campuses, who were going to city council meetings to extend the new campus policies into the community. For example, when the decision was made at UC Santa Cruz to agree to have 20% of food on campus come from local food sources, they then needed to seek out those local sources. You can imagine the glee the local farmers felt when the decision was made. More about HOW this happened will be in the next issue. The methods of how things change are important to the mission of HopeDance so other groups can replicate the process. One advantage the students who are part of the UC system have is an incredible network that keeps each participant informed about their successes and strategies. Of the 200 attendees at the Conference, almost 150 were students, mostly from UCSB, UCLA, UCSC and UC Davis. And now they have matured to the point that it’s overlapping into the State University system. So stay tuned for developments at Cal Poly in SLO and other CSUs.
Some of the highlights of the weekend:
Ocean Robbins spoke first, with precisely what I needed to hear. In fact, we are acquiring the transcript from his talk to reprint in a future issue of HopeDance.
He looked at Hope as a verb rather than a noun, that we need to embody hopeful actions. It must move through us, he said. We need to be "open to the painful realities of these times as well as open to the sacred and beautiful." He reiterated one of the roots of our problems: the myth of the separate self. "This is a lie and has been the cause of destroying the planet." He also spoke about how we can be of service and make sure we are nourished by what we have decided to do. When asked about what gives him hope, he answered, people like us and the organization he founded called YES (Youth for Environmental Sanity) in which he visited the country’s high schools in search of students taking a stand and making a difference. He empowers students with the stories of so many inspired youth. He is currently involved in communicating to the wealthy, famous and privileged youth to leverage their power and activism. Being privileged himself (the son of famed author John Robbins of the Baskin Robbins Corporation), he said we need to ask them, "How do we give back what has been given us?"
Another noted optimist/scholar who purveys the exciting and positive actions and policies being implemented throughout the country is Charlene Spretnak. After outlining the historical and philosophical roots of modernity via Newton and John Locke and their nefarious machinations toward an industrial model that has plagued us since, she described the cool things now happening. The Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) election in San Francisco was successful in the sense that they used it. If you don’t know what IRV is all about, go to hopedance.org and type in IRV in the search site option at the homepage. We have published articles about it. She spoke about clean elections (http://www.azclean.org/) in New Mexico and Arizona where anyone can run for office and even get funds from the government to do so. It increases the diversity of people running campaigns and broadens the issues. We showed a short film about it awhile back featuring Bill Moyers and the audience was in utter amazement at how such a simple solution can promote genuine democracy. Not only is there a diversity of people joining the ranks of various offices in those states but they spend more time speaking about the issues rather than fundraising and harping on their opponent.
She spoke about the highly successful living wage campaign in this country that has reached 130 cities and growing (go to http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/). Some local governments are taxing carbon emissions as a way to reduce pollution. Overall, her message was that we cannot wait for federal elected officials or the Bush administration to take care of the critical issues facing us. With the examples she gave, it became obvious that pioneering individuals as well as ordinary citizens are making headway implementing policies toward a restorative, socially just and sustainable future.
Frances Moore Lappe is another writer/activist who has been in the limelight ever since her first book on poverty, Diet for a Small Planet, hit the book stores in 1971. And now her children have been writing books as well. Her son Anthony has written True Lies and is the cofounder of the Guerilla News Network (http://www.guerrillanews.com/), and his sister Anna cowrote with her mother Hope’s Edge (reviewed in HopeDance). [Her husband Marc Alan Lappe died recently, on May 14, 2005.] The revolution has certainly become a family affair. Frances’ new book to be released soon is Democracy’s Edge (Anna helped with that book, as well).
She was a bit ill before the conference but intuited that the energy of the conference would heal her. She was right.
She said our main enemy is our powerlessness. An agreeing nod could be felt throughout the outside tent. We need to understand how we can feel powerful and how to cultivate it in our blood and veins. We need to cultivate long-range planning rather than the mantra "it’s too late." We are not in the business of changing human nature but "expressing the larger dimension of what it means to be human." She referred to George Lakoff’s popular "reframing" of our arguments and discussions with people who "oppose" us. She spoke about how cooperation actually is fun. Using cat scans, neuro scientists are declaring that the specific area of the brain gets energies when cooperating as it does when one eats chocolate or snorts cocaine. Cooperation has never been more pleasurable. We just have to do it more! We need to focus our attention on what empowers and nourishes us and align our daily choices. We need to see the possibilities and positivity of our actions. Often we need to see the next trapeze before we leap, and that next trapeze must be more beautiful and fun or people will not want to follow (please see the articles about City Repair in this issue).
One sentence was particularly thought-provoking, and many people’s heads went down to copy it: "It’s not possible to know what is possible." But I would like to amend that by saying let’s seek out what is possible since there are so many cool things happening, and replicate them.
Another observation that resonated with many people: "Things are getting worse and things are getting better." It’s difficult to hold ambiguity in the mind, yet it’s true. She spoke of fear as being energy. It’s our interpretation of the energy that can shut us down and drive us to impotence. She says often that the fear we feel allows us not to follow the dominant behavior. "If everyone is going over the cliff, your fear may be just what you need to alter your course and you may even be right."
Other speakers included Satish Kumar, editor of the wonderfully beautiful magazine Resurgence and cofounder of Schumacher College in England. He is also the director of IRE which presented the conference at Zaca Lake for the third year. He is such a cheerful and positive light. Most students were initially inspired by his talks at UCSB, expanding their studies in Sustainability. He spoke about simplicity, our need to reinvent functional artistry like cooking, baking, pottery, etc.. It’s almost as if we have destroyed our ability to do anything with our hands, he said. This was a radical reminder of who and what we have become: consumers, and how important it is for us to change it.
During this Beltane weekend there was dancing, drumming, naked swimming in the night, lively conversations, networking, serious conversations with elders and students, laughing, massaging, filming the students by a filmmaking crew, wonderful food by Barbara Zagata, and photos by Kazu Furuta.
