Loretto Earth Network News - Fall 2013

Loretto Earth Network News Divest/Reinvest Autumn 2013

Vol. 21, No. 4

An Award for Loretto Motherhouse Community

By Maureen Fiedler SL

O

n Saturday, October 5, I had the great honor of representing the Loretto Earth Network in presenting an award to the Motherhouse Community for its indefatigable work against the Bluegrass Pipeline. Maria Visse, Motherhouse Service Coordinator, accepted the award in the name of the community.

Many of you are familiar with stories about this activism on NPR, in Mother Jones or the Louisville Courier-Journal. The Loretto Motherhouse Community has been a model of environmental activism, a leader in regional efforts to oppose the Bluegrass Pipeline, which would carry toxic natural gas “liquids” from fracking sites in Pennsylvania and Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico. Loretto members have produced educational materials, staffed information booths at local festivals, held organizing meetings across the region, consulted with lawyers, lobbied legislators and shared facts about the pipeline with anyone willing to listen.

Award designed by Matt Myers CoL

In so doing, Loretto publicly proclaim that the earth is God’s sacred creation, not to be despoiled. They oppose the corporate interests, like the Williams Company which is behind the Bluegrass Pipeline, and they are working tirelessly to protect not only Motherhouse lands, but the State of Kentucky, from the ravages the pipeline could bring.

And the Lorettos know whereof they speak. When you come to the Loretto Motherhouse these days, you get an instant course in Environmentalism 101 from almost anyone. You hear about the dangers of fracking, a mining operation that uses dangerous chemicals to break through shale rock to extract natural gas – and often contaminates ground water in the process. You learn about the poisonous liquids that would be transported through the Bluegrass Pipeline and the history of “accidents” by the Williams Company. You hear about organizing efforts in neighboring counties to resist the pipeline and the latest efforts to get the word out through the media.

Many of us who are veterans of movements for justice and peace can only dream of such dedication and participation!

But here it is: at the Loretto Motherhouse. So, the Loretto Earth Network Coordinating Committee decided to present the Motherhouse Community with a special award . . . both a plaque designed by co-member Matt Myers and a real, live “tree of choice” for planting on the Motherhouse grounds.

As many of you know, the environmental movement – led by 350.org and the Sierra Club – is currently mobilizing against another pipeline: the Keystone XL Pipeline that would carry dirty “tar sands oil” from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico. The Loretto Earth Network is convinced that the folks doing that organizing could learn a great deal from the folks at Loretto.

Congratulations to the entire Motherhouse Community!

Editor’s Note Mary Ann Coyle SL

W

e are living in strange times.

I don’t know if you read the National Catholic Reporter for Sept. 27 - Oct. 10, 2013, with the same degree of dismay as I did these last few days. The article is on the front page and shows a group of women sorting beans and corn kernels at a home in Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s well-known slums in 2012.

Written by Megan Fincher, the article focuses on the Cardinal from Ghana, Peter Turkson.

Peter Turkson is an interesting character. He says that if you are in Des Moines, Iowa, this October, you should arrange your schedule to attend the conference on GMOs. Turkson, according to Fincher, will be speaking—and receiving one of three awards—at the World Food Prize organized by Robert Fraley, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Monsanto, the world’s largest GMO business.

Fellow awardees Mary-Dell Chilton and Marc Van Montagu are both involved deeply in GMO manufacture. The three will share a $250,000 prize for advancing “human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.”

Coordinators

Loretto Earth Network Beth Blissman Karen Cassidy Libby Comeaux Mary Ann Coyle Maureen Fiedler Maureen McCormack Nancy Wittwer

Ironically, the day before, NCR informs us, Turkson “will appear at an event hosted by the Occupy the World Food Prize campaign, which was created to oppose the use of GMOs.” Good intentions are laudable, but isn’t this a teeny bit incongruous? Let’s wait and see.

Loretto Earth Network members Maureen McCormack and Libby Comeaux share with us their experience of a meditation retreat given at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado recently. Though there were 120 retreatants from 12 countries (with 1,000 participating online,) it is difficult to reflect on the content of a silent retreat based on creative imagery.

Turkson’s efforts at achieving the best of all possible worlds is not, however, the theme of this issue. We were struck by a book review from YES! magazine written by Abby Quillen on the importance of a seed: “a love letter to the quiet revolutionaries who are saving our food heritage.” Bill McKibben’s work with the Fossil Free Movement in the U.S. is highlighted by this statement of their mission: “If it’s wrong to wreck the climate, then it’s wrong to profit by that wreckage.”

Loretto Heights alum Debbie McLogan spends several months a year away from her nursing practice in California working as a volunteer nurse with a native population in one of the most beautiful places in the world, Metlakatla, Alaska. Libby Comeaux gives us another look at the rights of indigenous people relative to nature, and LEN member Anne Spillane reflects briefly on her opportunity to attend a workshop on The Sacred Universe held at LaVista Ecological Learning Center in Godfrey, Ill. Finally, we believe you will appreciate Maureen Fiedler’s front-page introduction to the Keystone XL pipeline crisis.

Loretto Treasurer Kathy Wright focuses further on the Loretto Motherhouse/Community’s struggle against the encroachment of a natural gas pipeline on our property. She ends her article bringing home to us “Who will notice when a small town like Parachute, Colo., or Loretto, Ky., is significantly and adversely affected by a pipeline accident?”

Loretto Earth Network News

A publication of the Loretto Community

Editor: Mary Ann Coyle SL

3126 S Osceola Street

Denver, CO 80236-2332

Email: macoyle303@comcast.net

www.lorettocommunity.org

Layout: Nancy Wittwer SL

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LENN Autumn 2013

Courtesy of YES! Magazine

Why the Most Powerful Thing in the World Is a Seed

“The Seed Underground” is a love letter to the quiet revolutionaries who are saving our food heritage.

By Abby Quillen

J

anisse Ray celebrates the local, organic food movement but fears we’re forgetting something elemental: the seeds. According to Ray, what is happening with our seeds is not pretty. Ninety-four percent of vintage open-pollinated fruit and vegetable varieties have vanished over the last century.

Ray begins The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food by explaining how we lost our seeds.

Feeding ourselves has always been a burden for humans, she explains.

“So when somebody came along and said, ‘I’ll do that cultivating for you.

I’ll save the seeds. You do something else,’ most of us jumped at the chance to be free.”

But, according to Ray, when the dwindling number of farmers who stayed on the land gave up on saving seeds and embraced hybridization, genetically modified organisms, and seed patents in order to make money, we became slaves to multinational corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta, which now control our food supply.

In 2007, 10 companies owned 67 percent of the seed market. These corporations control the playing field because they influence the government regulators. They’ve been known to snatch up little-known varieties of seeds, patent them, and demand royalties from farmers whose ancestors have grown the crops for centuries. The result is that our seeds are disappearing, and we miss out on the exquisite tastes and smells of an enormous variety of fruits and vegetables. More alarmingly, “we strip our crops of the ability to adapt to change and we put the entire food supply at risk,” Ray writes. “The more varieties we lose, the closer we slide to the tipping point of disaster.”

However, The Seed Underground is not a grim story. It’s a story about seeds, after all, which Ray calls “the most hopeful thing in the world.”

Moreover, it’s a story about a handful of quirky, charismatic, “quiet, underthe-radar” revolutionaries, who harvest and stow seeds in the back of refrigerators and freezers across America. Sylvia Davatz, a Vermont gardener who advocates that local food movements produce and

promote locally grown seeds, calls herself the Imelda Marcos of seeds, because she has a thousand varieties in her closet. Yanna Fishman, the so-called sweet-potato queen, toils over a wild garden in the highlands of western North Carolina, where she grows 40 varieties of sweet potatoes. Dave Cavagnaro, an Iowan photographer, teaches people to hand-pollinate squash with masking tape to keep vintage varieties pure.

Seeds, it turns out, don’t just grow plants—they build stories, heritage, and history, which tend to be shared every time seeds pass from hand to hand. So it’s fitting that Ray, an accomplished nature writer and activist, shares some of her own story in The Seed Underground.

When she was just a child, Ray got her first heirloom seeds from her grandmother—Jack beans, which resembled eyeballs. At 12 she set a brush fire trying to clear land for a garden. At 22 she joined Seed Savers Exchange.

Perhaps we learn the most about Ray from her present-day gardens at Red Earth, her Georgia farm. Ray writes that in the garden, she is “an animal with a hundred different senses and all of them are switched on.” She grows crops like Fife Creek Cowhorn okra, Running Conch cowpea, and Green Glaze collard. Her barn is filled with drying seed heads; her kitchen is stinky with seeds fermenting.

“Seeds proliferate in the freezer, in my office, in the seed bank, in the garden shed—in jars, credit card envelopes, coffee cans, medicine bottles, recycled seed packets.”

Ray outlines the basics of seed saving in The Seed Underground, but it is not a how-to book. It’s a call to action, which often reads like a lyrical love letter to the land and to varieties of squash and peas most of us have never tasted. It’s also a love letter to us, Ray’s readers. “Even though I may not know you, I have fallen in love with you, you who understand that a relationship to the land is powerful,” she writes.

The truth is, Janisse Ray is on a mission to turn you into a quiet, under-the-radar revolutionary, and if you read The Seed Underground, she just might succeed. At the very least, you will look at seeds—tiny, but vital to our survival —differently.

“A seed makes itself. A seed doesn’t need a geneticist or hybridist or publicist or matchmaker. But it needs help,” she writes. “Sometimes it needs a moth or a wasp or a gust of wind. Sometimes it needs a farm and it needs a farmer. It needs a garden and a gardener. It needs you.”

Abby Quillen wrote this article for “How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy,” the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Abby is a freelance writer in Eugene, Ore. She blogs at newurbanhabitat.com.

LENN Autumn 2013 Page 3

Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet.

The one thing that needs to be bigger is our movermnt to stop it.

Bill McKibben

Mission Statement of Fossil Free Movement:

Lester Brown The 350.org campaign recognizes the importance of asking not what is politically feasible, but what is scientifically necessary to avoid catastrophic climate disruption.

Cutting net carbon emissions 80% by 2020 with basic economic restructuring in time will be challenging, but how can we face the next generation if we do not try?

Saving civilization is not a spectator sport—we are in this together.

If it is wrong to wreck the climate then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage.

We believe that educational and religious Institutions, city and state governments, and other institutions that serve the public good should divest from fossil fuels.

James Hansen Governments are allowing and encouraging fossil fuel companies to go after every conceivable fuel, which is an obtuse policy that ignores the implications for young people, future generations and nature. We could make substantial parts of Earth uninhabitable.

We are on the verge of climate chaos if we don’t begin to reduce emissions rapidly.

James Hansen is the former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the world’s best known climate scientist.

Lester R. Brown is Founder and President of Earth Policy Institute. His most recent book is “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Naomi Klein Forming partnerships with polluters was how the Green groups proved they were serious. But the young people demanding divestment—as well as grassroots groups fighting fossil fuels wherever they are mined, drilled, fracked, burned, piped or shipped— have a different definition of seriousness. They are serious about winning. And the message to Big Green is clear: cut your ties with the fossils or become one yourself.

Author and Social Activist

Apartheid seemed an overwhelming challenge that could not be defeated but we mobilised and defeated it. We need the same passion and determination to defeat climate change. Climate change is an even greater threat to us than apartheid was, because as temperatures rise, millions of Africans will be deprived of water and crops. This will cause enormous suffering. It is something we simply cannot allow. In the face of such a huge threat, many of us feel numb and throw up our hands, believing we can’t make a difference.

But we can and must make a difference.

May Boeve Why isn’t our electricity grid powered with more wind and less coal? We think it’s because of the influence the fossil fuel industry has. So how do we tackle that? Part of that is taking away their social license to operate. For the fossil fuel industry it’s their product that is the problem, and it’s what the product does to the planet. So that has to be challenged and that has to cease feeling like an inevitable way that the economy works.

Executive Director of 350.org

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LENN Autumn 2013

Loretto Motherhouse and Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) Pipeline Saga Continued …

By Kathy Wright SL

T

he Williams Company and Boardwalk Company may have decided not to put a Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) pipeline on the Loretto Motherhouse property, but the efforts to stop the Bluegrass Pipeline are far from over. A 24-inch pipeline filled with toxic, volatile, flammable NGL under high pressure is still a serious threat to the land and water of Kentucky as well as to anyone who lives near such a pipeline. A pipeline does not have to be on our property to affect us through leaks, explosions, property value decreases and loss of life. Many people along the various proposed routes understand this and are working together to prevent the construction of this pipeline or any NGL pipeline in Kentucky.

growing consensus that the nation is well on its way to becoming energyindependent. The impetus for this is the boom in extracting oil and natural gas from shale rock formations, and the technological innovations that have made it economically feasible. Called hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking,’ the environmentally controversial technology has already sparked an enormous energy revolution, with natural gas as its cornerstone. …The shale-gas boom has sparked a revival of the U.S. petrochemical industry, which uses natural gas as a raw material.”

Just saying no the pipeline on our piece of property is not enough. The Williams Company seems ready and willing to override the will of the people through legal maneuvers, including the use of eminent domain.

The next phases of the effort in Kentucky will likely include a more concerted effort 1. by faith based groups focused on the stewardship and common good perspective, 2. by groups and individuals to insist that the Kentucky legislature and courts do not allow the use of eminent domain for this pipeline, 3. by groups and individuals to pressure federal agencies (The Army Corps of Engineers) and state agencies (Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet) to require assessments of the environmental impacts and to regulate and monitor more closely these proposed pipelines.

These efforts are a small piece of the larger “energy” picture here in the U.S. today. According to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report to their investment clients “… there’s a

Unfortunately, this revolution, this boom, comes at a very high price to Earth, our land, the water supply and the vast majority of Americans who do not reap the benefits of this revival for petrochemical company stocks.

The “growing consensus” that this report refers to must be limited to those who will benefit financially from fracking because the work of many organizations tells a very different story: one of strong opposition to fracking from its extraction processes to its use of water resources and its delivery methods. Long-term consequences of these “technology innovations” have not yet been determined. And near-term profits come at a cost of yet again choosing not to invest in research and more responsible, renewable and environmental energy sources.

So the efforts in Kentucky represent just one front in the battle for cleaner, renewable energy sources and a refusal to believe that we have no choice other than oil and gas obtained in North America by whatever means necessary. These efforts may be an uphill struggle in this economic and political climate, but the grassroots movement is growing stronger, larger and more unified in its work. Faithbased groups will continue to plead an effective case for the common good of all Kentuckians and the land they hold dear. Federal and state agencies will feel the pressure to step into this relatively new industry to establish public safety and environmental safeguards. And legal challenges are being researched as another avenue to bring closer public scrutiny to the many issues raised by a proposed NGL pipeline.

In Loretto we will work in concert with those in Kentucky who oppose NGL pipelines as well as any national efforts to educate the public on this relatively new phenomenon.

It is important that people all across the U.S. understand the difference between a natural gas pipeline, an NGL pipeline and real options for totally other sources of energy. In many areas the plan to put these pipelines through small, inconspicuous rural communities is strategic. Who will notice when a small town like Parachute, Colo., or Loretto, Ky., is significantly and adversely affected by a pipeline accident or leak? We will notice and we will bring it to the attention of as many others as possible.

LENN Autumn 2013 Page 5

Awakening to the Natural State

By Maureen McCormack SL

L

ibby Comeaux and I attended a meditation retreat given by Craig Hamilton at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado.

There were 120 retreatants from 12 countries – including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Cyprus, Ireland, England, Australia, New Zealand and Barbados. An additional 1000 people participated online.

I grew in appreciation of the theme “Awakening to the Natural State: A Journey into Wholeness” over the five days. My mother told me that once, when I was a baby, I was very quiet in my crib. She assumed that I was asleep. She tiptoed over to the crib and was so surprised to find me wide awake, looking all around. Perhaps I was a contemplative baby; maybe I was really beginning to awaken to the natural state.

My first awakening at the retreat was at registration, something I usually considered to be perfunctory on the way to something else. Not this time.

Karen, the retreat coordinator, came forward to greet us so warmly that the perfunctory disappeared. It was as if deep reached out to deep. Later, when Craig spoke of the deep place and the surface being one, I thought of Karen. I had been aware that how we are in the deep places within can affect how we are on the surface, but I had not thought of them as one.

Karen epitomized for me that the deep and the surface can be one, and I wanted to go there.

I paid particular attention to what Craig said about both the depth dimension and the surface. He compared them to the ocean, which has the same water at the deepest part and at the surface. The water at the surface behaves differently, splashing around, frothing, making waves. The deep part of the ocean has slower currents but is the same

substance. Beneath all the details of our lives, a profound depth is available to us. We might miss this depth, because the surface can be so interesting. Being present to the depth is like learning to listen to a new frequency or seeing a new band of color we’ve never seen before. The surface can be a radiant expression of this depth. The depth can ripple out, begin to move, to touch, to inspire, and to flow into every aspect of our lives.

It was a joy to experience Craig Hamilton in person. Even if we have been meditating for most of our lives, there is always something new to learn.

By Libby Comeaux CoL Meditating at the silent retreat led

by Craig Hamilton at Shambhala Mountain Center in August, I struggled to make sense of his suggestion to let go, let be, and allow my inner experience to be whatever it was. No preference. Over the course of the five days as new instructions were given, I wondered what he meant by attending to the process of attending, of paying attention to paying attention. It did become clear that the chatterbox of my mind was something I was invited to allow to quiet. And an invitation emerged to sit in the awareness of pure consciousness.

Early in these days, when I joined the stillness of his more advanced students, an image spontaneously sat with me. It was similar to the icon Mary of the Cosmos by Bernadette Bostwick SGM. Now, it seemed that the Universe was in me or behind me, looking through me. Once while walking to the meditation tent, I saw with those eyes the perfection of beauty of the natural world and the thought came, “So these are the consequences of what we started!”

By that time, the “me” was receding.

The “we” popped into awareness as the consciousness that knows--if you roll the video backwards all the way as Thomas Berry said--we are all One. Evolutionary consciousness at work in the world drew me to this retreat.

I experienced how my attention to the chatterbox mind can get in the way of deep service. In our small group I began to attend differently.

We wondered together about learning in our working groups to recognize the different voices of ego-mind and evolving consciousness of our groups.

I like what I am learning, and I hope to continue practicing. Attention and awareness can shift and open, leaving space for reweaving connections.

The practice seems helpful for embodying our values: We are all in this together, and we will get through this together.

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LENN Autumn 2013

Sharing a Simpler Time

By Debby McLogan Potlatch? What kind of kitchen implement is that?

Why are there two Metlakatlas?

How do you pronounce Tngelit, Yupic and Tsimshian?

What’s a thimbleberry?

Stay tuned...

ugust 7 is a holiday on the island of Metlakatla, Alaska.

This dates back to the relocation of the Tsimshians people in 1887 from Metlakatla, British Columbia, to a very similar island given to them by the territory of Alaska 87 miles north. They had suffered religious persecution as well as a smallpox epidemic. An Episcopal lay minister named (Father) William Duncan became their leader and saw his mission in life as one of embracing the people and becoming fluent in their language. He was welcomed by the native population and led 800 of them on an epic trip by canoe from B.C. to Annette Island. One-hundred people remained behind in BC and continue in “Old Metlakatla” near Prince Rupert.

Fr. Duncan was buried in front of the church he built on their new island.

A

The population on “New Met” is comprised mainly of members of the Tsimshian (Shim-shian), Yupic (You-pic), Tngelit (Cling-it) tribes, and number today a little over 1,300.

Children of the tribes have access there to education from pre-school through high school.

The island offers a cold rain forest of magnificent trees and waterfalls of clear luscious water. The town itself is very walkable with vistas of nearby islands with whimsical characteristics such as trees looking like a man’s crewcut or a battleship. At one time potatoes grew on a nearby island. Today the primary source of commerce is fish. There is a fish processing plant on the edge of town across from the museum that was the

former home of Father Duncan. Purple Mountain rings part of the panorama of the harbor. If you take a 20-minute climb mostly on boardwalk, you reach the peak of Yellow Hill with its USGS official medallion on its peak. From Yellow Hill you can see distant snowcapped peaks, multiple islands and fjords.

The trip from Annette Bay to Ketchikan is served five days per week, twice daily, by the ferry Lituya. The road that connects the ferry is 14 miles from town and taxi service is available. Annette Island is one of the southernmost points of land north of B.C., Canada and a mere 650 miles from Seattle by air or 1,100 miles by ferry. It was the location of the commercial airport for Ketchikan until the mid -’70s. The airfield still exists on the island with its old hangar being reclaimed slowly by the surrounding forest. During WW2, it was an early warning post where the U.S. watched for Japanese aircraft.

Walking around the town is a true delight. A few of the buildings are from the early days. Father Duncan’s Church has a distinctive double spire.

The Annette Island Service Unit, the medical facility which serves all

in need, is an architectural delight complete with a lobby filled with local native art. The Horne brothers’ masks representing the four tribes are on display. These are the Raven, the Bear, the Orca Whale and the Wolf.

They reside harmoniously inside the double story, well-lighted reception area. Capes, paddles and other native treasures are artistically displayed.

The pool and gymnasium complex is across the street and is open to all.

August brings out a variety of edible berries. The thimbleberry is a strawberry-red berry, the size of a fingertip. The succulent seedpods are very much like a coneshaped raspberry in appearance.

Huckleberries are both red and blue.

These, as well as the more traditional raspberry, are made into jam or stirred into yogurt.

Much of the island can be walked from the beach and harbor to the old cemetery. If you plan accordingly there may be ceremonial dancing in the Long House or the arrival of canoes from Old Metlakatla when Founder’s Day is celebrated on August 7. If you like gaming, bingo is available two evenings per week at the casino. You may encounter a traditional party/ceremonial feast or potlatch with costumes of red with black designs representing the tribes.

The entire town seems to take part in the various ceremonies from toddlers to the elders with the playing of traditional drums.

Metlakatla is filled with polite, friendly people and not to be missed for an authentic visit to simpler times. Bring your fishing tackle and cast out a line.

LENN Autumn 2013 Page 7

The Rising Wind of Justice

By Libby Comeaux CoL

To guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her … there are existing cultures, practices and laws that do so.”

A

-Preamble to the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth

t the 2012 Assembly, the Loretto Community endorsed the Rights of Mother Earth.

We also stood in solidarity with indigenous peoples seeking public repudiation and rescission of the Doctrine of Discovery.

and ecocide).

What possible practical effect can these two resolutions have? Let’s take a look.

Earlier columns in this series showed how the regulatory approach failed to protect nature. And time is running These two resolutions have two out. Rights-of-nature laws – beginning common themes: that humans are at the local level – can catalyze not separate from nature or from each unprecedented transformation of other, and that mutual reciprocity, consciousness and constitutional law. rather than domination, structures Catholic voices are asking Pope relationships.

Francis to publicly repudiate and The rights-of-nature movement rescind, in a public way, the 15th challenges human domination century papal bulls that formalized of plants, animals, and natural the Doctrine of Discovery. (If you ecosystems like rivers, oceans, and want to participate, contact libby. forests. The older movement, to comeaux@gmail.com well before revoke the Doctrine of Discovery, November 6.) Then we will ask the challenges domination of settler U.S. Congress to reverse Johnson v. nations over indigenous peoples M’Intosh, a key U.S. Supreme Court and the plants, animals, and natural decision that relied on the papal bulls ecosystems that formed their web of to discriminate against indigenous life, culture, religion (genocide, really – peoples.

My Time Exploring the Sacred Universe

By Anne Spillane CoL

R

ecently I had the opportunity to participate in a weeklong program entitled “Exploring the Sacred Universe.” The program was held at the La Vista Ecological Learning Center in Godfrey, Ill. The Center is located on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, at a bend that is breathtakingly beautiful.

Among the nine participants in the program were people from California, Canada, Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri, Washington, D.C., and the State of Washington. We were all asked to meditate on, think about, and ponder the significance of the universe story in our lives during this time together.

We were housed in comfortable private rooms, which provided a space for relaxation when we were not in session.

I enjoyed our delicious vegetarian meals. They generally consisted of fresh fruits and vegetables, grains and beans, seeds and nuts. Eggs and dairy foods, including cheese and yogurt, are used now and then.

Every effort is made to use seasonal and bio-regionally grown foods.

Meals together provided opportunities to enjoy one another and to build community.

Program activities included lectures, outdoor morning prayers, walking, gardening, cooking, art, journaling, creative projects and a field trip.

“Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well.”

But what does this all mean? Do I have to give away my property to the Indians, or to the bears? Relax.

First, think about the habitual (mis) use of the word “my.” Then consider traditional ways in English common law, which the U.S. inherited, to address all this. The commons can be the basis for a respectful, sharing relationship among humans and the land communities with whom they relate. And public lands like national parks may well thrive again if returned to traditional native peoples whose religion, science, and culture have always understood that they belong to the land (and not the other way around).

Many more practical options exist for a thriving future. Visit www. therightsofnature.org – view the trailer for United Natures and be inspired!

Despite this full schedule, we did have time for solitude and contemplation.

Among the highlights of the week were a stargazing session led by a local astronomer, the actual harvesting and eating of fruits and vegetables from the seven-acre farm on which the Center is located, a field trip to the Audubon Center and a tour of Pere Marquette State Park.

None of this could have happened without our outstanding organizers and presenters. Thank you to Norm Comtois OMI, Paulette Zimmerman SSND, Maxine Pohlman SSND, and the Loretto Earth Network.

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