The Role of the Spiritual Activist in the Environmental Movement

      In considering the deepening crisis in North Dakota at Standing Rock where the treaty rights of Lakota/Dakota peoples (commonly known as the Sioux) are being violently violated, my thoughts turned back to the direct actions I participated in with Earth First! in the 1980’s. As opposed to the purely environmental concerns of Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Mike Roselle, Ken Sanders and other notable founders of that movement that I engaged with, I saw environmental protection as a spiritual matter.
      The article below was published in CATALYST Magazine and summarizes materials that I presented as a workshop at the Ancient Ways Festival in California in the early 1980s, produced under the auspices of the Covenant of the Goddess. This was the outcome of a deepening interest in Native American spirituality and driven by some of the successes in defending and protecting sacred places, that native peoples had recently had in court. I had been inspired to look into my own Celtic European roots for similar traditions, ceremonies and folkways. This led me to an involvement with Celtic Pagan traditions and credentialing by the Covenant of the Goddess. Anyone who has read other of my blogposts in Interfaith Advocate knows that my spiritual alignments are quite eclectic. For a number of years now I have been deeply involved in the Unity movement, whose byline is “One God, Many Paths”.
 
The Role of the Spiritual Activist in the Environmental Movement

A New Perspective
      We are in the midst of a revolution in consciousness which heralds the new age. It is the redefining of our very place in the universe. The movement of thought from “conservation”, a concept which is anthropocentric and economically based, to “deep ecology”, which takes life itself in all of its manifest diversity as its base — is a quantum leap towards faith. In this new perspective we see all liberation movements as having their ultimate ground in ecology. In its fertile soil lies the seeds of peace. Biological, socio-economical, political and cultural harmony are all branches of the one tree.

Aligning Ourselves in Thought, Word and Deed
      For those that subscribe to this creed there is a spiritual mandate to ally ourselves in the life of the Earth with our fellow beings. We must align ourselves in thought, word and deed. Esoterically in rituals of protection and healing, and celebrations of the cycles of seasons and thanksgiving. Exoterically  as teachers and political activists, engaging in protest and civil disobedience. It is not trite to say that faith and conviction are potent forces for change. Examine the roles of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King and the Rev. Daniel Barragan among many others in our recent history.
     The distinction between esoteric and exoteric considerations, although ultimately artificial, is useful in much the same way as are military strategists’ division of a war into fronts (a metaphor suggested by the urgency of our situation).

“Stead” — developing a sense of place
      Spiritual traditions arise out of a community’s relations with its environment and express themselves in the cultural trappings and unique poetry of their practice. A coven, a clan, a spiritual tribe is lost without “stead” — that is, the appointed or natural place of the thing, the ground on which a structure stands, that which gives the upright standing. Covenstead, the place of the gathering, meeting place of the four winds and the five senses.
      Come to know the land on which you live. Meet the inhabitant animals and plants, learn their names and the ways in which they fit into their environment. Your covenstead may assume the guise of political boundary, but must be mapped as a biome, a unit of living organisms in an ecological region; it defines itself in terms of ridge, valley and watershed, by that place where oak gives way to Douglas fir or field to fen. Find the heart of this place and make a shrine, altar of the wider temple in which you renew your faith by finding communion. Such an altar is a focal point for the gathering energies, crossroads of animal, mineral and plant, of devas and demons and of life and death. A place at which you may receive and give, a point of release for devotional energies, the appointed place for ritual and meditation.
      Exoterically we have the duties of conscience. Whether we celebrate in works of art and beauty and balance to which we are privileged witness, or find ourselves in confrontation with political powers and their sworn testimonies in halls of justice, we must stand with our alignments.
      As an environmental activist who acts for spiritual as opposed to “other” reasons, you bring to bear on specific cases, constitutional issues unique to your role in the movement. You must be prepared to demonstrate the integrity of your conscience through a history of affiliations and religious involvement. If called into court, your sincerity is in the province of witnesses and documents. Your views dodge the charge of being idiosyncratic when backed by common experience and by being encoded in charters.
      Law is a conservative venture requiring precedent and careful reasoning for which you will be held accountable. The notion of love may be dismissed as aesthetic, whereas the concept of devotion implies the possibility of sacrilege. The erection of a shrine and a history of religious activity at a given place may be important legal precedents if you are defending an act of civil disobedience. Knowledge of the traditions of indigenous peoples regarding the sacredness of a given place may stand as collaborative evidence. Your religious affiliations should have encoded in their traditions charters and administered credentials a philosophical basis for your actions.
      It is a spiritual war that we wage and our paradoxical weapons include shared hearts and minds as well as the tools of resistance. An ancient aphorism contends that the best defense is the making of friends. From the tradition of the four sacred hallows, also called the four magical weapons, comes the wisdom of offering the cup to those who thirst, the dish to those who are hungry and with the wand you may give the lost direction. It is in the final resort that we wield the iron will. May you be blessed in your service to the living.

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