I was very pleased to attend the closing keynote lecture by Kenny Ausubel at the annual meeting of the American Holistic Medical Association in Portland this year. The theme of the conference was Environmental Medicine, and Kenny’s presentation was a highlight for me, capping the whole conference with a positive attitude around facing and dealing with the many environmental challenges we are confronted with today, including pollution, exhaustion of natural resources and global warming, among others.

Kenny is the founder of the Bioneers. See more on his presentation in Blog entry of June 13

From the Bioneers website http://www.bioneers.org:

Founded in 1990, Bioneers is a nonprofit organization that promotes practical environmental solutions and innovative social strategies for restoring the Earth and communities.

"It's All Alive, It's All Intelligent, It's All Connected."

Bioneers offers pragmatic solutions that honor the living web of the natural world as the most fertile source of inspiration and models. It's all alive.

One of the beauties of biology is that its facts can become our metaphors, and these underlying codes serve as inspiring parables for how we can organize a more just, humane and authentically sustainable society. It's all intelligent.

Interdependence also teaches us that there are no single issues because it's one whole that can be addressed only by bringing together all the parts. Bioneers gathers people at the crossroads of ecological restoration, human health and social justice. It's all connected.

The bioneers span all fields, cultures, ages and walks of life. The work ranges from science to spirit - local to global - academia to the grass roots - farm to city - business to public service - art to engineering. We celebrate the gift of life in all its diversity and mystery, conjuring a change of heart to renew our empathic connection with the web of life and the Earth, our home. It's all relatives.

Kenny suggested we might take comfort in:

“There is tremendous hope in how little we know.” Gaia appears to have vast capacities to deal with challenges to its homeostasis – the chemical, temperature, biological and other balances that it has maintained over several billions of years. Gaia may have unexpected reserves or capacities to adapt to the instabilities of pollution, depletion of resources and global warming that humanity is creating.

While the excesses of humanity may lead to a partial failure of humans to survive, with catastrophic consequences for untold millions or billions of people, there is a likelihood that humanity, too, has unknown capacities to survive.

You might be interested in

1. The Bioneers 18th annual conference, which is beamed to many other locations around the country so that more people can attend.
 http://www.bioneers.org/conference

MARIN CENTER, SAN RAFAEL, CA  OCTOBER 19 - 21, 2OO7

Explore the forefront of positive change in deeply inspiring plenary talks with visionary thinkers and doers from wildly varied fields, cultures and walks of life.


2. Ecological Medicine notices and artiles
http://www.bioneers.org/ecologicalmedicine

and many more items...

WHEE-MD Observations

There are many organizations today focused on ecology and preservation and restoration of our planet. All draw upon research that demonstrates we are damaging our planet to the point that recovery into conditions that are conducive to survival of humanity is questionable. Many suggest that there may be cusps or tipping points of balances between damaging conditions and recuperative capacities of our planet – points beyond which there will be nothing more we can do to stop or reverse catastrophic deteriorations that will make continued life as we know it impossible. This could happen in the air, the sea, temperatures, chemical pollution, or in other factors we have yet to identify.

The Bioneers, while saying the same things, are putting these messages into language and concepts that are focused on the positive side of our responses to these challenges.

My own belief is that wholistic healing and spiritual awareness are pathways to reconnect with our environment and resume a greater responsibility for that which is a part of ourselves, as we are a part of it – for our healing stewardship of the resources of Gaia.

At the very least, our spiritual awareness can help us make a gentler transition to the world of spirit, which is something we will all face – hopefully later rather than sooner