We are living through an environmental crisis and yes it’s serious, it’s scary and it’s overwhelming. Some might call this climate anxiety!
Well take a deep breath with me, because on Earth Day I found two inspiring experts who can help us with our climate anxiety and guide us to a more hopeful and empowering way of nurturing our nature within. Gary Ferguson ( author of The 8 Master Lessons of Nature–Book Wise Pick 2019) is America’s favorite nature writer and Mary M. Clare is a respected social-cultural psychologist who also happens to be Gary’s partner. Together they have written an insightful and inspiring book “Full Ecology’ –Repairing Our Relationship with the Natural World.
Did you know you share 90% of your DNA with an apple tree? Part tree you are! Get ready to dig in deep and be prepared to see yourself in a beautiful new light along side of other living beings on earth. Think ‘six degrees of separation’ with all living things on the planet and you’re on your way to feeling a kinship with nature all around you. As you know, our charge at World Wise Beauty, is to ‘nurture your nature’ inside and out. Together, we celebrate our unique bio-individuality cultivating wellness wisdom for life’s beautiful journey. Like the flowers we love, we too bloom, grow, and flourish. And like beautiful flowers, we don’t do this alone. I invite you to take our World Wise Beauty mindset and jump into ‘Full Ecology’ with an open mind and heart. I promise when you finish reading this book, climate action and awareness will no longer be a source of anxiety or pressure, but rather a deep feeling of commitment to live life well harmoniously–at peace with nature and yourself.
It is an honor to have a conversation with these two beacons of light, and I hope you have a chance to know them even better with their live virtual event “Walk in the Wild’ scheduled for later today. See the promo video and link to registration below the Q&A. Happy Earth Day to all! As the wise sage Gandhi has said…
“Be the Change You Want to See in the World”
Laura Connolly, Founder of World Wise Beauty
Lauroly Q- The first chapter is titled Stop. Stop? I first thought, “Now wait a minute the world is on fire and we are meant to stop?” I am reading so much lately about what I can do to prevent climate change and stopping seems counter intuitive? What do you mean by Stop?
Gary: It’s tough to address a problem like climate change until we really understand the perspectives that led to the mess in the first place. And further, how those perspectives are expressed in our personal lives. I’m not talking about shaming. Rather, we can stop in order to take an honest look at whether some of the ideas we thought about life – like our notions about being stand-alone beings, rugged individuals – are really true. Stopping is how we begin to trade old, unhelpful stories for the truth about how life on this precious planet – all life – actually works. In this stopped place we can begin to perceive the critical role in life of relationship, of diversity, of elderhood. And when we perceive those realities, we can ultimately use them to guide our actions.
Lauroly- The chapter titled ASK is one of the most enlightening chapters in the book. While Full Ecology is focused on repairing our relationship with the natural world, it is also a great self-help book! Living in a western society like America with a pull up your own boot-straps mindset, it is hard for us to dance between interdependency and independence. Funny, because in nature this is exactly what is going on all the time. Living life is an adaptive dance between the I and the we. Knowing who you are is important but it’s also equally important to understand who you are in relation to others. How do reconcile our sense of separateness and individuality with nature’s apparent law of interdependency? So many good questions and answers in your book! For now we glean…
Gary: If you look at how nature evolved – and again, please remember that you’re part of that brilliant evolution – you find what philosopher Neil Evernden called “a rhythm of exchange.” On one hand are individuals, offering a wide range of expressions. When it comes to how an alpha wolf relates to her pack, she can be playful or aloof. An elephant, or an orca whale, can be prone to acting boldly or going through life as a very cautious being. But those individual expressions are always firmly connected to the community that sustains them. The wolf connected to her pack. The orca to her pod. The elephant to her herd. And then on top of that, each of those small groups are dependent on a vast array of other lives, other beings, outside their own species. It’s not by accident that we humans are considered to be one of the most cooperative species on the planet. Yes, be your best self. And at the same time, relax into the fact that on planet Earth, true creative genius has always been a team sport.
Laura: The chapter on Inspiration really resonated for me. I love this line in your book “Inspiration is how you remember the world has your back.” We are never really alone are we? You go on to say “Opening yourself to grief instead of running from it will always reveal inspiration. It will restore your sense of belonging. It will deepen the color and texture of your relationships with family, friends, the earth, and life itself.” How do we find inspiration to move forward when we feel like we’ve hit rock bottom as a species?
Gary: Maybe it’s worth first stopping to check out that thought: We’ve hit rock bottom as a species. On one level this is a reasonable, even logical conclusion. But what if we let whatever is true about that be first and foremost not an invitation for giving up, or blaming or shaming, but a simple, elegant invitation to grieve. Within the honest sadness we feel about the mistakes we’ve made is undeniable proof of how much we love, how much we care. (Otherwise, after all, there’d be nothing to grieve.) When we walk into our grief – honoring it, but not using it as a spark for shame – we end up touching the very qualities nature wired into us for compassion and meaningful relationship. Qualities that in turn help us find the next steps.
Lauroly: What beautiful answers full of so much wisdom. This is hardly a glean my friends, we are filling up! Many people start to think in annihilation terms when it comes to solving any big challenges these days. We seem to have lost our ‘repair mode’ which is inherent in nature. Your ideas in the book about a holding space seems like a much better option than self-destruction. What is a holding space in a spiritual sense and how does it lead to repair?
Gary: Some environmentalists these days like to dismiss individual recycling efforts, or turning the thermostat down, or picking up litter. If we’re to save ourselves, the thinking goes, we have to take big, bold steps aimed at the worst of the corporate polluters. Such small individual acts don’t matter. It’s true that we need big, bold steps. But thinking of it as an either/or situation is an illusion. Truth is, the kind of culture that would insist on those big, bold steps for the long term is going to be one made up of people who know the sacred aspects of the planet in their personal lives. When you pick up litter, you honor the Earth. When you recycle, you touch the long chain of connections that make up the products that sustain you. Such consciousness is for many a powerful part of spirituality. Helping to heal climate change is going to be a long journey, lasting many decades. And while clever technologies and smart regulations will be a big part of that healing, the energy and resilience needed to insist on those things in the first place, is ultimately driven by what we hold in our hearts.
Laura: Thank you so much to both of you for sharing your wisdom on Earth Day and for writing such a beautiful and enlightening book. I wish everyday was Earth Day, but I hold this space with hope that we will all find our way back home, connected once again with our holistic nature. Happy Earth Day!
Mary and Gary Closing: Thanks to you, Laura, for this opportunity. We keep learning with every conversation. That’s the thing about Full Ecology – it just keeps welcoming us, giving us chances to get closer to our truest human nature; and that’s our best hope for addressing climate change, as well as for passing along ways of thriving to the ones who follow us. And yes, Happy Earth Day!! Hope to see you at our virtual event! https://www.wildboundlive.com/events/walkinthewild