Spirit and Nature explores the spiritual connections between humans and the natural world with particular attention to using spiritual approaches to solve environmental problems.  

The call has been made over and over again to end the destruction of the natural world - since the birth of the modern environmentalist movement began with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and up until the current urgings of NASA’s James Hansen to act aggressively and immediately to curb global warming.  Yet still as a culture we have been unable to adequately respond, and continue on the path of rampant consumerism, sucking up resources from the environment faster than we can ever hope to put them back.  More than two-thirds of the U.S. economy is based on consumer spending (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 2008) - yet the statistics and our own deep, personal knowing prove that such spending fails to bring us satisfaction.   

Al Gore states in Earth in the Balance, “the more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual.”  Deep ecologists such as Arne Naess have long called for a values-based approach to environmentalism.  Such a philosophical approach may have been developed before the movement had gained sufficient emotional maturity to integrate it.  However, there are indications that times have changed.  Creation spirituality, Native wisdom, and Earth-centered frameworks of all kinds are now embraced by many.  Personal practices such as voluntary simplicity and green consumerism are also gaining ground. 

And just as we reach out to help Nature, she reaches out to help us.  There is research evidence that shows a walk in the park results in significantly lower blood pressure, nervous tension and resting heart rate than walking on a treadmill. There is also evidence from the emerging field of Ecopsychology indicating that a wilderness experience triggers spiritual insights and revelations for the people who are involved in them.  There is much we already understand about the reciprocal relationship between the Earth and her children.  What is missing are daily habits that strengthen our spiritual relationship with the Earth - ones that convey gratitude and respect.  In sharing these historical yet forgotten methods, we can mend the Earth and ourselves at this important, though often neglected level. 

This website is dedicated to getting the word out.  Through publicizing the research, personal stories, communities and philosophies of spirituality grounded in the Earth, we can begin the process of creating deep and lasting change, of a kind the world has never seen before. Nothing short of an evolution of human consciousness will do.  This is major work, and requires major preparation, collaboration, dedication and perspiration.  Let us take the best of the work that is already done, find ways to apply it to our lives and feed back into the web that connects all life. 

"A new social model

We must attempt the impossible. I am convinced that if we continue to follow a social model that is entirely conditioned by money and power, and that takes so little account of true values such as love and altruism, future generations may have to face far worse problems and endure even more terrible forms of suffering.

...Each one of us lacks one thing or another. I am not exactly sure what we lack, but I can feel we lack something. In the West, even if at the moment you are going through a crisis, you actually have everything, or at least you think you do; all kinds of material goods are there, and are no doubt distributed better than they were in the past. But it seems to me that you are living in a constant state of tension, in an atmosphere of never-ending competitiveness and fear. And those who are brought up in such an atmosphere will find themselves lacking all their lives: they will not know that wonderful quality of depth and intimacy that is the richness of life. They will stay on the surface of the troubled sea, without ever knowing the calm that lies beneath."

--from "The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner Peace: The Essential Life and Teachings" by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

You are encouraged to explore and enjoy the information at your leisure, but before you go, please have a look at the "Inspired Actions" section and consider what you can do to help us all evolve into better caretakers of the Earth.