Climate disasters: fires, floods, desertification, rising sea levels and the ascendency of fascist elites call for us to decolonize our mindset and recognize the difference between spiritual, religious, and churchly. The Reclaiming Spirituality arena attempts to recover the earthly, wild and prophetic spirituality necessary to take the lid off the well of truth and stop the carbon state's incessant efforts to fill our minds with clutter and lies.
As Chris Hedges writes in The Cost of Resistance:
“Revolution is not, ultimately, a political calculation. It is a moral one. It is grounded in a vision of another world, another way of being. It is driven, in the end, by a moral imperative, especially since many of those who begin a revolution do not survive to see its fulfillment. Revolutionaries know that as Immanuel Kant wrote: “If justice perishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning.” And this means that, like Socrates, we must come to a place where it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. We must at once see and act, and given what it means to see, this will require the surmounting of despair, not by reason, but by faith.”
This arena explores three aspects of spirituality:
The Spirit and Activism:
Spiritual activism brings together outside and inward-focused work, inseparable parts of a interconnected whole among all living beings. Spiritual activists use their beliefs to fuel and guide their attempts to create positive change in the world. Their practice is often separate from organized religion and dogma; instead, spiritual activists render service for the oppressed, the marginalized, other species, and the Earth. Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and Abraham Joshua Heschel held different religious beliefs yet each devoted his or her life to improve the well being of people of all faiths.
The Colonized Repression of the Spirit:
Spiritual activism is generally dismissed in Western thought because spirituality cannot be controlled, measured, or understood within the confines of "rational thought." The Cartesian split and European enlightenment created a sharp division between the linear, rational methods of science and the intuitive, relational practices of spirituality. Colonialism imposed this European distinction on Indigenous peoples, discounting practices and ways of knowing that developed independently of European science. As a result, equalitarian societies were exterminated, and the important roles filled by indigenous women in spiritual practices was repressed. This colonial mindset continues today.
A Change our Hearts – Indigenous Worldviews:
What follows says it best:
"For Indigenous Peoples around the world, climate change has long been more than an abstract, futuristic possibility. It has been a reality affecting the harvesting of our traditional foods and our ability to hunt and fish, affecting our ability to live on our ancestral homelands, and changing a way of life that we have been living since time immemorial. The importance of an Indigenous worldview is illuminated by the impacts of climate change, and climate change is exacerbated by the western world’s historic and contemporary reliance on imperialistic endeavors to extract resources in the name of capitalism. But we cannot drink oil nor can we eat money. Indeed, Elders all over Turtle Island tell stories of a time to come when the world will be forced to return to Indigenous ways, a time when the world will need our ways in order to heal itself."
