Our Teacher for Billions of Years: the Earth — Part Two
Image taken by the Apollo 17 crew as they traveled to the Moon: on the final Apollo mission.
December 7, 1972.
WHY WAS THE CENTER FOR WOMEN, THE EARTH, THE DIVINE CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE?
The Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine (C:WED) was created in 1991 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring the parallels that exist between the image and treatment of Women and of the Earth and how our images of the Divine are related to these parallels.
(A more detailed explanation is available in Eleanor's and Anne's first blog post on our website at www.cwed.org. Click on "Blog" and scroll down to the first one.
WOMEN:
We wished to offer women a chance to share in worldwide conferences and to offer our own C:WED seminars and retreats. We did these and many women participated in them and grew with us along the way.
THE EARTH:
We truly believe that the Earth has much to teach us about the ways of survival and growth. The C:WED newsletter "Weaving the Connections," as well as retreats that I offered and my public talks locally and globally served to spread the word.
THE DIVINE:
And the Divine just "is". We are based in the Christian faith while we also gave many interfaith talks and retreats.
In 2001, C:WED wanted to infuse values associated with women, the Earth, and spirituality into the United Nations agenda, documents, and process.
Working with the UN, I became aware that Rio+10, the 10th anniversary of the UN Earth Summit, was fast approaching. That is when it came to me that whatever their agenda was, the issue of Values was not part of it. So, as we described in our previous post, Part One, as president of C:WED, I proposed a meeting to add Values to the conference. From that meeting, we created the Earth Values Caucus (EVC), which offered the UN input through workshops and talks — and through the deeper insight that what we were actually facing was a crisis of values.
WHAT CRISIS? WHAT VALUES?
Here are some highlights from the EVC brochure below:
"Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted."
-from the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)
The EVC suggested that there is one place -- beyond government and/or any other values system -- that we can turn to if we truly want to address the crisis. And that is Earth itself.
Earth, over its billions of years of existence, has developed its own set of values that can serve as a learning instrument for those who are willing to listen. Earth embodies organic growth based on natural cycles: day and night, seasonal activities, rest and renewed energy, chaos and death, new life arising from changes.
THE EVC LISTED PRINCIPLES IN THE BROCHURE that form the basis for the Earth's continuous sequence of irreversible transformations.
CHECK THEM OUT BELOW!
These principles become the shaping factor for outlining a contemporary value system; with a vision for shaping a sustainable society arising from these values.
A few years ago, C:WED experienced a pause, during which time we discontinued our UN connection and ceased publishing our physical newsletter. Now we are excited to have returned with this new digital interactive blog format.
We specifically wish to make this new format your platform for discussion, as well as a base for enlightened insights. Let us know what we can do for you! We welcome guest bloggers! And of course, we will be adding our own expertise and drawing on the work of great visionaries. Let's go C:WED!
In Part One we shared how C:WED brought the Earth Values Caucus to the UN in 2001. In this post, we offer another piece from that period (and which also relates to today) with insights from one of the greats: our Earth.
Here is our brochure from 2007 on Earth Values. We hope you find irs message worthwhile.
__________________
COMING UP NEXT: Our next blogpost will be Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite’s essay “Of Bears and Men,” reprinted with Susan’s permission.