Reinvent Yourself

Changing to Earth-being language expands us beyond the orbit of human being – with stunning implications. Realizing Earth-being is expressed in a simple story. "A Chinese tale tells of some men sent to harm a young girl, who upon seeing her beauty, became her protectors rather than her violators. That’s how I felt seeing the Earth for the first time. I could not help but love and cherish her." (Quoted by Taylor Wang from The Home Planet, Conceived and Edited by Kevin W. Kelley for the Association of Earth Explorers, 1988.) It is the fervent intention of this author to sweep the reader into the symphony of loving and cherishing Earth as her protectors.

One of my most moving experiences was witnessing a slow turning of the Earth from outer space, using close-up photography, as presented by Richard Underwood. Obtain a copy of The Home Planet. Conduct your own visual discovery of Earth. Become intimate with these pictures as you would sacred icons. Thus make it powerful – beyond looking-at – to transformed seeing!

This presentation for me was so stirring that it became a conversion experience. It is, in part, out of the wellspring of that energy and its flood of insights, that this book is written. It is an invitation and wake-up call to catch its dynamic, creative trajectory moving us beyond wonder to action in committing oneself to a Great Work. In that spirit of Earth-wonder and Great Work may you see new possibilities in the bonding of human-being and Earth-being for living in the Twenty-First Century.

One unusual morning I found myself walking in a dense fog with only a few feet of visibility. All orientation to land, or to anything else, was lost. In a strange connection, I thought of living from birth on the lunar landscape. How one’s imagination would be totally impoverished by comparison with the stunning Earth, and perhaps diminish irreversibly the human plunged in a descending spiral of narrowing possibility?

The unusual circumstance was my dawn-walk alone on the top deck of a cruise ship--nine stories above the water line. The ship moved slowly with silent stealth as though by some invisible guidance system. Two hours later the ship stopped. Dropped anchor. One hour later, the fog lifted and the sun revealed how the captain using radar had threaded the eye of the needle in putting this huge vessel inside a narrow necklace of islands. The captain assessed the risk. He imagined how the maneuver was achievable.

Presently we are in a situation that calls for putting on a new imagination of a different human for this 21^st century. A human who terminates the industrial plundering process whereby "the desolation of the Earth is becoming the destiny of the human," as Thomas Berry, the cultural historian, assesses our terrifying trajectory into the future.

One specific proposal for reinventing the human is participation in an Earth Integrity Discovery Seminar. This seminar is the opening chapter of this book and draws us into such an exercise of the imagination. What happens if we rethink the human as the Earth become conscious of itself? This focus shifts attention from self-absorbed Ego Energy to Earth-expansive Eco Energy. Further, the comprehensive method of re-educating and re-learning awakens awareness to a new guiding criterion: the conscious bonding of the human and the Earth in a mutually supportive, enriching and enchanting relationship.

Through an interactive, questioning, conversational process we will open ourselves to the voices of the Earth community. St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13^th century philosopher, said that we need all the voices to reflect the divine immensity. It was a revelation to this writer when speaking a few years ago aboard a cruise ship in Alaska about the Earth to be given this insight: Dick Lambert get out of the way and let the voices of the natural world speak through you. I let go of my self-absorbed Ego Energy and I felt, like a conversion experience, expansive Eco Energy pass through me.

In the new context of this ecological age can we have human integrity that is alienated from Earth integrity? Isn’t the Earth the primary integrity? Isn’t that the most profound meaning of holistic and the source to being re-membered as a whole person? In a parallel way, we can rethink community. Can we have a human community that is severed from the Earth community? The Earth Integrity Discovery seminar and its interactive Socratic process probes beyond the surface mind to stirring a person to become a self-thinker and a self-maker standing self-expressed to the world in an original way. This takes us beyond the human isolated from the Earth and despoiling the Earth, to an Earth-human who cherishes with her whole heart this Garden Planet.