Beginning of the Beginning

We are poised in our time between humanity’s proclivity for self-indulgence, arrogance and short-sighted self-destruction and a time of healing, cooperation and sustainable relationship with each other and the planet. Some of you understand. You feel revulsion and you feel the possibilities to do better–far better–for the sake of our children’s children, and because it is the RIGHT thing. The problems are many. So too may be the solutions.

“But what can one person do?” we hear so often, perhaps from our own lips or unspoken thoughts.

While working in the garden yesterday, mending the fences from last year’s deer damage, feeling more than a little discouraged about the state of the world, I listened to Paul Hawken describe our collective understanding about our place in the grand scheme of things, and encourage his listeners wisely in ways we CAN and ARE changing the way we do things to each other and the planet–perhaps, even in time to avoid paying the consequences of where our bigger-hammer approach to commerce and politics seems to be carrying us.

I encourage you to pull this thread. If you could use some encouragement, some hope, and a vision for a brighter future than the one we see at first glance in the media, take time to visit at least one of the links below.

Read the advance endorsements of Hawken’s Book, Blessed Unrest by Jane Goodall, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, Terry Tempest Williams, David James Duncan, David Suzuki and others.

Watch the short video where Hawken speaks at the Bioneers conference describing this “movement without a name” that may already include more than a million like-minded organizations and 100 million people. If you think you’re alone and powerless, watch.

Buy the book. Give to your children.

And finally, visit Natural Capital, and read about WISER, the World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility. Let’s find out where we fit best, each one of us. We all have strengths, skills, gifts, experience that can be used toward the healing of injury–environmental, political, and economic. Maybe it’s NOT too late, after all. Perhaps we are at the beginning of the beginning, a time of blessed unrest–and not the beginning of the end.