Our global crisis could be summarized as a broken covenant between humans and nature.   Humans were once beloved indigenous member species of the various ecosystems on the planet.  Projects of immigration, slavery, displacement, war, and colonialism are the outward exhibitions of the human's warped drive for domination of other people and nature.   Humans loyal to their membership in their respective ecosystems were wiped out, humiliated, or given secondary citizenship in the sick world created by the conquerors. 

When I look at current environmental movements, I see that the main focus is more on preserving or restoring nature and less about restoring the broken covenant between nature and the humans that used to live there.  This is analogous to a criminal who murders a man to steal his property, but then, to make amends for his crime, marries the man's wife so she won't be a widow.  This may seem noble to the criminal's mind, but if we look at it from the widow's point of view, this is actually a very barbaric approach.  To make reparations to the widow, the criminal should build a lavish shrine for the widow's husband and seek out her husband's family members who have gone into hiding to reunite the family.  He should create a safe space where they can openly share their grief and heal themselves together.

From this perspective, the best way to work for environmental justice is by honoring the people who have intimately loved their homeland for thousands of years and who are closest to remembering the language and needs of the land.  Rather than attempting to research and connect with nature on our own terms, like courting a mourning widow, it might be better to beg for forgiveness from the indigenous ones and offer them all our resources of time and money to guide us in the movement toward healing and balance of the natural world.   If we are truly sincere in our desire to repair the damage that has been done, we will pay full allegiance to the moral authority that the black, brown, and red-skinned people of the world possess.

This is not an accidental combination. 

Mystical traditions that aim to make direct contact with a divine reality almost always use the arts, like poetry, whirling or dancing, singing, music, painting, or other form to reach ecstatic states.  We human beings have many characteristics that make us unique on this planet, the greatest of which is possibly our creativity.  Every major corporation that tried to sell a car or a hamburger has used a finely crafted combination of color, sound, shape, movement, and words to wield this power. Cheetahs have speed, bats have radar, and we have imagination as the power of our species.  Art is the expression of that power.  Activism and Spirituality without Art has limited power to affect and reach others in a meaningful way.

Activism is another way of saying service.  Service can take numerous forms of intention and action, but the basic desire to be helpful is natural in humans raised in a healthy and positive environment.  We may not agree about what would be most helpful in a given situation, and some efforts to be helpful can be the most damaging.  Nevertheless, activism is the declaration of our membership in a community of life and our commitment to its balance.  The degree to which we are each capable of seeing beyond our small circle of affiliation and feel moved into action by the suffering in our environment is a measure of our maturity and value to our community.  Activism is our humanity.  Art and Spirituality without Activism is unsustainable self-pleasuring with limited significance in the world.

Spirituality gives us our understanding of life.  We constantly depend on our knowledge of the human mind and heart, our awareness of the interdependence of all life, and our perception of the Whole.  Through our spiritual practices and cosmologies, we can access the wisdom of God and recognize the relationships between events and the patterns of life.  Spirituality is the intelligence of the human.  Activism and Art without Spirituality is limited to superficial solutions and responses to the world without the benefit of understanding the causes and effects. 

I apologize if this seems like theoretical nonsense, but really.  With a strong desire to help, combined with the understanding of universal patterns in life, combined with the power of art to create, heal, and transform, anything is possible.  This is my recipe for a miracle. 

I'm just going to dive in somewhere. 

While reflecting on the varying views of our current crisis, I identified several areas of conflict that felt helpful to name.  The benefit for me in making this little list has been to acknowledge and recognize some of the beliefs that shape the current climate of activism.

In the process of developing solutions to our problems, we may prefer:

1. cultural or spiritual orientation (i.e. praying for peace) vs. behavioral or practical orientation (i.e. lobbying for environmental regulations)
2. individual actions and "emergence" theory vs. large-scale coordination and hierarchical leadership
3. local goals or microcosm vs. global goals or macrocosm
4. innovation and creativity vs. fighting against obstacles
5. calm and centered emotional style vs. obsessive or dramatic emotions
6. environmental concerns vs. social justice or human rights concerns
7. incremental cultural change through education vs. forcing change through policy, propaganda, or violence
8. acting quickly on established agendas vs. analysis, questioning, and searching for pitfalls
9. perspectives of "common people" vs. perspectives of authority figures
10. accepting the necessity of compromise vs. unwavering moral code

I realize that some of these conflicts may seem like different aspects of the same goal, but I believe that they represent ends of a continuum of beliefs that call for a complex negotiation of values.