After Glow

Six months ago I joined the Finger Lakes Bioneers team as a volunteer, and this weekend it became reality. All weekend we heard lectures and stories, watched stunning images of life on our planet, talked, discussed and danced. It was really something to see complete strangers, some of them from Vermont or Maryland sporting their Bioneers name-tag, and consulting the program we spent so many months putting together. I was proud to have been part of the team.

Last night as I drove away from the conference I was sad, and grew sadder as time passed. I remembered driving away from the conference center in San Rafael in past years when I attended the headwaters conference in California and a sadness there too. This sadness comes in part just from being separated from that lovely energy and synergy of so many caring talented people committed to creating regenerative life for all of us. It also comes as the images and numbers and ideas and stories start to get sorted by the mind and heart.

"We should no longer use the word 'common' in the common names of animals. We take the presence of the "common" water snake for granted - which we cannot do any more," said one presenter as the amazing wildlife photography of his career flowed before our eyes, and he explained how much harder it is to find those images today.

A flicker of the graph showing the amount of Nitrogen run-off into our ocean from our farms that would kill all the coral reefs in the oceanic eco-system into which it flows, and how close that number is to the trajectory of our immediate future.

Lake Onondaga is a Superfund site. The whole lake. Mostly from the toxins used during coal mining operations dating back 100 years. And now the Hydrofracking of the Shale that underlies that same watershed.

All that gave me hope and joy during the conference- stunning slow motion photography of bats drinking from a flower, or those ever adorable tree frogs, the stories of Community art restoring the spirits of survivors in post-genocide Rwanda, American small towns rising up to claim legal standing for their local eco-systems, giving the rights under the law. All these hopeful, wondrous things weigh my heart this morning with how high the stakes really are.

Joanna Macy asked the question "do we have hope?" and answered, "it's not about hope or lack of hope, but about the work before us in the present moment... We are in our being a verb" she said "that verb is whatever we choose to do"

So before I clean off all that has piled up on my desk throughout these conference days, I have to take a moment to sit still with all of that, the awe, hope, joy, sadness and fear, and let it all change me. People took part in the conference from various disciplines and walks of life, but I think all of us would agree: the future is not yet written, and the verb that is at the heart of our being must be one that participates in a great turning towards regeneration of life, the life of this eco-system we all share.