Decrease your carbon footprint, increase your spiritual footprint

Spiritual ecology is more than just having a recycling bin at a church. It is a paradigm based on interconnectedness and unity with our planet and all of its components: the land, the air, the waters, the climate, the sentient inhabitants. This intersection has been gaining momentum throughout the world since the 1960s, starting with environmental activism pioneer Rachel Carson's 1962 tome Silent Spring. There were plenty of visionaries from earlier times who recognized the oneness of life and earth's sustenance of life, such as the indigenous groups of the continent that came to be known as America. The most famous early environmentalist is Henry David Thoreau, who in the 1800s prophesied the downside of industrialization and treatment of the earth as a commodity rather than a source of well-being for every living thing.

The environmental crises of our time are the inevitable result of this basic imbalance: humans consuming more than we produce. Or put more accurately, what we are producing is often counterproductive to spiritual fulfillment and vitality, given the barrage of assaults to our spirits (violence perpetuated relentlessly in entertainment media), our bodies (war, rape, famine), the well-being of animals (genetic engineering, poaching), water (oil spills, melting icecaps), earth (desertification, drought) and air (smog, ozone depletion).

However, there are, and always have been, committed citizens who espouse spiritual ecology through their actions. Two such resources are:

Earth Light - This site is a web portal to the "evolving world of earth-inclusive spirituality," featuring an extensive hodge-podge of essays, artwork and links.

Freecycle - This grassroots global network has chapters in virtually every major city in the world. There are over 80 groups in New York State alone! If you have a couch, cellphone, pots and pans in good condition to give away, or you need plants, tons of plastic bottles for an art project, or nail polish, Freecycle is a good site to comb through. Their mission is very simple and practical: "it's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills."

Also, ever the music buff, I included my two favorite songs focused on our natural environment: one of Marvin Gaye's most famous tunes "Mercy, Mercy, Me,"  released in 1971, and Michael Jackson's 1995 international hit "Earth Song."