An Open Letter to My Spiritual Colleagues: On “Spirit” and the Climate Emergency

Arctic ice is melting much faster than predicted, putting us in midst of planetary and species survival “tipping points.” Photo by Andy Mai, from “Lion’s Roar,” online

When I was a little girl, growing up in Eugene, Oregon in the 1970’s, I had two dreams that were so impactful, I remember them clearly to this day.

In one, the mass of people on Earth were starving, and clamoring for basic resources: water, food, supplies, medicine. They were represented by a gray, dusty, teeming mass of desperate people gathered around a rocket ship. The rocket ship was taking all the very wealthy people to another planet where they could somehow live with some resources. The whole scene was, as you can imagine, terribly sad and scary.

In the other dream, details of form were less clear, but everything resolved on a set of boulders placed in a circle that still exists at the elementary school I attended in Eugene as a child. In the dream, a light fog enveloped the boulders. I and a larger group of people had been engaged in some sort of epic, global, even universal battle.

This battle was “fought” on many planes — it was not just physical. It may not have been physical at all. It was spiritual and mental for sure. At the end of this dream, I found myself on these rocks of my childhood embraced by a feeling of tremendous love, and a “victory” that included all involved in the battle, on all sides. The feeling of that dream was one of the best feelings of my life.

I am writing this open letter to you, my spiritual friends and colleagues — in the “Three Principles” community, the Science of Mind/Centers for Spiritual Living community — and all spiritually deep religious communities everywhere not yet engaged with the climate crisis, because the time for either of these dreams to come true is now.

We are in the midst of a crisis of global proportions that may end most life on Earth as we know it — and will do so at current trajectory.

Whether we believe our plantery future is setting, or rising … if we each engage fully with the current crisis, our chances for preventing and ending global suffering will increase a thousandfold

I understand that most of us are aware of what has traditionally been called “climate change.” If you think like I used to, “climate change” is a problem that is troubling and worrisome, but we still have time to fix.