Barry Lopez Reflects on Nature, Horror, and Beauty with Bill Moyers

As he prepared to retire after four decades in broadcast journalism, Bill Moyers thought long and hard about whom to invite as his guest on the last broadcast of his Bill Moyers Journal. In the end, he decided that the honor should go to author Barry Lopez, whom he described as "someone whose curiosity about the world, and pursuit of it, have set the gold standard for all of us whose work it is to explain those things we don't understand."

During the thirty-five-minute interview Lopez, the award-winning author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, spoke eloquently about nature as what he called "the full expression of life," the whole picture of the earth and its inhabitants, not simply a collection of majestic landscapes like those that appear on the pages of calendars.

Despite the fact that the phenomena of the natural world play the starring role in all his books, Lopez insisted that "I'm not writing about nature. I'm writing about humanity. And if I have a subject, it is justice. And the rediscovery of the manifold way in which our lives can be shaped by the recovery of a sense of reverence for life."

Moyers and Lopez also talked about the relationship of beauty and horror. Lopez began by saying that, even though he has lived for forty years in the Oregon wilderness, he loves New York City, especially when the sky is a particular shade of blue, as it was on this April day in 2010 when Moyers was conducting the interview.

Moyers replied that the sky in New York was that very color on the morning of September 11, 2001, when the two airliners were crashed into the World Trade Towers. What does that do to any idea of beauty? Moyers asked his guest.

Lopez responded: "Real beauty is so deep you have to move into darkness in order to understand what beauty is.... What you must do is build a system of civilization that is as aware of darkness as it is of beauty."

Click here to watch the complete broadcast of Bill Moyers's interview with Barry Lopez.

Humans Don't Desire Like Bettongs Desire

One of the most fascinating sessions I attended at the Parliament of the World’s Religions was called “Enabling Response: Contributions of the Ecological Humanities toward an Environmental Culture.” Freya Mathews, Associate Professor in the Philosophy Program at Melbourne’s La Trobe University and author of several books, including one I particularly admire, The Ecological Self, talked about the problem environmentalists run into when they try to persuade people to rein in their desires for the sake of a sustainable planet.

“We have to want what the biosphere needs us to want,” Mathews said. Unfortunately, humans have the capacity to want in much bigger, more creative ways than their biology demands. Unlike the bettong, for example, a small Australian mammal also known as the rat kangaroo, “which only wants to eat truffles,” humans have very complicated desires, desires that are fed by fantasy, ego, envy, and many other enticements. “Can we imagine a synergy between humans and nature?” Mathews queried.

In my book, The World Is a Waiting Lover, I unfold an arc of desire from raw, potent physical attraction to the longing to transcend and become intimately united with the great mystery of being. The force I explore is the archetypal Beloved, the inner flame of passion that allures us all our lives to connect with the people, ideas, and acts that will bring out our higher self. This path can be a joyful one and very rewarding, but it is basically solitary.

We all have an inner Beloved, but how can we get those Beloveds together on behalf of the Earth?

Mathews discussed the need for activities that would create meaning for people through what she calls onto-poetics (ontos is the Greek word for being), since “the language of the world is the language of poetics and symbol.” Examples would be festivals, pilgrimages, invocations expressed in language that plumbs below the surface and stirs what a colleague of mine calls the indigenous-mind.

The outcome of such practices? “We are sure to be ravished,” Mathews concluded.

Street Arts for the Earth

The Balinese barong has been described as a cross between a lion and a caterpillar. With a carved wooden head worn by one dancer and a long body made of raffia or palm fiber, the far end of which is worn by another dancer, the barong is a benevolent creature that appears at Balinese sacred dance performances to bring peace and well-being.

On Sunday, December 6, at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia, a different kind of barong came to life, and in a way that well suited this particular gathering, whose theme is “Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth.”

The World Peace Barong was conceived in 2003 at an international gathering called "Sharing Art & Religiosity," held in the vicinity of the temple Pura Samuan Tiga in Bedulu, Bali. Painter I Wayan Sudiarta from the village of Peliatan got the idea of creating a barong made of materials offered by people from any culture and faith. The mask of the barong was carved by Tjok Alit, a maskmaker in Singapadu, Bali. Elements that arrived from twenty-three other lands to adorn it included prayer bells from Japan, cow bells from Switzerland, feathers from India, and fabric from Assisi, Italy.

As the barong prepared to journey to Australia, parliament officials became concerned that its many natural materials would prevent it from clearing customs smoothly. As a result the World Peace Barong traveled with new black velvet garments. Garuda Airlines designated it executive class. At Melbourne's airport, customs officials greeted it graciously, charmed by its gentle, smiling face. But once the seventeen-kilo barong arrived at the Melbourne convention center, there was no place to put it. The sacred barong actually spent one night in the kitchen convention center, laughed Suprato Suyodarmo, Indonesian movement artist and founder of the Padepokan Lemah Putih school in Solo, Central Java.

The barong danced "Tri Yoni Saraswati" with eight artists from Bali and South Sulawesi for the International Plenary of sacred music. Although it was scheduled for an interactive session with parliament participants in one of the meeting rooms of the convention center, Suprato conceived of another idea.

He had noticed a strange figure, dressed in black and bearing a dire warning, who stood all day every day at the entrance to the convention center. Benny Zable, of Nimbun, New South Wales, and Woodstock, New York, wore a gas mask and a long black cloak on which were painted the words, FOSSIL FOOLS and THERE ARE NO JOBS ON A DEAD PLANET. Day after day he stood there, his hands rising and falling in mute supplication or despair. A few people stopped to look at him, but most rushed past.

Because Suprato Suryodarmo is interested in the relationship of sacred theatre and the natural environment, he asked Zable if the World Peace Barong could join him on the plaza. Late on the afternoon of the 6th, when most of the parliament participants were attending sessions inside the convention center, Suryodarmo and Diane Butler, an American dancer who has lived and danced in Bali for many years, carried the barong out to the front of the convention center and arranged it with offerings on the pavement. After sitting on the ground and praying softly, Suryodarmo rose and began to dance. His feet moved with slow-motion precision, turning in perfect balance. His hands and long fingers created mudras, formal patterns of meaning. Then Benny Zable began to move in response. Both the Indonesian dancer and the Australian street artist moved in harmony, their movements reflected in the tall plate glass windows of the convention center as the barong stared benignly out at the passing crowd.

One dancer brought a message of peace through the form of a figure from an ancient religious tradition; the other delivered a message of environmental urgency through artistic improvisation. One was dressed in traditional ceremonial clothing, one in a hand-made costume. Together they wove a message that religious leaders of many faiths were attempting to spread inside the convention center all week: in matters of environmental stewardship and peace among nations, it is only through creative collaboration, the willingness to listen to others, and the invention of new forms of expression that change can occur.

World Religions Get Down to Earth

"Welcome to country" is how the Aboriginal Australians greet visitors, and it was the greeting of "Aunty" Joy Murphy Wandin, a senior Aboriginal leader of the Wurundgeri people, to participants in the Parliament of the World's Religions, currently being held in Melbourne, Australia. The theme of the parliament, which was first held in 1893, is the environment: "Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth."

It would be hard to find one of the world's religions NOT represented at this gathering. The Aboriginal people of Australia are here, of course, as are other indigenous people from Scandinavia, America, Africa, and other lands; Christians of different denominations; Jews; Hindus; Muslims; Buddhists; Zoroastrians; Sikhs; Pagans. What is even more extraordinary than the diversity, however, is the willingness of people of different faiths to listen to and learn from one another. Those who have attended previous parliaments claim that there is an openness and honesty here that has not been seen before, from the native Australians' expressions of sorrow and distress over the failure of the government to recognize them to the admission of several religious leaders that they have not always been mindful of holding the earth in respect.

My own particular interest is in finding ways to reconcile people and wounded places, and I'm curious how people of different religious traditions view that challenge. A few responses:

Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin: "My people know that the pavement all over Melbourne is not the real surface of the Earth. It's a covering over the hills, the rivers. There is a cemetery that now has buildings over it. But we remember what is really here."

John Grim, Senior Lecturer and Scholar, Yale University (at a panel on the work of Thomas Berry): "Thomas was very concerned about the degradation of the environment, but then as he got older, he wanted to turn away from a negative view. He wanted to be more hopeful, especially for the sake of the younger generations."

Leo Killsback, Northern Cheyenne: "They said that the killing at Virginia Tech was the worst mass murder ever in the U.S. The [1864] massacre at Sand Creek that killed 250 of my people was even worse."

Vidya Sarveswaran, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Deep Ecologist: "We must work to heal what is broken on the inside, as we heal what is broken on the outside."

H.H. Swami Sandeep Chaitanya, Hindu, founder of the School of the Bhagavad Gita, India: "Become a vegetarian. Meditate. You cannot change what is already done. You can only improve yourself."

Chris Peters, Yurok, director of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, Arcata, CA: "It's a good question. Indian people never used to have to worry about this. If the forest burned, you knew it would grow back."

Freya Mathews, Associate Professor, LaTrobe University, Melbourne, and author of The Ecological Self and other books: "That's what the Kingfisher Festival is all about. It's finding revelation in the midst of a fallen state."

The concept of "wounded places" obviously has a lot of different connotations for people. Religious people have the capacity for awe, which means they can see the beauty of the Earth and be transported, can see the Earth either as sacred or as a manifestation of the sacred that is the Creator. However, many religions also tend to focus on teaching people to live today in ways that will make the next life (or after-life) better. Can both these perspectives be merged to help us solve the problems of living on our wounded and ailing planet today?

In My Back Yard

For many years I have been searching for some way to bring attention, personal stories, and beauty to ecologically damaged places. In a way, I think this way of approaching life and death, joy and sorrow, and the strange beauty that can be found when we gaze at that which we least want to look at has been pursuing me all my life.

Over the years I've held small gatherings and longer programs in several wounded places, from a clearcut forest in British Columbia to Ground Zero in New York City to a coal-fired power plant for 350: the International Day of Climate Action last month. When I founded Radical Joy for Hard Times, I joined others who shared the vision of finding and creating beauty in wounded places.

And now, by strange fate or synchronicity, this long search is becoming very personal.

The Marcellus shale beneath the earth in Susquehanna County in northeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, has been found to have one of the largest reserves of natural gas anywhere in the world. In the past two years, the momentum has been building to tap this source of energy with new technology. Unlike more affluent counties in New York, just north of us, where people are fighting this encroachment, here in rural, low-income Pennsylvania, poor farmers are eagerly leasing their lands... and many are already regretting it.

The problems, not surprisingly, have begun: polluted wells; damage to the hilly, winding, rural roads by heavy trucks; and even the recent discovery that the water that has been used to shatter, or "frack," the shale thousands of feet in the Earth, may be radioactive after it is pumped back out.

Two months ago, to my surprise, my husband and I were offered $5,700 an acre for our five and a half acres, plus 20% royalties for a portion of a larger consolidated leasing area.

For weeks Andy and I were immersed in long, tearful discussions together and with friends about our options. Neither of us has much money, and we have lost much of what we did have in the current recession. If we leased, we would not only get a settlement up front, but a regular income. For me, however, there was never any dilemma. I knew I could not live with myself if I were to condone, and even profit from, the exploitation of the Earth.

We finally have reached a decision. As my husband said, "You founded Radical Joy for Hard Times to bring beauty to wounded places, and now the wounded place is coming to your own backyard." So we will be staying, at least for now, and we will not be signing a lease.

Some people we know, including a good friend, think we have made a very foolish choice. And as I look at the rolling hills, the long expanses of woods and fields near my home, my heart aches for the ugliness and scarring that is probably inevitable. But I also am seeing new opportunities for exercising the principles of Radical Joy for Hard Times—the main goal of which is to reconcile people and wounded places through storytelling, bearing witness, and creating beauty. As seekers have known for millennia, you never have to go far from home to find the revelation you so long for.

On Monday I leave for Melbourne, Australia to attend the Parliament of World Religions. Watch for more blogs from there.

Message to a Power Plant: 350!

On October 24, Radical Joy for Hard Times chose to take part in 350: The International Day of Climate Action in a very direct way. We went right to a power plant to present our message.

Nine people braved heavy rain to gather in front of AES Westover, a coal-fired power plant in Johnson City, NY and a major supplier of the electricity in our area. The message we conveyed to them and to coal-fired power plants around the world: We demand a planet where 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the absolute maximum!

The 350 event was organized over the internet by Bill McKibben, the environmental activist and author of The End of Nature and other books. 350 is the parts per million of carbon dioxide that climate scientists have determined to be the maximum level for a healthy environment. Currently, levels are at 389 ppm. McKibben urged people around the world gather together to demand that policy makers take drastic steps to bring carbon levels to 350 ppm. All people had to do was somehow depict the number 350, take a photo, and send it to the website.

As of this posting, two days later, it is estimated that more than 5,400 events were held in 181 countries around the world. Looking at the 350.org website or at the photo stream on Flickr is an amazing and moving experience. Soldiers in Iraq, children in an orphanage in Bali, large groups of people forming the magic number with their bodies and being photographed from a height, small groups with hand-painted signs, people in front of historic buildings, ancient temples, glaciers, and mountains.

Radical Joy for Hard Times chose to take the message right to the source of the problem: the coal-fired power plant. Although AES Westover recently installed $50 million of new equipment to reduce emissions, “power plants are the nation’s biggest producer of toxic waste, surpassing industries like plastics and paint manufacturing and chemicals,” according to a recent report in The New York Times.

What we had in mind, however, was not protesting or blaming, but simply giving people the opportunity to reflect, up close, on the source of power that, as much as we want to hate it, we are all complicit in using.

I had called the plant a couple of weeks earlier to ask their permission for a small group to sit in front of the gate for two hours. I also invited Westover employees to join us. However, plant manager Jim Mulligan denied my request.

Nine of us showed up anyway. After we had introduced ourselves, Dick Rehberg, a member of the Radical Joy for Hard Times board, gave an introduction to coal and coal use. Coal provides 22% of energy use, and 91% of coal goes into firing power plants. Among the toxins emitted by coal plants are sulphur dioxide, arsenic, aluminum, and mercury.

Before long, a young security guard, on his first day on the job, approached us and told us we had to leave. We simply went across the street and stood under a bridge—after first snapping a photo with our 350 sign (made by local school students and recycled to other 350 events during the day). Under the bridge, we still had a good view of the power plant, and we were out of the rain as well. Over our heads, a steady stream of invisible traffic provided an audio accompaniment to our reflections on energy use.

Then, as is the practice on all our Earth Exchanges, each person took some time to be alone and reflect on the power plant, on energy use, coal, and whatever else in that immediate environment struck their attention—while also paying attention to how what they noticed sparked emotions, memories, thoughts, and ideas.

Here are some of the fascinating comments, each reflecting a completely different sensibility, experience, and perspective that people made as we sat under the bridge only half an hour later:

“While I was standing across the street looking at the power plant, I was struck by how, from this perspective, this maple tree towers over the smokestacks. It affirmed for me that nature will prevail.”

“Until recently I didn’t pay that much attention to global warming. Now I feel I’ve lost my innocence. Part of me wants to go back to that innocence, climb that tree like a little kid and pretend everything is all right. But I know I can’t do that.”

“I was standing at the entrance staring at the plant, and the guard saw me. For a moment our eyes met. He seemed like a nice young man. I wondered what he is making of all this.”

“I’m a nurse. I take care of people with deep wounds. I feel I’m now being called to take care of the wounds of the Earth as well.”

“I was thinking about the shrubbery in front of the plant. When I was young and growing up in Chicago, you never thought twice about power plants. Now, with this shrubbery, it’s like they’re trying to hide what they are, what they do, to make it seem more ‘natural.’”

Besides calling attention to the urgency of bringing CO2 levels down to 350, our group had a personal encounter with the predominant force that suffuses the air with this planet-altering chemical. We all have a more personal understanding of what we’re dealing with and how, in matters of the environment, we are all deeply and personally involved in countless ways.

Message to Coal: 350!

Saturday October 24 was designated 350: The International Day of Climate Action. As of this posting, two days later, it is estimated that more than 5,400 events were held in 181 countries around the world to call attention to the urgency of attaining this number.

350 is the parts per million of carbon dioxide that climate scientists have determined to be the maximum level for a healthy environment. Currently, levels are at 389 ppm. The United States Congress, considering legislation on energy efficiency that won't