We are stardust-as-human-civilization, dawning into an evolutionary imperative: the creation of a collectively wise culture that is capable of its own conscious evolution.

                                             -Tom Atlee, Reflections on Evolutionary Activism

What is Earth Asking of Us?...
A Question for Transition Times

This is always a guiding question for us here at Genesis Farm: What is Earth asking of us? Last year we expanded our part of the Great Work into the Transition movement, an international grassroots effort formed out of an urgency to move communities from oil dependency to community resilience in the face of Peak oil, climate change, and economic instability. Asking what Earth is asking of us has moved us this year into a deeper commitment to the Transition movement.

We have been inspired and galvanized by a gathering of Transition leaders here at the Farm early in December 2009. In collaboration with Transition Colorado, we hosted this 3-day meeting. Michael Brownlee and Lynette Marie Hanthorn, co-founders of Transition Colorado – the first Initiative in North America – issued the invitation to 25 people who are active in the movement in this country and 17 responded.

The invitation for this gathering described its purpose as “a beginning dialogue” and “collaboration” for considering what the movement should be and how it should proceed within a North American context.  Transition Initiative leaders attended from six states, including nearby Newton, NJ. Two of the Farm’s Board members attended, as well as the executive director and a board member of Transition U.S. The authors of two books significant  to the movement also joined us: Carolyn Baker who wrote Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, and Tom Atlee, author of Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, Poems, and Prayers from an Emerging Field of Sacred Social Change. 

This question – What is Earth asking of us? – emerged in the conversation on the second day, and moved the group into a sense of deeper listening and humility. One of the three small working groups focused on "Connecting Transition and the Great Story" and asked what the Transition movement would look like if the evolutionary story of the Universe were integrated into its focus.  After a process of reflection and conversation, the energetic report from this group to the gathering was clear: Earth was asking that its story be made integral and visible as context for the Transition movement. At the gathering’s final reflection, one person said “We so need to bring the New Cosmology into the movement.” And another stated:  “I am grateful for this amazing space at Genesis Farm and especially grateful to be more connected to the Great Story and its potential within Transition, for it to fulfill some purpose that is great.”

Our next steps have been to make this connection between Transition and the Great Story in several new programs.  A course for those who have participated in Earth Literacy programs will help integrate Transition movement ideas and information into their work. Since Permaculture principles offer practical ways for the human to live in a mutually-enhancing way with all life, it is important to connect this movement more closely to Transition. A Permaculture design certification course will be offered which will empower participants to incorporate these design principles not only to this land, but to the places where they live as well as into the social structures embedded there.  Also, a workshop will connect Permaculture ethics and principles more fully into Transition thinking and practice. Developing healthy and sustainable Transition work groups will be the focus of another program, within the context of understanding Earth’s evolution as ‘emergent.’ And finally, the Introduction to Transition weekend will continue as an expanded 3-day program to allow integration of New Cosmology understandings.

We are developing this new work with the close collaboration of Transition Colorado and the Permaculture Network of NJ, as well as with support from our ongoing network of friends, neighbors, and nearby organizations, and with the enthusiastic involvement of our Genesis Farm Board of Trustees. Most of all in this new work, we seek the blessing of the community of all life here at the Farm.

March 2010