|
SPIRITUAL
Stewardship
|
Introduction
In
researching this months topic—stewardship—I happened upon a book called The Cultural Creatives: How
50 Million People Are Changing the World. Sociologist
Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson coined this
term for a growing group of people they discovered in 13 years
of research and opinion poll studies. They describe "Cultural Creatives" as
those who: "care
deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships,
peace, and social justice, about self-actualization,
spirituality, and self-expression... are both inner-directed and
socially concerned; they're activists, volunteers, and
contributors to good causes more often than other
Americans."
We
went on to find material from several others who describe
this same group. You will find from the descriptions below that
we are all talking about the same group - The New Group of World
Servers.
The
following is from our Introduction page:
"The people who live from this point of view are concerned
with the welfare of wholes, with the long range health of entire
systems. They avoid systems that feed or sustain only a part of
a structure or community at the expense of other parts of the
community. Their group conscious point of view renders them
acutely aware of the interrelatedness of all life and results in
their efforts to build sustainable systems that nurture the
whole.
Basically
and most generally, this kind of consciousness characterizes a
person who understands the fact of the one humanity, realizes
the value of the individual and is endeavoring to live a life
that has service to the common good of all life very high on his
or her list of priorities. The service rendered by individuals
of this kind of consciousness is thus practical, inclusive, and
lovingly motivated. The service is both inner and outer. It
consists of efforts and endeavors of all kinds and can be found
in all areas of human endeavor... Whatever the level and whatever
the project, the objective is the betterment of the common good
of the community of the whole."
These
ideas and the term New Group of World Servers are based on
material found in the numerous books of Alice A. Bailey. The following is a brief synopsis:
"...It is to be noted that there is upon our planet a group of men and women belonging to every nation, who are
... definitely serving the race. They are subjectively welded together into a body, which we have called the New Group of World Servers, for lack of a better name...
Many of these group members know or recognize each other from the similarity of objectives, ideals and methods, to be seen in their work, but in many cases they remain unknown to each other. Group members are to be found working in all fields of human enterprise, economic, political, social and religious...
It is encouraging for us to observe, however, that the New Group of World Servers...has been vitally increased in numbers during the past few years..."
Alice A. Bailey
It
seems that Alice Bailey was right! We found the evidence of the
growing numbers and strength of World Servers so encouraging
that we thought we would share it with you...
© Jay Cossey
|
|
A change of
mind is emerging from the collective unconscious. No economic, political, or
military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately
changing our images of reality, we are changing the world.
~ Willis Harmon
|
The
Cultural Creatives :
How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
by Paul
H. Ray, Sherry
Ruth Anderson Ph.D., Paul
H. Ray Ph.D.
the
following is an excerpt from an
interview with Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson
by Sarah Ruth van Gelder of Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/16culture/rayanderson.htm
Sarah van Gelder: Maybe you can
start by telling me something about what drew you into researching shifts in
values and world views, and how your findings changed you.
Paul Ray:
I initially started doing market research and opinion polling because I wanted
to learn about how values relate to culture. As I got further into my research,
I was shocked to see that I was getting information not just about why people
give money to good causes, or buy things, or vote a certain way. I was compiling
evidence that pointed to something more fundamental — a deep shift in the
culture.
I was seeing the emergence of a group of people whom we’re calling Cultural
Creatives. This is something new. It doesn’t fit the standard categories of
activist, or right-thinking church people, or political liberals. These Cultural
Creatives are already creating lots of social inventions that are going to make
a new world, not just reshuffle old political programs.
For me personally, the biggest thing that changed as a result of this research
is that I shifted from being pessimistic — especially in reaction to the
Reagan era — to being very optimistic about what’s possible for our future.
Sherry Anderson:
...We got a call yesterday from a journalist doing an article on straw bale
houses for The New York Times Magazine. She said “Each time I interview
someone who is building a straw bale house, I wonder what’s at the core of
this? What is going on? And I have finally found the common thread. I realize
that they’re all Cultural Creatives, and there’s this enormous energy behind
what they are doing.”
And she said “...There is nothing flaky about this. There is nothing New Age
about this. These people are practical. They love the Earth, and they want to
live their values.”
And this is the way I feel — I never knew that there were so many people like
me, who believe this...
Paul:
First of all, we’re talking today about a quarter of the adults in the United
States, 50 million adults, and probably 80 to 90 million adults in Western
Europe. These people take the ideas of ecology very seriously, and they support
slowing business growth in order to save the planet. They also take very
seriously women’s issues and issues of personal growth and relationships.
We found that the typical Cultural Creative cares intensely about the issues
raised by post–World War II social movements. These movements include those
focused on civil rights, the environment, women’s rights, peace, jobs and
social justice, gay and lesbian rights, alternative health care, spirituality,
personal growth, and now, of course, stopping corporate globalization.
All of those concerns are now converging into a strong concern for the whole
planet....
Sarah: What
makes these movements different from earlier movements?
Paul: Unlike
the social movements of 1880 to 1930 — the Wobblies, the fascists, the
communists, the socialists, and so on — those involved in the post-1960s
movements are not trying to take over the government. Nor are they primarily
concerned with “more for us” issues, like wages and benefits, for example.
Rather these movements are reframing issues in a way that changes how people
understand the world.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, didn’t say, “It’s time the
Blacks got theirs.” He said, “This is about freedom, and justice, and
dignity, and the Constitution, and who we are as an American people.”
Rachel Carson didn’t advocate NIMBYism —“keep pollution out of my back
yard.” She said, “This is about the death of nature.”
Betty Friedan didn’t just say, “It’s time that women got through the glass
ceiling.” She asked, “Who are we as human beings?” The alternative health
care movement isn’t about getting insurance coverage for chiropractic care. It’s
about the real meaning of health.
What happens when somebody gets involved in a half dozen of these issues and has
their world reframed six times? Their entire worldview changes.
|
 ...Today, more people regard a
redwood grove as sacred than regard churches as sacred. Surveys everywhere in
the world show that 70 to 90 percent of the people regard nature and the
environment as having sacred qualities and as under threat. For all practical
purposes that’s unanimity. It’s quite stunning.
|
...Our research shows that the
more a person is engaged in social activism, ecology, and social justice, the
more likely they are to be engaged also in developing their spiritual lives and
in personal growth.
...We’re talking about the creation of a new culture — about living in a
different world. What’s in your house is different. Your daily concerns are
different. The words you use to describe your own experiences are different.
Your life priorities are different.
And in addition to all those up-close and personal changes, you’re looking at
changes in the role of corporations and government in American life, changes in
the relations of humans to nature, changes in our relationship to people in
other parts of the world, changes in how women and minorities are treated.
We’re going through a process of changing our minds at every single level.
Today we regard as totally unacceptable many assumptions that were part of how
your average, middle-class, moral person would have thought in the ‘50s. Then,
violence and discrimination against Native Americans, African Americans, Asians,
and Hispanics were accepted as normal. Nasty ethnic jokes were the norm.
Discrimination against women in the workplace was legal, and violence against
women and children at home was perfectly normal.
Today, these attitudes persist in some circles, but they’re widely seen as
quite unacceptable.
So in a span of 40 to 50 years we have reinterpreted the world in fundamental
ways, and every last one of those fundamental reinterpretations comes out of the
new social movements.
...What
would happen if Cultural Creatives knew that they had lots of company? What if
they were aware of themselves? What if they asked themselves what kind of future
we want to live in?”
The way we’ll invent the future is with each other, in conversations about
what’s possible and what kind of world we want..
The hallmark of this profound culture shift is going to be reinventing
practically every institution of society from the ground up. And that is not
only possible, it is rather likely.
Paul H. Ray, PhD, and Sherry
Ruth Anderson, PhD, are authors of The
Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, published
this year by Harmony Books.
"Stewardship
is caring for life through purposeful, loving and wise action."
FROM THE "VISIONING
SPIRITUAL GOVERNANCE" CONFERENCE AT MEDITATION MOUNT
© Jay Cossey
|
(Adapted from the book
Promise Ahead, Morrow, 2000)
Writing in 1845, Henry Thoreau set the soulful tone for the simple life in
Walden, in which he wrote these famous lines:
I went to the woods because I wished to
live deliberately, to confront all of the essential facts of life, and see
if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to
discover that I had not lived. . . I wanted to live deep and suck
out all the marrow of life...
The Hindu poet Tagore wrote, " I
have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song
I came to sing remains unsung." Those choosing a life of simplicity
are not leaving the song of their soul unsung. Instead, they are living
"deep," diving into life with engagement and enthusiasm. And, in
living that way, they are no doubt experiencing what Thoreau discovered—that
"it is life near the bone where it is sweetest." To live simply
is to approach life and each moment as inherently worthy of our attention
and respect, consciously attending to the small details of life. In
attending to these details, we nurture the soul. Thomas Moore explains in Care of the Soul:
Care of the soul requires craft, skill,
attention, and art. To live with a high degree of artfulness means to
attend to the small things that keep the soul engaged. . . to the soul,
the most minute details and the most ordinary activities, carried out with
mindfulness and art, have an effect far beyond their apparent
insignificance.
For many, the American dream has become
the soul’s nightmare. Often, the price of affluence is inner alienation
and emptiness. Not surprisingly, polls show that a growing number of
Americans are seeking lives of greater simplicity as a way to rediscover
the life of the soul.
Although the mass media may focus on the
external trappings of a simple life, if we look below the surface, we find
a powerful new form of personal spirituality motivating the vast majority
of these life-way innovators. For many, their spirituality is an
individualized form of faith that minimizes rules and absolutes, and bears
little resemblance to the pure form of any of the world’s religions.
Their experience with the soulful dimensions of life and relationships is
so rich and meaningful that a consumerist lifestyle appears pale by
comparison.
I have had a quarter-century of
experience writing about, speaking about, and living a life of voluntary
simplicity. Based on that, here are other priorities (beyond material
frugality) that I have found that characterize this way of living:
• Sacred relationships—Those
choosing the simple life tend to place a high priority on the quality and
integrity of their relationships with every aspect of life—with
themselves, other people, other creatures, the Earth, and the universe.
• Giving One’s True gifts—This
way of living supports discovering and expressing the true gifts that are
unique to each of us, as opposed to waiting until we die to discover that
we have not authentically lived out our true potentials.
• Living with Balance—The
simple life is not narrowly focused on living with less; instead, it is a
continuously changing process of consciously balancing the inner and outer
aspects of our lives, an immensely demanding process in our busy, complex,
and confusing world.
• Life as a Meditation—Living
simply enables us to approach life as a meditation. By consciously
organizing our lives to minimize distractions and needless busyness, we
can pay attention to life’s small details and deepen our soulful
relationship with life.
All of the world’s spiritual traditions
have advocated an inner-directed way of life that does not place undue
emphasis on material things. The Bible speaks frequently about the need to
find a balance between the material and the spiritual sides of life, such
as in this passage: "Give me neither poverty nor wealth."
(Proverbs 30 : 8) From China and the Taoist tradition, Lao-tzu said that:
"he who knows he has enough is rich." In Buddhism, there is a
conscious emphasis on discovering a middle way through life that seeks
balance and material sufficiency. The soulful value of the simple life has
been recognized for thousands of years. What is new is that world
circumstances are changing in such a way that this way of life now has
unprecedented relevance for our times.
Copyright © 2000
Duane Elgin. All Rights Reserved.
"Voluntary
Simplicity and Soulful Living"
by Duane Elgin, former senior social scientist at SRI
International, where he coauthored numerous studies on the long-range
future for the Environmental Protection Agency, the president's science
advisor, and the National Science Foundation. He is an author, speaker, evolutionary activist, and internet entrepreneur. Author
of "Voluntary Simplicity," "Promise Ahead" and
"Awakening Earth," (www.awakeningearth.org)
|
© Jay Cossey
|
|
...Signs of new growth
are everywhere. In contrast to the wasteland of government, grassroots movements
sprout, connecting fields of ideas and greening the social agenda with greater
community responsibility and inventiveness. Millions of Cultural Creatives are
adopting voluntary simplicity and putting economics back where it belongs, as a
satellite to the soul of culture, thus restoring the social balance. A new
appreciation and celebration of our relationship to Nature is rising, rewriting
our covenant with the Earth and acknowledging that we humans are her steward and
partner, not her master. Aging baby-boomers are acknowledging that our elderly
are critical to the health of the planet, true citizens of *Jump Time
who can
deal wisely and creatively with planetary complexity because they have lived
long enough to develop the necessary depth and simplicity.
People are responding to
the stress of current issues by going beyond themselves. So many are
learning skills they never thought to have, inspired by an undeniable
inner urge to take on heroically creative tasks they never thought to
do...
Copyright © Jean
Houston. All rights reserved. Adapted from Jump Time, (New York:
Tarcher/Putnam), 2000, pp. 253-264 passim.)
| *Jump Time is a
whole system transition, a condition of interactive change that affects every
aspect of life as we know it. It is the changing of the guard on every level, in
which every given is quite literally up for grabs. It is the momentum behind the
drama of the world, the breakdown and breakthrough of every old way of being,
knowing, relating, governing, and believing. It shakes the foundations of all
and everything. And it allows for another order of reality to come into time. |
|
© Jay Cossey
This is an excerpt from
"In
Earth's Company: Business, Environment and the Challenge of Sustainability",
by Carl Frankel, published by New Society Publishers. ISBN 0-86571-380-4
From Chapter 2:
Sustainable
Development and the New Humanism
True, sustainable development is about securing the welfare of future
generations... But —
and this point is as important as it is overlooked —
it has a "vertical" as well as a "horizontal"
dimension. Life is not only technical and objective; it is also
soulful and subjective. Our conception of sustainable development
needs to do justice to these "vertical" dimensions of human
experience as well. Sustainable development implies a new and
healthier balance in how we conduct our human affairs, one that celebrates
depth along with surfaces, community along with individuality,
spirituality along with materialism, art along with linear technique... |
"Some
day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and
gravity,...we shall harness...the energies of love. Then, for the second
time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
- Teilhard de Chardin
Engaged
Living
by Vicki Robin
Something is moving
across America. In a myriad of ways, Americans are opting for quality of
life over quantity of stuff. Millions are swimming upstream against the
consumer culture. This "quality over quantity" ethic is showing
up in the food people buy, the way they educate their children, how they
manage their finances, their deep engagement with religious and spiritual
values, the depth of their friendships, their unwillingness to be hurried
and harried, what they want from politics and public life and the
mindfulness they bring to dying. In short, we want a life, not just a job
and all the trimmings. We are creating options for gracious living amidst
the tawdry, prefabricated fixtures of MacWorld. While many are gaining
inspiration from the past, this movement (if it can be called that) is
definitely of the third millennium. Connections are happening both face to
face and in cyberspace. Practitioners are urban, suburban and rural. Most
are as at home on the Web as on the phone. Everything from our music to
our genes reflects an emergence of a global culture that is diverse, rich,
varied and very interesting.
This movement, though, is
very different from past ones. It seems to have less to do with agendas
and more to do with some sort of organic multiplication of a set of
life-centered values. Heroes are everywhere, quietly creating new pathways
for daily living – from the flow of traffic down city streets to barter
networks to study circles to all kinds of cooperatives. The command center
seems to be in some sort of spiritual understanding people have developed
through traditional or non-traditional study and practice. No one seems to
be running the show, but many networks are organizing around issues and
concerns, and activating other networks, when the time is right, to get
particular jobs accomplished. Any name applied to this unfolding seems to
close down the energy rather than empower, so we are temporarily calling
it Mildred. Why Mildred? Why not? It's a name with a solid and sensible
feel, it holds the place until the real one comes along and it seems to
connote that whatever this is, it's the new mainstream for the third
millennium.
To
read the rest of this article go to the Resilient Communities Web
Site at: http://www.resilientcommunities.org/articles/feature.htm
ARCHIVES
of past newsletters
Archives
|
