The answers to our pressing questions are within our communities and it is up to us to step up to galvanize each other and our resources to create solutions that serve us. As communities gather every month to discuss our universal challenges of child care, elder care, housing, transportation, food, nutrition, social isolation and more, we will uncover resources that we never knew were there.

She goes on to brainstorm several great ideas for helping communities take care of themselves, using our resources wisely, and solving problems we all face. Read about them here.

During the post-World War II era we redefined and recreated communities of all sizes to support the transition to an automobile age within the span of only three decades. The North American landscape was changed forever—and its about to change just as radically, over just as short of a timeframe yet again. The types of infrastructure and planning that separate us within our own communities—urban sprawl, big box retail, interstate freeways, mega powerplants, centralized sewage treatment systems, and absurdly tall skyscrapers will suddenly become impossible to sustain. In their place will emerge a new urban landscape supported by new kinds of infrastructure responding to the new reality of energy, food, water, and population.

…Think about what makes a place great for kids: a focus on found learning, serendipitous personal interactions with others, oppotunities to interact with nature and natural systems (water in particular), right-sized designs that aren’t intimidating and automobile-based, a city with an all-around gentle touch. Now consider a city that extended such considerations to everybody. If communities were built in ways that nurtured children rather than worked around them, all ages would be the better for it. By catering our infrastructure to those among us who have the least control, we actually usher in greater opportunities across multiple demographic segments.

from To Save Our Cities, Put Children First
by Jason McLennan

Both movements seek to bring the way we live into alignment with the structure and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere, which self-organizes locally everywhere to optimize the sustainable utilization of energy, water, and nutrients in support of life.

The corporate ruled global economy isolates people and communities from the sources of their food, energy, water, materials, and manufactured goods, leaving them dependent on corporate controlled global supply chains that are wasteful, unstable, unaccountable, and environmentally and social destructive. …the global economy is maintained only by unsustainable dependence on a non-renewable fossil fuels subsidy. It is already failing and its ultimate collapse is only a matter of time.

…We humans, in a fit of adolescent hubris, have sought to liberate ourselves from the responsibilities of life in community. …We have so confused individual autonomy with personal liberty that we have created economies that reduce caring human relationships to soulless financial exchange and structured our physical space around buildings and auto-dependent transportation systems that wall us off from one another and nature. In isolation from nature we have sought to dominate and control rather than work with nature’s natural generative processes. We have paid a terrible price.

from Living Buildings, Living Economies, and a Living Future
by David Korten

green roof on city hall

The forecasts, while not out of line with global predictions, shocked city planners.

If world carbon emissions continued apace, the scientists said, Chicago would have summers like the Deep South, with as many as 72 days over 90 degrees before the end of the century. For most of the 20th century, the city averaged fewer than 15.

By 2070, Chicago could expect 35 percent more precipitation in winter and spring, but 20 percent less in summer and fall. By then, the conditions would have changed enough to make the area’s plant hardiness zone akin to Birmingham, Alabama.

For the full article, go here.

-Andrew McNamara, Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation

They cite this sobering graph to show us how much we need to change:

Earthworks seeks to promote sustainable agricultural practices, nutrition and care for the Earth. We strive for peace, respect and harmony between Neighbor and Nature.

Garlic Harvest at Earthworks

Earthworks works to restore our connection to the environment and community in keeping with the tradition of our spiritual patron, St. Francis. It is a working study in social justice, as well as in being more connected to the food we eat. This project relies on the gracious donations from supports of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and of time from volunteers and materials from sponsors. Neighbors and friends of all ages, incomes and faiths join us in our work.

The idea of shopping better to save the world can be… an expression of the new green mastery, optimizing one’s efficiency as a consuming unit through the latest clever devices. But it may also be the worst instinct of a depoliticized naturalist humility: a desire to live more humbly and lightly on the planet at the individual level, joined with an acceptance of unjust political and economic systems at the social level… To suggest that shopping is one’s principal form of moral agency is to pit victim against victim in our consumerist monoculture; we struggle — individually, unequally, and ineffectually — to find seemingly green alternatives at the tail end of global commodity chains we neither control nor understand.
-from Naturalism as Mastery? by Ken Conca, Tikkun Magazine

In our current position as “ethical” consumers, we fear that we have essentially resigned ourselves to the inevitable destruction of nature, because the basic problem of consuming more than our earth can sustain remains unsolved. And more than that, we want to be more than mere consumers: we want to help create a world worth sustaining.

These ingredients always seem to boost mental health: genuine affection among community mates; the presence of children; elders, music-making, meaningful group work; people committed  to inner and outer communication; a mission of service to the larger world; creative homegrown culture; abundant opportunities to be outdoors; and the sharing of food grown and prepared consciously.

-Chris Roth, Communities, Spring 2011

For those of us who haven’t practiced it, meditation can seem like a glorified nap or an ultra-serene form of yoga. It’s neither… People have been practicing meditation for millennia, and there’s no evidence to indicate that we’re tiring of the activity.

Until recently, meditation has been considered almost exclusively in the context of spirituality. Now, though, scientists and physicians are investigating meditation to see how it can benefit physical as well as mental health. Meditation may be accepted as a stepping stone on the path toward enlightenment, but can it help people with depression and anxiety disorders? Can it help improve the quality of life for sufferers of chronic disease and other physical ailments? Can it help make employees more productive and companies more profitable? Recent research suggests it can.

from The muse in the moment, by Mary Desmond Pinkowish, Ode Magazine