Issue 29: October-December 2024
Printable copy (pdf) of Issue 29
Sacred Grounds
The term “sacred grounds” has been used in a variety of contexts and purposes, but generally it refers to a place that holds special religious, spiritual, and/or cultural meaning to people and communities. Identifying and treating a place as sacred provides a tangible connection to deep and embodied meaning and significance in our lives and how we relate to each other and the world. These places often serve as a refuge and provide space to reconnect and realign ourselves to our most fundamental values, beliefs, and practices. They can also serve as a model for how we want to live in our everyday lives and how to care for all of Creation.
Cultivating the Sacred
As members of cultural and spiritual communities that recognize and cherish these places, it is our shared responsibility to cultivate and care for them. This strengthens not only our spiritual connections, it also gives us embodied knowledge of their own being, broadening and deepening our relationships with them and each other. Whether hill or valley, lake or forest, hidden cove or glorious overlook, there is usually a distinct combination of earth, air, water, and life – a living, sustaining system – that we seek to nurture and maintain. And this can involve various levels of our own intervention, modification, and even use of these places that reflect our culture, history, religion, values, goals, and our own identities. Our active engagement can be (and increasingly must be) a part of what makes these places special, so while the natural integrity and beauty of these places can call for us to tread lightly in some places, what is sacred about other places reflects how we have shaped and maintained them.
Sacred Grounds and the Climate
The extraction, exploitation, degradation, and transformation of places near and far to us as part of modern life is anathema to care for Creation, much less cultivating and honoring the sacred. These self-centered values and practices reflect an attitude and (lack of) relationship that are the true cause of our entwined climate, biodiversity, and health crises in the world. In seeking a better quantity of life, we have sacrificed the quality of our lives and defiled the many sacred grounds we once shared and cultivated. To feed our insatiable appetites, we have upset the balance of life, death, healing, and self-renewal of places that sustain us.
Much as Hawaiians and most cultures abhor the disturbance and desecration of the bones of our ancestors, so too is the Earth unleashing its wrath as we dig up and burn the bones of millions of years of life. We may benefit from transforming this mana of our ancient ancestors into energy that accelerates our economy, but it has become all too apparent now that in doing so, we are accelerating the demise of ourselves and much of the beauty and diversity of Creation, literally creating a Hell on Earth.
By reorienting our attention and renewing our relationship to the most sacred places that we still remember, recognize, and hold dear, we can relearn the lessons of humility, gratitude, and compassion for all of Creation. No technological or policy breakthroughs can substitute for this transformation of our hearts and minds; nothing else will save us from our own damnation or liberate us from this downward karmic cycle.
Indigenous Culture and the Sacred
There is much knowledge and wisdom we can seek and receive from our Indigenous brothers and sisters. In Hawaiʻi, the Kumulipo story of Creation is filled both with calls to recognize and cultivate the sacred. The places, plants, animals, and ecosystems that fill this story of the origins of these islands and people are often places where we live, plants and animals that we harvest and cultivate for nourishment, that feed us in different ways, i.e. the ʻāina is sacred.
The story of kalo itself is a moving tale of the sacredness of this plant and its relationship to humanity. The plant known as the elder sibling of humanity sprung from the ground where the stillborn fetus of the child of Hawaiian deities was buried. This plant became a staple food of Hawaiians and other Pacific Island cultures.
Numerous rituals and protocols – such as offering a chant to the inhabitants of a place to ask permission to enter – recognize the sacredness of everyday places and their relationship to the people who live there, in the fullness of that word. How much more meaningful and sustainable would our ways of life be if we honored and embraced these traditions and practices?
Sacred Grounds in Our Congregations
While there are undoubtedly special places in our own congregations, Interfaith Power and Light encourage us to cultivate “sacred grounds” to recognize, honor, and restore the natural and managed ecosystems that sustain us and support a healthy climate and livable planet. The Cool Congregations program has an annual challenge to religious communities to save energy, be a role model of renewable energy use, inspire community action, and to cultivate sacred grounds. This last category includes native landscaping, organic gardening, water conservation, promoting pedal-powered transportation, and recycling and composting the resources and food we consume every day.
While these practices are encouraged by many groups working to combat climate change and promote sustainability, their grounding in the sacred is what sets them apart for IPL and religious communities. Of course, cultivating a culture of the sacred is not the exclusive domain of religion, but it is definitely something congregations should embrace as central to and a natural outgrowth of their faith. Cool Congregations provides incentives and resources to begin this journey and to recognize the efforts of faithful communities. Hawaiʻi Interfaith Power and Light, admittedly, has some work to do to seek, share, and develop resources locally to support these efforts, but with our partners, we promise to help you cultivate sacred grounds here in our ʻāina.
Issue 28: July-September 2024
Printable copy (pdf) of Issue 28
Connectivity ≠ Community
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shut-down of schools, churches, and places of business led to greater emphasis on remote “connectivity,” i.e. technologies and the accompanying capacity and infrastructure to connect with each other remotely. The term “virtual” became popularized to distinguish remote from in-person connections, and it is appropriate in the sense that “virtual” is contrasted with “reality”. But it became clear within a year or so that these virtual connections did not provide the same kinds of experiences as being together in-person. People felt isolated and craved true social connections, even if less “convenient” than virtual ones.
Social Isolation Amid Constant Connectivity
A related problem growing before the pandemic was the reduction in meaningful social connections, especially for young people, due to almost constant connectivity to entertainment, news, social media, and online distractions. As much as schools have struggled to combat “cyber-bullying”, the real challenge for young people is a crisis of isolation and social anxiety, even though they have near-constant access to the opinions, reflections, and experiences of others.
Back to the Basics for Community
Higher education and workplaces will likely continue to embrace virtual connectivity to accommodate diverse and scattered students, employees, customers, and clients; however, churches, schools, and place-based communities have renewed in person connections to restore the living and vibrant social experiences that create healthy relationships, a sense of belonging and the social processes essential for “the commons”. Virtual connectivity should always be seen as a supplement to reinforce these foundational processes.
From Consumers to Community Members
Our dominant socioeconomic system – market-driven capitalism – thrives on individual and self-interested decision-making. Through the marketing of products and services and the way we structure our lives around them, our very culture is shaped by this isolating system. Just look around you in commuter traffic next time to see how many one-ton automobiles are transporting one person, plus all their “stuff”. We are, in this system, encouraged to be “consumers”, not community members.
This individualized orientation extends to politics and governance. We are exhorted to be voters and to make a choice among two or at most three serious candidates in winner-take-all elections.
Rethinking how we meet our needs and govern our shared places and resources within the framework of what we hold in common can transform this orientation. To make this work, we have to connect and communicate with each other in real ways. We must strive to understand each other, meet each others’ needs to meet our own, and actively participate in meaningful social processes. This requires that we find shared purpose, shared values, shared goals, and shared processes to achieve them. We do not need compromise or competition to be successful. Instead, we must become fully vested members of a community, exerting our personal agency but with the full knowledge of what we all need and want to accomplish.
Applying the Commons to Energy Systems
This approach to building and strengthening community and the commons can be applied to energy systems. In Hawaiʻi, you may have heard of the community based renewable energy (CBRE) program. While the name sounds great, the language on the webpage describes a “subscriber organization” as the developer of a renewable energy project that solicits customers who buy into the project. In reaching out to “subscribers”, developers tout the lower cost of electricity and the company’s ability to take care of all the work. Just sign up and save (money, as well as the planet)! This is not intended to build or strengthen communities in any meaningful way.
Fortunately, there are true community-based alternatives. Several affiliates of Interfaith Power and Light are working to promote and support true community-based energy projects. For example, in Minnesota, Cooperative Energy Futures (CEF) helps communities develop and install CBRE projects. Their vision is people in every community working to produce, manage, and wisely use the energy they need to thrive. Their projects ensure community ownership, participation by households of all incomes, and pathways into the solar workforce for local community members. The Center for Rural Affairs started the Nebraska Solar For All program that leverages grant funds to support community, multi-family, and household renewable energy projects in low-income and tribal areas. These projects treat energy as a commons and communities as essential, using the latest technologies to support this traditional approach to meet common needs.
In Hawaiʻi, the Hoʻahu Energy Cooperative Molokaʻi is a real community-based CBRE intended to serve the electricity needs of the entire island. They formed in response to Hawaiian Electric sending out a call for CBRE projects on the island. Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, Hawaiian Electric considered submitting its own development proposal, but ultimately Hoʻahu was awarded two projects.
Roles for Religious Communities
While religious communities are often synonymous with “congregations”, the work of the organizations summarized above show other important ways congregations can build and support larger communities. These projects help under-served communities meet their own needs in ways that strengthen their social relationships and connections. In supporting this work, churches can serve as places to gather, learn, share, celebrate (and worship), as well as advocate on behalf of these efforts.
With open eyes and ears, congregations can pray, study, and reflect on what makes for a strong religious community – recognizing, nurturing, and celebrating what we hold in common – and use that as the foundation to help create and support these personal and social values and processes in our larger communities to meet our basic but most important needs. That is an essential component of the commons and of a just, sustainable, and renewable future for all, including energy, food, other material needs and real and meaningful social connections.
Issue 27: April-June 2024
Printable copy (pdf) of Issue 27
What We Hold in Common
Our recent issues of Ka Mana have emphasized the importance of community for true sustainability. But what do we mean by “community” within the context of sustainability? That, like a lot of seemingly simple questions, does not have a definitive or universal answer. But “It depends” is not satisfactory, either. If we look at the word itself, “community” assumes we have important things in common with each other, and it is what we hold in common that defines what we mean by “community”. And so, as we reflect on the importance of community for sustainability, we must ask ourselves what we hold in common that we wish (and need) to sustain to ensure a healthy, abundant, and meaningful life for all.
Common Ground
The documentary film being promoted by Interfaith Power and Light during Faith Climate Action Week – the time around Earth Day (April 22) – this year is “Common Ground”, which tells hopeful stories of farmers, foresters, ranchers, artisans, and communities renewing our soils through regenerative agriculture and land management to address climate change; biodiversity; food security; the physical and financial health of farm family and communities; even racial, indigenous, and economic justice, i.e. the interconnected and interdependent aspects of sustainability. While the “producers” highlighted in this film are tending and renewing their own plots of land, they have a much larger perspective of caring for and renewing parts of this Earth, of Creation, that we all need and depend upon. Farmers speak of their responsibility toward and love of future generations: their kids, grandkids, and those not yet born. As producers, they help provide for our basic needs, which has always been an immense source of pride but also a sacred duty they feel called to fulfill. While the documentary focuses on soils as something we hold in common, it serves as a metaphor for the complex earth systems we depend upon and have a responsibility to manage sustainably.
The complexity of the soil itself is a theme of the film, representing the larger natural and social systems we must nurture and renew to live sustainably. The Hawaiian word for “land”, ʻāina, translates directly as “that which feeds”. This is not a utilitarian interpretation of land but rather a deep and complex understanding and relationship to what sustains us biologically, socially, culturally, and spiritually and therefore what we have a responsibility to steward and celebrate. This is integral knowledge and “ancient wisdom” for indigenous societies and even for most of the world’s religions; thus, it is also something we hold in common and should sustain.
Grounding Community in the Commons
Recognizing that what we mean by community depends upon what we hold in common AND that what we hold in common is complex and reaches across times, places, and cultures, what emerges is a broader, deeper, and more complex sense of community. Cliches such as “We are all God’s children” should not be spoken lightly but with a deep sense of reverence and connection. That we are a part of Creation should also bring forth a deep sense of interdependence and responsibility to care for all of the Earth as a manifestation of our Creator’s design and desire. Scientists have discovered for themselves the inter- connectedness of systems, from the universal influence of gravity across the universe; the idea of Earth as Gaia, a self-regulating and abundance-generating super-organism; to the complex microbiome of the soil and even our own digestive systems. It is complexity and things we hold in common all the way down.
Even those we disagree with and treat as enemies are part of this community. We seek to suppress and destroy them at our own peril, as they are connected to the systems that we also depend upon. If climate change has taught us anything, it is that unsustainability anywhere affects sustainability everywhere. There is no 100% local self-reliance, independence, or security. Again, the Hawaiians understood this well. While they were able to support hundreds of thousands of people in these islands with no daily imports of food, fuel, or manufactured items, they depended upon the seas and skies and lands far away to enrich and sustain the abundance of the islands. They traveled widely and welcomed visitors, recognizing our interdependence, vulnerability, and reliance upon hospitality and care for that (and those) which feed us. They readily learned from others and adopted technologies, practices, and traditions that could support the thriving of the Hawaiian people and the ʻāina. We speak of this in the past tense, but it is part of a living culture and traditions that can guide our return to sustainability.
Community is an essential part of this return. It is essential not just for survival, it is how we thrive and sustain ourselves, each other, and what we hold in common, cherish, and celebrate. As we learn and reflect on the existential crises we face, let us do so in the context of the deepest values and traditions of our respective cultures and religions. We will find we hold much in common, which makes us part of diverse communities. It can guide us and support us in developing renewed and mutually supportive interactions with each other and all of Creation and help create and sustain an abundant ʻāina for ourselves and future generations.
For Earth Day this year, we encourage you to consider screening the film Common Ground (HIPL has DVD copies and can assist you in a screening event) and making what we hold in common the ground of our efforts to build communities whose goals align with a just, abundant, and sustainable future for all.
Issue 26: January-March 2024
Printable copy (pdf) of Issue 26
Sustainability & Wicked Problems
Sustainability is a way of orienting our values, priorities, decisions, and actions toward the social and ecological systems we have co-created and live in, from local communities to global networks. The linked crises and challenges that threaten the sustainability of these systems and thus ourselves - climate change, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, the cross-over and spread of novel human diseases like COVID19, to name a few - can seem complex and overwhelming, resulting in what are sometimes called “wicked problems” with no easy or straight-forward solutions.
What makes many of these problems wicked is not that we do not know what to do or what can work; rather it is that we are often not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to implement them. In too many instances, we want to do the right thing but complain it is “too expensive” or there are not enough resources. In economic terms we are not “willing to pay” the price to avoid or address these systemic problems. The real costs to the environment and human society of not being willing to make these sacrifices are, of course, much larger than the price of doing what is right, as we are becoming painfully aware these days, but somehow that knowledge or awareness never seems to be convincing.
The term “wicked problem” is perhaps appropriate, since it suggests the kinds of solutions that are needed: moral, religious, cultural, transformational, but also visionary and unifying. Getting prices low enough, developing the next breakthrough technology, or figuring out various “life hacks” are not solutions in themselves, but they can support the more fundamental changes that are needed. And much like the religious and cultural diversity around the world and in our own islands of Hawaiʻi, these necessary changes are not exactly the same for everyone. But at the core of the worldʻs major religions, and what we most cherish in our own cultures and communities, are shared values, virtues, and orientations that are meant to permeate our lives and form the basis of how we make decisions and relate to one another and the world at large. “Aloha”, “shalom”, “compassion”, and “grace” are just a few of the names we give to these shared values that are meant to guide our lives and how we live together.
Spiritual and Religious Transformation
Drawing upon these core values and beliefs is essential when we face the wicked problems that confront us. And much like the Hawaiian proverb Ka wa ma mua, ka wa ma hope (look to the past for a guide to the future) our cultural and religious traditions tell us that todayʻs problems (and solutions) are not really new. They are related to decisions we have made (or that have been made for us) and continue to be made, which reflect as much the systems we live in as our personal preferences or values.
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To truly solve these wicked problems, we have to think, relate, decide, and act in radically different ways. We need salvation, conversion, transformation, call it what you will. To achieve that, we have to embrace not new ideas, necessarily, but rather the core values and beliefs of our deepest traditions. It will take vision and dedication and working together, but that is what religion, culture, and community are all about.
Working in Community
These changes are not merely personal, but they also are not things we should just expect government or industry to do for us. In Hawaiʻi, we are slowly but increasingly embracing community-driven approaches to these wicked problems. Family Promise of Hawaiʻi is an example of churches working together to provide temporary housing and support for working families. Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae is a self-organized village of houseless individuals and families who have created a community and are now seeking land to grow food to feed body and spirit. Community-Based Sustainable Fishing Areas, drawing on the knowledge and experience of Native Hawaiian culture and communities, are becoming a reality on Kauaʻi, Molokaʻi and Maui, with broader interest across the islands. The community of
Hāʻena, on Kauai’s north shore, has shown tremendous resilience after the climate change-fueled rain bomb in 2018. They also continue to show leadership in managing tourism in this area to the benefit of residents, tourists, and the ʻāina. The Hawaiʻi Food Hub Hui is a network helping local farmers work together to store, process, and distribute locally produced food for local consumption, with help now from the state. Community-based nonprofits are at work across the islands to protect, conserve, and restore natural and cultural resources on public and private lands, involving youth, families, and even visitors to our islands in their efforts. Efforts to document and map these stewardship groups has been undertaken on Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi islands. Community-based renewable energy projects are slowly rolling out in Hawaiʻi, but they are primarily driven by development companies, not communities themselves. This is most likely because they were introduced by the state with rules strongly influenced by the electric utility, meaning we need to re-envision and redesign this to emphasize the priorities and needs of targeted communities.
With the right institutional support and enabling rules and regulations, these religious, cultural, and community-driven approaches can help renew the sustainability of the places we live, work, and call home. Because they are grounded in religion, culture, and community and reflect the core values we profess and hold dear, these approaches are more flexible, adaptable, and resilient; more just, equitable, and diverse; and thus more sustainable as we work to address yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s wicked problems. We do not need government, business, or educational institutions to lead these efforts: we need them to recognize and support what our innovative spiritual, cultural, and stewardship communities are already doing. They cost little in money but provide truly valuable benefits and models of transformational sustainability.
