Page 19 - ECOlogic Book

will be the healing of the other. The more people can connect to that larger
issue, the less they’ll come from the patriarchal mode that we’ve all been
taught. It means a better integration of masculine and feminine for everyone.

ECOlogic: Who were some of the plenary speakers that moved you the most?

Gail: First of all, Thomas Berry. Joanna Macy was very powerful too. The
physicist Brian Swimme was wonderful. Then some of the panelists: David
Spangler, Miriam McGillis from Genesis Farm, and Dean James Morton from
the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. He pulled a lot together. I’d
like to say more about Thomas Berry. He gave me a sense that we were born
at this time to do what we must do, and our awareness is essential. We must
be willing to do what the spirit moves us to do. It’s an exciting time to be
alive. There is a new paradigm beginning and we’re a part of it. We are like
Michelangelo. We are painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

ECOlogic: I get goose bumps hearing you say that. This is it! It’s real!

Gail: Yes. And there was a connectedness to yourself. The love of nature
that we all experienced as a child was re-enforced and validated. It brought
us all back in touch with that child that runs out into the first snow, to feel the
newness of it.

ECOlogic: Were there other things in the plenaries that you’d like to talk
about?

Gail: So many serious problems we’re facing: the conflict in the Middle East,
children being shot in the streets. I’m looking at the connectedness of all
these problems. You can’t solve one without solving the other. In fact, unless
we solve our healing of our relationship with the earth, we’ll never solve these
local problems. We’ve got to go back to our very reason for living, for being
alive, and to the earth as the mother who gives us life.

ECOogic: It sounds like for you the conference did what it was supposed to
do.

Gail: I’m really impressed with Chinook Learning Center. They’re a focal
point, not just for the Seattle area and the whole Pacific Northwest for this
kind of thinking. These kinds of places are very necessary all across the
country. The Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center (EAC) is one of these
educational centerpoints for Greater Detroit and the Great Lakes Bioregion.

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