Page 3 - ECOlogic Book

Although small non-profits like the EAC are always hanging on by their
fingernails, the ‘90’s were especially difficult for such an organization, whose
vision of empowering people to participate in the healing of our planet was
not uppermost in most people’s minds. It was a period when hardly anyone
was thinking Green. Globalization was expanding exponentially as
corporations extended their grasp into every corner of the planet. Gas was
cheap and wastefulness was encouraged. Just about everything was
commoditized and citizens were valued primarily as consumers.

The EAC was one of only a handful of small centers in the US struggling to
keep their mission going in the face of the materialistic juggernaut that
swept over the land like a parching wind. The EAC’S mission of promoting a
responsible relationship with nature was not one that resonated with many
people. Only a few people on the edges of society cared to experience the
alternative technologies that the Center tried to demonstrate. Wind, solar,
biomass and geothermal technologies were not yet very well developed.
Lacking incentives and the necessary economies of scale, technologies like
Wind and Solar were too expensive for most people. They were regarded by
the main street America as pie-in-the-sky fantasies of the radical fringe or
scruffy Hippie types. Families were disintegrating and community, for most,
consisted of shopping trips to the mall, or a church experience that, with few
exceptions, came with a heavy dose of fundamentalism and a “prosperity”
twist that reinforced the covetousness that was driving Western economies.

Determined not to let its original vision be overwhelmed by the rampant
materialism that was then overrunning American life, the Center held fast to
its mission of bringing the work and inspiration of world teachers to the
Great Lakes Bioregion. During those eight years, over 45 of these world
teachers regularly infused the EAC and its surrounding area with the deepest
wisdom and music that could be found anywhere. These included such
notables as Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Berry, John Orr, Bernie Siegel,
Marilyn Ferguson, Ram Dass, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, Joanna Macy, Marion
Woodman, Robert Bly, Paulus Berensohn, Wes Jackson, Jean Houston, Helen
Caldicott, Stephanie Mills, Starhawk, the Paul Winter Consort, Henryk
Skolimowski, Wallace Black Elk, Matt Fox, Helen Nearing, Amory Lovins,
Michael and Justine Toms, Thomas Moore, John Seed, and Satish Kumar,
Dozens of others whose names might not be so immediately recognizable,
brought their unique views of things to the Center.

Through what many think of as a period of spiritual drought, we who were
active at the Center during those years fought to keep a green spirit alive.
We used that period of indifference on the part of most of Western culture to
deepen our own process, and to anchor our own spirits in a broader vision,
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