The Yin-Yang of Life

What we hold in common as a human species is the imaginative capacity embedded in our consciousness to use symbols that depict elemental forms of communication. The universality of ancient symbols is fascinating and, I suggest, significant today to help us restore – together as a human family – an environmentally sustainable planet.

Here is where media literacy meets ecological literacy. That is why the media literacy page on my website shows the Venus of Willendorf, a saucy-looking lady from the Upper Paleolithic era in Europe. She epitomizes, provocatively, the importance of awakening the feminine principle, most particularly in Euro-western culture today.

In this blog post, I want to identify her and introduce a brave and independent-thinking archeologist, whose still controversial interpretations of the `Venus figurines’ I will discuss in my next blog post.

Here, however, I want to point out why we need to question the intellectual disciplines of Western culture, not just popular media that addresses the present. In order to learn how to live on the earth more respectively, we also need to revisit how Western culture has characterized the past – namely, pre-history – which, in turn, influenced the destruction of Indigenous cultures from the beginning of colonization to the present.

Meanwhile, what I characterize as `awakening the feminine’ has been evident since the 1960s in the growing number of Euro-western individuals who have sought out spiritual teachings in Eastern and Indigenous cultures because of a human yearning for wholeness not readily accessible within our own Western culture.

Therein, I believe, resides the reason for the phenomenon of the `New Age’ movement that, sadly, tends to get misrepresented and trivialized. The regrettable reasons why include the exploitation of this profound human yearning by spiritual charlatans and related hucksters whose commercial exploitation reduced spiritual symbols into moneymaking commodities that distort and undermine their original higher purpose. (The New Age movement, similarly I suggest, was based upon higher intentions.)

At the same time, beginning in the 1960s, an incredible renaissance of North American Indigenous culture became evident, through the political and the artistic voices of new generations, strengthened by spiritual elders no longer imprisoned for practicing their spiritual beliefs, nor their traditional ceremonies outlawed.

No wonder the Indigenous people authentically living their spiritual traditions got really pissed off about cultural appropriation by the 1990s. I even got vilified for speaking out to support their right to protect the integrity of their spirituality – a story for another time.

For by the 1980s, their cultural renaissance had fully blossomed through contemporary expressions of the Indigenous spiritual ethos in visual, literary, and performing arts, followed by feature drama and documentary films created by Indigenous storytellers internationally.

I was privileged to witness this renaissance, and be a messenger as a non-Native journalist, since 1982, to communicate the significance, as much as the mastery, in the creative art of Canada’s Aboriginal people – First Nations, Metis, and Inuit. Those early years were an exciting time.

Even so, getting their creative talent recognized, in the mainstream institutions and popular media, was fraught with struggle. The irony was, until entrepreneurs figured out self-serving ways to make profits from it, contemporary Native imagery was seen by the mainstream art world as inferior to Euro-western art.

What soon became evident to me were the first clues of the cultural racism that I would be challenging, as a journalist and educational writer, henceforth, in every sector of mainstream North American society.

In the arts sector, the early wave of contemporary Aboriginal art was considered inferior to the Western tradition of `fine arts,’ because the latter were seen as rooted in the classical Greek and Roman civilizations. All Aboriginal visual arts, therefore, were demoted to `crafts,’ given their lesser valued and misunderstood `primitive’ origins outside of what Western culture identified as higher forms of civilization.

Always impressive to me in Indigenous art, however, – as a graduate from a `fine arts’ program in drawing, painting and stained glass – was the symbolism so visually and orally evocative in the paintings, the sculptures (demoted as `carvings’), the dance performances and the narrative theatrical plays of Native people.

Such symbols focused on interrelationships of human life with the worlds of Spirit and Nature, consistently. The intentionality of Aboriginal symbolism, in my mind, took the term `decorative art’ to a whole new, and higher, level.

Consider that pottery, even when produced by Euro-western creators, is referred to as a `decorative art’ or `craft,’ in the Western hierarchical scale of the arts, at least since the historic period of the European Renaissance. During that major historic shift, the role of the arts radically changed in European society.

Summing it up for brevity – writing with broad strokes here – the Renaissance looked back to the Graeco-Roman era and the longstanding influence of Christianity, in creating art targeted for the new and growing leisure classes. But, the original purpose of art images – imbued with symbols to remind us of our connections with Nature and Spirit – was tossed aside to create`art for art’s sake.’ Therein, the seeds were planted for the arts to be considered foremost as marketable commodities.

This observation eventually led me to investigate, and conclude, that what Euro-western people, systemically, inflicted upon Indigenous peoples was based upon a fractured consciousness. For what we (collectively) inflicted on people globally, we already had inflicted upon ourselves, through many centuries prior to colonization, as urbanized, hierarchical societies – namely, a shattered understanding of an integral human existence with the earth.

This integral understanding previously had been reinforced through spiritual belief and practice that expressed awareness and responsibility to respect, be grateful for, and take care of all forms of planetary life. In turn, meaningful symbols infused art forms, not only those used for rituals yet also in everyday objects.

What I propose, therefore, is the following. The hope and the transformation to live, once again, in a more respectful relationship with `all our relations’ includes paying attention to newer interpretations of ancient artefacts and their symbology. Similar to other sciences, anthropology and archeology continue to bring further revelations to public awareness, that deepen and expand human understanding about the existence of life.

The best thinkers and practitioners in all fields of knowledge question existing assumptions. In doing so, it appears to be inevitable for those at the cutting edge, of course, that their newer insights often are controversial and consequently meet a lot of resistance from peers.

Such explorers of human history demonstrate media literate skills. For what they do is interrogate not just who were the historic creators, in what circumstances, the purpose of their production, and for whom.

Yet, as well, these explorers interrogate the previous theories that arose from attempted answers to all of those questions and more. Equipped with critical thinking, they bring an open-mindedness to examining human-created artefacts that take us back to the earliest artistic expressions in the Upper Paleolithic era, for example, in Europe.

I focus on Europe here, because the message in this blog is the fact that Euro-western cultures, within their social structure, from the Upper Paleolithic through the Neolithic eras, show archeological evidence that matrifocal cultures existed. The feminine principle of consciousness, in other words, prevailed as a guiding force in human societies during certain historic periods.

A maverick archeologist, whose theories in identifying this feminine consciousness remained controversial throughout her professional life, was the late Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994). Despite her theories still being debated, she profoundly influenced the contemporary movement of matriarchal, goddess, and feminist studies.

The fracturing of this ancient holistic Euro-western consciousness is a story that has many chapters. What I want to emphasize here is the need to transcend the regrettable divide between Euro-western culture for so many centuries in philosophical conflict with the more holistic Eastern and Indigenous cultures. The latter two cultures kept their spiritual traditions more intact, in regard to an appreciation of the interrelatedness between Nature and Spirit.

Regardless, despite the naysayers, Euro-western culture can recover and piece together its own former holistic worldview, awakening an innate human consciousness grounded in the recognition of what sustains life. This possibility, moreover, resides in the consciousness of the entire human family.

Where we can find hidden and rich treasure is in the place of darkness, according to John O’Donohue, the late Irish author, philosopher and theologian in his soul-filled book Anam Cara. In other words, we need not be afraid of the dark. O’Donohue refers to the wounded soul of our inner being, where much revelatory material resides for us to identify, transform and heal, to be able to manifest more fully who we can be.

In the outer world, some people perceive the uncertainty of this historic moment as something to be feared, while others use the uncertainty to exploit human fear for self-serving purposes.

Always as well, however, there exist those individuals who choose a third path, beyond fear and opportunism. Any of us can make this choice any time, anywhere.

The third path calls us to reflect and act from our Higher Self, which guides us closer to our human potential. Doing so awakens our innate `spiritual will’ rather than remain limited in our responses to the world by functioning merely from a `personal will.’ Spiritual will directs us to who we can be. Personal will is based on ego, namely, who we think we are and want the world to see, catering to our familiar comfort zone.

A prevalent tendency in human nature to resist change, however, can become a stumbling block that obstructs us from growing towards our potential. The fear about change resides in layers of our unconscious, which is why change appears so difficult. We simply are not aware of our own unnamed resistance, instead projecting our unnamed fear onto exterior sources to rationalize why change is not possible.

Consequently, through history, too often the possibilities of transformation present themselves only when chaos prevails, such as in war and natural disasters. Indeed, we marvel at the stories about heroism, sacrifice, fortitude, perseverance, and other inner strengths that folks discover within themselves, to survive and rebuild their lives. Such inner strengths represent aspects of the Higher Self, and actually are accessible within each of us.

Historically, specific nations or groups within nations, could feel isolated, protected, and prefer to be uninvolved, believing – rightly or wrongly – that the collective `we’ are not responsible for what befalls people half a world away. Disasters were seen as occasional, unconnected, not affecting `us,’ ergo, not `our’ concern.

Differently today, what we witness – and increasingly experience now in the developed world – is an extended period of what, ultimately, is leading toward radical disruption to life as we know it – that is, what we, collectively speaking, in the `developed world’ have come to take for granted as our right to an affluent way of life.

Following World War II, everything in mainstream North America – from socialization processes to mass media and popular culture – tells us every waking moment how our purpose in life ought to focus on striving for our own individual success and, secondly, the well-being of our immediate family. Today, the forms of consumer culture and celebrity culture say it all, in illustrating sorely reduced and misguided priorities about why we exist on this planet.

What distinguishes today from the past is what ought to be painfully obvious – we are all involved, as `life as we know it’ incrementally is being chipped away to present a different way of existing on the planet. The increase of mindless, extreme forms of entertainment, complemented with portents of gloom and doom, seem to distract too many otherwise decent human beings from putting energy into using their innate creative intelligence to engage in marvelous, life-affirming possibilities collaboratively as community members and planetary citizens.

But the penny still has not yet dropped for folks who tenaciously hold on to the status quo, despite new swaths of the employed who now include well-educated, veteran professionals who have lost their livelihoods. They are shut out from offering their much-needed `long view’ knowledge and experience to a troubled world and in a mainstream society coming apart at the seams, stitch by stitch.

Why did the mainstream news media generally omit mention of those participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement? The answers are several – speaking as a disillusioned, former journalist. Amongst the above-mentioned veteran professionals are many caring, investigative journalists who have lost their jobs, while conventional funding has largely disappeared for similarly dedicated documentary filmmakers.

Be aware that media corporations, which have other agendas than truth telling to help humanity and the planet, increasingly have swallowed up independent thinking news organizations in the past 20 years or so. As for broadcast news per se, it focuses on dramatic conflict not conflict resolutions to human dilemmas that can empower people.

Regarding television overall, reality TV, talent competitions and similar dumbed-down forms of entertainment are much cheaper to produce than investing in well-researched investigative documentary films and high quality dramatic productions.

Yet the stories that inform us about who we are, our purpose on earth and what befalls us when bad things happen, have been the glue to give coherency and meaning to human existence. They have elevated our minds, hearts and spirits since rock paintings and texts written on clay tablets.

Meaningful stories continue to be essential, to give us a map of life, and what we have dreamed as possibilities for the past, present and future. How then can we work together, to create new funding sources and distribution venues, as storytellers and audiences, and thereby give voice to stories that offer imperative understanding about our very existence?

Meanwhile, what is happening around us was foreseen several decades ago, namely, extreme and numerous environmental events disruptive to planetary life. But, few people paid attention to the signs. Consequently, much more harm has occurred to our brothers and sisters in the developing world than had to happen, and more harm is imminent. Human arrogance mindlessly continues to wreak havoc, because of the willful disregard for what fundamentally sustains life on this planet.

Hope for the present and future, regardless, continues to reside in the ever-present individuals among us on every continent – and those who preceded us who bequeathed perennial wisdom for all generations – whose vision is guided by light and love regardless of how dark everything might appear.

Such individuals include caring souls, past and present, who chose to dedicate themselves, quietly and without fanfare or much support, to discover, protect and restore whatever sustains life. They range from grassroots, land-based peoples who still practice under-valued ways of knowing to medical, scientific, philosophical and spiritual visionaries – all of them having a focus on what really matters – despite their work and contributions being under-recognized, even sometimes dismissed.

Also included, potentially, is any one of us, whether our life has fallen apart professionally or not, who decides to choose the third path, to participate in the human and planetary project of our time – healing and transformative activities (that include telling good stories) for the larger good.

What is required is not simply learning new skills, although that is useful, even in opening up new neural pathways to keep our brain healthy. Yet, consider further reasons.

For what is fundamental to opening one’s mind, and heart, is the embrace of new ways of thinking and asking new questions. What will be the impact of our choices, for example, in new business models, on the planet’s life support system and fellow human beings?

Recognize your own inner power. Choose to help in creating a future along a journey there that makes being alive an incredible adventure. Do not fear the unknown, but instead participate in a more deeply life-affirming present and future.

Do not despair, nor give away your power to the messages bombarding you from news and pop culture that feed off fear, divisiveness, stereotyping, vanity and selfishness and, furthermore, that misrepresents, exploits, or omits altogether what really matters.

Seek out alternative sources of knowledge and processes of learning, as well as colleagues and friends who similarly want to share insights and wisdom about approaches and tools to learn and grow. Discover untapped capabilities within yourself and new directions to contribute in the wider world – and experience hope and fulfillment.

One strategy along the `third path,’ to which I referred earlier, calls upon the awakening of our unconscious, that I characterize as `awakening the feminine.’ It is one of the themes of the workshops that I offer in this moment of transition happening in the lives of a growing number of people at multiple levels.

Awakening the feminine is valuable for men and women, to become more fully aware about the multiple layers of human consciousness that influence why we respond to the world in particular ways and, moreover, how to respond with more of our capabilities. In doing so, we exercise our free will and replace fear with love and compassion.

At a later time, by the way, I also will describe the importance of aligning the feminine and masculine principles that reside in human consciousness. Both principles exist innately within each man and woman. Establishing the harmony between them is another step in tapping our inner potential.

Next week I will address `awakening the feminine’ and introduce a saucy lady whose image recently was added to my website. Can you guess which image I mean? Stay tuned and find out who she is.

A NASA space shuttle sent four ladybugs and some aphids into outer space in 1999. The ladybugs were named after The Beatles – John, Paul, Ringo and George. I’m not kidding. Who knew?

I can think of a few members of another species whom I would love to launch in a space ship, for long term outer space exploration. Hopefully, they would get lost in a black hole, in order not to inflict their stupidity on any other part of this galaxy or beyond.

For the outer reaches of certain minds among some members of the human species are as inexplicable as the outer space of our Universe. I speak of particular municipal political councillors who are agreeing to have their respective municipalities considered as host communities, in planning discussions to create future deep geological repositories (DGR) of high level nuclear waste. Their companions on this space ship, of course, would be the individuals in the nuclear industry who thought up this idea in the first place.

Where I currently live is a long established region of agriculture and tourism, given the region’s outstanding and diverse natural beauty. And they want to dig up how much land to bury how many millions of spent fuel rods here, from across Canada? I don’t think so.

Since relocating to a rural region from a metropolis five years ago, I have been a witness to the mixed realities of rural life which, I imagine, are mirrored elsewhere. However, each nation and its regions have their own particularities to address.

For full time residents in mid-western Ontario, for example,  local jobs are limited. The largest single employer is a nuclear power plant, which attracts newer residents with specific skills to work there. This is interpreted as a boon to the local economy by some folks, yet definitely not so by others. The second highest employer is the district school board and all its employees, most importantly, the teachers.

Otherwise, since my relocation and the economic downturn, locally-based people are losing jobs in other sectors, such as manufacturing, and more farmers are growing cash crops than food for human consumption. Hence, food security in this region today is a question and, I wonder, in how many other rural regions today in North America?

I write my blogs intentionally to a global audience. For I consider myself a planetary citizen who resides on a small and increasingly imperiled planet, on which I recognize that everything alive is interconnected. Regardless of where a person chooses to live, each of us is confronted by environmental threats that we can heed or ignore.

The fact is, the above scenario – a corporate business whose proposed actions threaten the well-being of the environment and human safety, in an economically-challenged region – is playing out on all continents in regions outside many major cities, in which particular corporate businesses, with the acquiescence of governments, invent ever more ways to trash the life support system of the planet.

Where I live, in the coming months, I will stand with fellow concerned community members to assist in doing much-needed, and sorely lacking, fuller public education on nuclear matters. How to inform the larger number of people across tiny, rural municipalities – for their voices to be more united and stronger – will be an interesting task, yet one filled with possibility.

For consider who are among the most valuable and wise teachers of our time? Those teachers include the world’s land-based peoples who bravely resist environmental destruction as best they can. Their efforts, with some successes, are remarkable in the face of unmentionable political oppression, racially-instigated violence, gender inequalities, economic disparity and cultural destruction. (See my recent blog on Wangari Maathai and her work in Kenya, as one example. I will cite more examples from different countries, in future blogs.)

If those folks have the courage and stamina to face such overwhelming odds, surely in a so-called developed and democratic nation such as Canada, we can care enough here to inform ourselves much better – and take actions when called upon – in order to protect the soil, water and air that sustain us, for our health and the health of our children and future generations?!

Blessings upon each and every Canadian awakened enough to be engaged in actions that benefit the larger good, and more inclusively in regard to Aboriginal people. As I mentioned in my four-part January blog series, titled “Where the Caribou Live,” we definitely have major issues to address environmentally and culturally across our own nation.

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, I give thanks every day for my wee plot of earth. The land, water, and species with whom I now attentively co-exist, teach me continually the interrelatedness of all forms of life and also tough realities about the laws of Nature in such co-existence.

Alas, I will never be a Buddhist, despite my aspirations. Yes, I do rescue ladybugs. But you do not want to know how expediently I rid my farmhouse of the thankfully few, misguided mice who enter, nor other unwanted indoor guests such as crickets. Have you ever been kept awake for a month by serenading crickets, making love calls to find their mates?

As for my darling ladybugs, they always are welcomed. No, their endearing aspects are not based solely on the Mother Goose nursery rhyme: “Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home! Your house is on fire, your children all gone, All but one, and her name is Ann, and she crept under the pudding pan.” (In a children’s book, the poem is accompanied by an illustration of a boy balancing a ladybug on his hand.)

The practical reasons include, outdoors, ladybugs benefit gardens by eating the aphids. Indoors, ladybugs have greatly minimized the cluster fly population which is inevitable in a century-old farmhouse, by feeding on the fly larvae around the windows. Bless their little tummies.

Thus, reverence and comedy hold hands in my country living. Through these serendipitous encounters I am reminded daily to cherish life and feel grateful to receive such joy and delight, while at the same time existing in a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

The most glorious and uplifting experiences of my life have presented themselves in unfamiliar surroundings. One such memorable experience occurred during the many days that I spent researching the personal archives of Roberto Assagioli in Florence, Italy, at Casa Assagioli. His home is the headquarters of the Istituto di Psicosintesi.

For the rooms of Casa Assagioli radiated an extraordinary energy of peacefulness that I rarely have experienced elsewhere. A space that still radiated such transcendent energy says something profound, so many years after his passing in 1974, about the type of person who once lived and worked there.

Does the experience of inner peace seem out of reach to you? Does the attainment of world peace seem utterly impossible? I suggest that what is important, to make meaning of life and our purpose here on Earth, are not the goals for inner and outer peace, but instead consciously making the effort to take the journey towards them.

Assagioli’s quest to understand the human soul, and how to find inner peace, I can tell you was hard won. Below I will relate a poignant episode in his life that might have terminated the capacity for love and forgiveness in a less developed soul.

Inner peace is not based on material comfort. Rather, it is the experience of serenity despite the person’s material and/or surrounding circumstances. Serenity resides in the soul, and deepens in accordance with one’s capacity for forgiveness and willingness to bestow love and compassion on fellow beings.

Is that not the message in the Christian remembrance of Easter? In the biblical story, despite the persecution that led to the crucifixion of Christ, He died on the Cross with forgiveness in His heart. How consciously do we practice forgiveness toward anyone who has transgressed us?

Forgiving in itself is a journey that can take years of effort. It requires a process of letting go the emotional and spiritual pain sufficiently and be able, eventually, to feel as if a great weight upon one’s heart had lifted, through developing compassion.

This time of year also is the Jewish celebration of Passover, another biblical narrative. The story, again, unfolds from the human experience of persecution, in relating the epic journey called the Exodus, taken by ancient Israelites freed from slavery in Egypt. The remembrance, as in the best intentions of religious rituals, brings to consciousness our more edifying, spiritual qualities as human beings, such as humility, grace, gratitude and honouring one’s cultural ancestors and cultural histories.

The essence of celebrations of any religious faith and spiritual path, whether exoteric or esoteric, is to offer ritualized opportunities to awaken an intentional mind and a loving heart. Awakening, of course, is a choice always available to exercise personally at any moment throughout the year and, again and again, throughout a lifetime.

Personal narratives of courage and compassion offer us remarkable examples as well (as I have mentioned in earlier blog posts), to inspire and fortify us when we feel paralyzed by personal or world troubles.

Let us look at Assagioli’s plight. The Fascists considered Assagioli, a Jewish/Italian psychiatrist and intellectual, to be threatening, because of his anti-war and internationalist views, according to Assagioli’s student and collaborator Piero Ferrucci. In his book What We May Be: Techniques for Psychological and Spiritual Growth through Psychosynthesis (1982), Ferrucci, psychotherapist and author, cites Assagioli’s description about how he coped with imprisonment – indeed, solitary confinement – in order to withstand the Fascists’ efforts to break his spirit:

“I could rebel inwardly and curse; or I could submit passively, vegetating; or I could indulge in the unwholesome pleasure of self-pity and assume the martyr’s role; or I could take the situation in a sporting way and with a sense of humor, considering it as a novel and interesting experience… I could make of it a rest cure or a period of intense thinking… about scientific and philosophical problems; or I could take advantage of the situation to undertake personal psychological training: or, finally, I could make it into a spiritual retreat. I had the clear, pure perception that this was entirely my own affair; that I was free to choose any or several of these attitudes and activities; that this choice would have unavoidable effects which I could foresee and for which I was fully responsible. There was no doubt in my mind about this essential freedom and power and their inherent privileges and responsibilities” [p. 115].

Friends of Assagioli were able to liberate him and his son, Ilario, from the prison in Rome. Both of them subsequently hid in the woods for an extended period, to avoid being shipped to the Nazi death camps. Tragically, the relentless persecution, and the exposure to the elements, eventually took their toll on Ilario, a frail lad, and Roberto Assagioli lost his only child.

What is remarkable, given that heartbreaking loss – and why Assagioli’s example continues to provide enlightenment – is that he never gave up his vision of possible world peace someday. He continued his life’s work as a psycho-therapeutic and spiritual helper to those who came to him for teaching and guidance, and also pursued his writings.

That is why I decided that Assagioli’s life story ought to be mapped in a documentary film, and why I travelled to Italy, and did trips to the United States, to gather extensive preliminary research, confirm several future on-camera interview subjects and get legal permissions, through 2005 and 2006. Up to mid-2008, I made several efforts to get interest from broadcasters and fellow producers, spending many months on the preparation of funding proposals – with no success. Federal cuts to the arts in Canada in 2008, and the global economic downturn, have undermined our documentary industry, as has the increased TV broadcaster focus on commercial profits in programming choices.

The paradox today for many documentary filmmakers like me, who want to write, direct and produce meaningful stories pertinent to our time, is that conventional funding has largely disappeared, while at the same time growing audiences want to see serious documentaries. Therefore, we filmmakers currently are exploring and re-inventing how to finance our work, and also distributing to venues and media platforms beyond television.

So, while forced to figure out how to pay the bills at all in this economy, regardless, I absolutely am not giving up on the further development, and eventual production, of my film on Roberto Assagioli. Indeed, it took four years of persistent fundraising to complete my first film on a culturally important, yet under-recognized, Canadian subject in Soop on Wheels. However, Assagioli’s film story is an international project that requires shooting in Italy, the United States, and England where he travelled frequently in his work.

His story deserves cinematic attention. Moreover, Assagioli’s legacy continues to evolve through practitioners internationally today. The reason speaks to the beauty of his soul in its humility. For he characterized his contributions as “in development,” and welcomed future generations of psychosynthesis practitioners to develop further the insights that he bequeathed to humanity.

I fully believe the project of our time is the evolution of consciousness, at multiple levels from the personal to the global. Roberto Assagioli’s vision embodies that project, as does the vision of Wangari Maathai as she defined it in her Nobel Peace Prize speech cited in my previous blog post.

Meanwhile, what human beings can, and do, accomplish every day, through acts of free will grounded in love, is amazing. Such simple actions of caring rather than indifference represent taking steps forward in that evolution.

In my years spanning two graduate degrees through the 1990s, among the foremost, lasting impressions is the tenacity, graciousness – and commitment to the larger good – that African students brought to their studies and also to their interactions with fellow students and professors.

Indeed, entire African villages usually had raised the funds to support selected individuals to do graduate studies abroad, in order to become future bridge-builders between their home communities and outside influences – for the well-being of the grassroots people.

What struck me were two qualities: first of all, a deep sense of community instead of focus on one’s self. Secondly, in many private and group conversations, I never detected personal animosity, or cultural rage, directed towards the descendants of the colonial powers that had destroyed the spiritual and ecological practices of diverse Indigenous cultural communities across the African continent (and other continents).

Without such personal encounters, would I be accurately informed and aware of the fuller human capabilities of African people and, equally important, even begin to understand their cultural perspectives, if I only relied upon mainstream news stories? I think not. That is why documentary films have such a vital educational role, for example, when they give voice to grassroots, and other marginalized, folks, as well as to the visionaries whose messages are pertinent to the whole human family.

The late Professor Wangari Maathai was one such proactive visionary, until she succumbed to cancer on September 25, 2011, at age 71. Professor Maathai’s call to action, when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, was emblematic of her understanding about what sustains life on this planet:

“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking so that humanity stops threatening its life support system. We are called to assist the earth to heal her wounds. And in the process, heal our own… In the course of history there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness. To reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”

She embodies the power that resides within every caring human soul, in her chosen quest to restore the trees of Kenya and, moreover, redevelop the traditional skills of rural grassroots women to plant their own food and feed their children needlessly suffering from malnutrition because of corporate and political interests.

A journey that began with Wangari Maathai’s 1977 creation of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya took her on an odyssey to recognize how to connect the dots between rural women’s poverty, malnourished children, the deforestation problem, the severe decrease in clean water, and the deterioration of the soil. Focusing on the causes instead of the symptoms of the causes, she then empowered the rural women to plant trees, initially to restore the water and the soil. Professor Maathai knew, however, that doing so, in turn, would restore their self-confidence, and equip them as communities, to challenge the bigger, related issues.

Her own life, meanwhile, was hit by several blows. They were the results of her standing up for values that would restore and sustain the environment and, in turn, nurture greater democracy and peace. Alas, these values were not shared by the Kenyan dictatorship of President Daniel arap Moi. Her husband divorced her; President Moi publicly ridiculed her. When she ran for government, the university terminated her teaching post, her income and her housing. She also was arrested and imprisoned several times, her own life, ultimately, in constant danger.

Her tenacious journey is mapped eloquently in the documentary film Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, co-directed and co-produced by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater, partners of Marlboro Productions, in the United States. Lisa Merton spoke via Skype at a screening this past weekend at the Richmond Hill Public Library, in Ontario, Canada, to a keenly engaged audience.

“She is such a force of Nature and she personifies everything she believed in,” said Merton, to the Richmond Hill audience, from her home in Vermont. “Her path led her on a holistic approach to change.” Merton, who attended the funeral for Wangari Maathai, held in Uhuru Park, Nairobi, still feels the vitality of Maathai’s spirit.

“Such hallowed ground,” Merton reminded the audience. They had just watched scenes in the film when Maathai initiated an international furor to save this park from being razed for a multinational high rise office development. On another occasion, she and a large group of rural women camped out in the park, to demand the release of political prisoners detained because of speaking out against the Moi regime. Police attacked the women.

Marlboro Productions is dedicated to a huge, long term task to dub their film Taking Root in various languages, and find NGOs willing to fund workshops, to help people globally in environmentally degraded regions.

“Everything is inextricably linked,” she said. People living directly on the land more easily understand that fact though, than those of us who no longer live immersed in a natural environment, in order to appreciate, viscerally, our dependence upon other planetary life.

Regardless, Wangari Maathai, courageously and lovingly, shows what we hold in common as a human family – our dependence upon a healthy planetary environment and, as well, traditional values that she identified as innate within each person: love for the environment, self-betterment, gratitude and respect, and a commitment to service.

For further information and how to order the film, see http://takingrootfilm.com. Regarding books and other publications by Wangari Maathai, and the continuing legacy of her activism, see http://www.greenbeltmovement.org.