* BIOREGIONAL ACTIVITY -- by Fred Cervin

Bioregional activity is a way of seeking to restore our lost connection with the earth. It differs from other ways in its recognition that connection requires specific points of contact.

 

Seeking awareness of the earth in our own locale, we walk over the land knowing with our feet, our bodies, the reality of her body — which is still there, still present under the spectacular veneer with which modern society has covered it. Even when we have rearranged physical features and water flows; even when we have utterly destroyed the life communities which covered a region only a century or two ago, the earth is still present. It is still possible to know her, to hear her breathing, to feel her life. Bioregional practice, even when it is most mundane, is spiritual practice — because it enhances our awareness at the roots of our being of the nourishing source upon which we depend. It establishes new flows of energy, new filaments of ecological participation, between our re-inhabitory human group and the earth — which receives and bears our whole weight and impact at every moment, here, in this place.

 

Everything we do and are is already a part of her rich flowing life.

 

Bioregional activity is becoming conscious of this reality. Bioregional practice is an expression of our commitment to the earth not in a general way, not focused on far-off regions, but in the concreteness and specificity and here-ness of everyday life.

Bioregional activity is like marriage: it is not always romantic, but it is always real. We have decided to be married to our own life-place. This commitment requires of us an ongoing revision and renewal of our priorities and way of life. It requires us to form new relationships with the people of our area as well as with the other living beings who dwell in this place. It requires us to participate in the decision-making processes that affect the people, the lands, the watercourses, the plants and the animals of our area. As in marriage each spouse acts out a loving commitment in the details of everyday activity, so we act out our love and deep commitment to this place. We might have lived elsewhere, might have married otherwise. But didn’t. We came somehow to this specific place, and that has made all the difference. Beginning from where we are, we discover a wonderful new meaning in our lives. No doubt it was always there — at least as a possibility — but now we embrace it consciously and with due deliberation. Now we are married. Now we know where we stand. Slowly we discover how to live, what to do. Our new relationship with our place is the source of this new wisdom. It is all so simple, so concrete, not at all abstruse.

Bioregional activity is the way to a new blessing of our lives here and now, in this body, on this earth, in this place. It is the basis for a new community. We the lost, we the displaced, we the uprooted, we the alienated — products as we are of a tumultuous, ever-advancing modernity — have a chance to find home again. This commitment does not set us at odds with people who live elsewhere. Far from it! We are spiritually akin to all those who lovingly care for their own places, everywhere. All together, caring for our own life-places and resisting those who would despoil us, we come into a new hope for humanity as a whole, for the future of the earth. Humbly taking up the tasks of caring for the earth in our own place, we join hands with people everywhere who are making a similar commitment.

Bioregional activity is the metabolism of a new civilization, a new era of human life on earth. Breathing deeply, grounded in our own life-place, we will find the strength we need to resist tyranny. We have been in the grip of a placeless, earth-devouring monster. Now we are drawing the line: We will deny the ravager access to the life of our place. No longer will we turn over, without a qualm, the life of our own lands to those who live elsewhere — those who care nothing for us or our region and for whom we and our place are merely means to their ends. In the name of the earth we resist this domination, and call upon people everywhere to join us in a similar resistance in their own living places. We decline to play this game any longer.

It is time to put the nipples back on the goddess.

F.C.
July 20, 2005