I'd like to take a break for a moment from the weakening stock market, the unfolding disaster that is Greece, etc… and share my experience from this past weekend.
I presented at the New Story Festival in CT with my wife Becca. We discussed the importance of nature connection and community, myself covering the essential knowledge that serves to light a fire to ‘do something’ and with Charles Eisenstein eloquently covering the essence of being alive in these times.
The combination of the three of us was especially effective I thought, and many participants said so as well. There was something about the way that each of the three of us carried our own pieces of the story that combined into a much more rounded and complete narrative than I had anticipated.
What I especially loved about Charles’ approach is how he seemed to pull exactly what needed to be said next out of his heart. One of his main threads that really stuck with me was how he contrasted so-called 'modern' culture with indigenous cultures.
Noting one story about a Scottish fisherman from a remote island who said a prayer to get out of bed, another prayer to the sun on opening the curtains, another to sweep the hearth, another when he first set foot outside and yet another when he got into his boat.
In this fisherman’s story of the world, he is in constant communication with something that is ‘out there’ and is listening. In our Cartesian, Newtonian world there is no ‘out there’; everything can be reduced to sub-particles, measured, counted and profited from. All the things in the world, then, are there to either assist you or to harm you, but they have no value beyond those limited functions.
In the indigenous cultures, everything is imbued with a sense of ‘more,’ of being-ness, of having and being in relationship with everything else, including you.
Now Charles did not opine as to which orientation was better or worse, but merely noted that each worldview comes with its own sets of gifts and drawbacks. However, when we consider that the Cartesian/Newtonian view has set us on a path of almost certain self-destruction, then we are free to wonder if perhaps the other way might not have something to it.
by cmartenson 
