I just watched PBS's Secrets Beneath the Ice, a report of research in Antarctica examining what our world will look like when the planet's temperature rises the predicted five degrees over the next hundred years. Scientists are finding strong evidence that sea levels will rise in the neighborhood of sixty feet as the ice shelves of  Antarctica and their sister glaciers melt. Which means our coastal cities will be partially submerged. It means the salinity of the sea will change drastically. The higher temperatures will also mean changes in vegetation, summer temperatures, and other habitat changes.

Global Warming is real, but still unpredictable. We don't know for sure what is going to happen. And since it's probably totally out of our control (if we were to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere the temperatures will still rise at this point) and we fear what we can't control, we just act like it isn't happening. But it is. And it will change the face of the earth in my children's lifetime.

Climate change is not a new topic for me. Trying to live in a way that mitigates its effects, like riding my bike and turning off the lights and hanging clothes out to dry, are not new behaviors. They feel neither wholly effective nor foolish, just part of being a responsible human being. But after watching this documentary (having also recently read most of The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery) I'm left with two unanswered questions: What does global change mean to me as I try to live a meaningful life? And what does it mean in terms of how I raise my children?

If rising sea levels is a given, for instance, what do I want to do with my life? What gifts and tools do I want my children to have given that this world now and the world to come in their lifetimes will be totally different than the world throughout human history? Surely the basics remain the same: love, compassion, understanding of interconnections, responsibility. But do those basics change in the face of a different planet? If, for instance, the world is as warm as it was during the age of dinosaurs yet contains nearly nine billion people, how will that change the way humans live? How can I raise my children to be wise, loving, calm, yet prepared?

I don't know. No conclusions. Just thoughts and questions. I'm curious what you think.

Prayer and Intention for Japan

 I read that Denver Botanic Gardens has created a wish tree for prayer, wishes, and reflection for the Japanese struggling with the massive earthquake, tsunami, and other related disasters. At first I thought - wow, they need so much more than prayers! They need food, financial resources, blankets.... everything! I caught myself. Of course they need those things. But caught up as I was in the here and now, I forgot for a moment the power of intention and prayer. We exists within and of the quantum sea. We are all connected. Thoughts have power. Heart fields have immense power. One way to tap into this power is to sit in nature - wilderness, a garden, a city park - and breathe. Ground yourself. Focus on Japan. Vibrate with love, healing, and wholeness. It will raise the vibrations in Japan and throughout the quantum sea.

When you send financial support (through a verified source like the Red Cross or Save the Children) send your intentions through the energy of money as well. Money and intention are both essentially energy. Energy - vibrations - bring other energies into attunement with themselves. Your intentions do make a positive difference.

What is a Nature Intuitive?

In my book Voices of the Earth: The Path of Green Spirituality I talk a lot about being a nature intuitive. I have to admit this phrase makes me a little uncomfortable (isn't that the curse of the author, to read our published words and cringe a little?). I came up with it in the interest of maybe coining a phrase or at least presenting my ideas in a neat little package. But the thing is, I'm afraid making it a neat little package is rather misleading.

A nature intuitive, as I mean it in Voices, is someone who talks to nature and hears an answer. Who listens to his or her keenest level of sensory perception - which is to say the five senses - to tune into the quantum sea in which we and nature exist. But of course we are nature, too. Everything is nature. To say that a tree or a rock is more "nature" than a person or a table is erroneous. We're all vibrations. We're all part of the great being some call Gaia - and also of God/the Creator/the Goddess/the Great Spirit, etc.

Not everyone's intuitive or psychic abilities are the same. They vary in degree and style. Some are mediums, able to clearly communicate with the dead (and their styles can differ from each other). Some can sense the future. Others may have a heightened intuitive sense but not be tuned in (yet?) to the afterlife or the future, for instance. Along these lines, some people will be more interested in, and therefore able to sense, the vibrations of the natural world than people. So maybe we could call them nature intuitives. But really it's all extended sense perception directed at whatever thing you want to sense. Everyone has this ability, or the ability to develop psychic senses.

I do think perhaps being surrounded by "nature" (i.e. trees, water, stones) helps us to slow the mind chatter, a crucial part of tuning in to extended senses. So learning to intuit nature energies might be an easy first step to developing one's abilities to attune to people, which we usually refer to as psychic.

So. Don't get hung up on the nature intuitive phrase (maybe you weren't - I hope not. I was). It's all about attuning, listening, focusing - inward and outward. I think you'll find that this ability will lead you to "nature" no matter what you call it.