Category: Teaching & Learning

Contested Spaces – Arkansas River Haiku

A haiku in honor of the 2014 ACM-SAIL Contested Spaces learning seminar in Colorado and to a great rafting team. There is tremendous opportunity in this experience to consider how integral theory applies to thinking about environmental learning, action, and reflection.

Rafting the Arkansas River in Colorado. (L-R) Terri, Jo, Paul, Kelsey & Maria.
Rafting the Arkansas River in Colorado. (L-R) Terri, Jo, Paul, Kelsey & Maria.

On the river, five
rafting down the Arkansas
Kelsey as our guide

Clear water gushes
carrying our craft downstream
destination awaits

Eddies, waves, currents
forcefully nudge us around
rhythm songs abound

Browns Canyon rock walls
speak of past earth history
continuing today

Laughter, joy, concern,
anticipation, relief
care, my rafting team

Returning to the new familiar

I felt a profound sense of connectedness and spirit in this place. I listened to the fluttering of birds on wing, the pace of fellow travelers making music with footsteps in the small stones, the wind moving branches and leaves, and to the warmth of the sun shining into my spirit.

Having arrived in Japan on 11 January and meeting up with the ASES 277 group and Asian Con crews this evening, I thought I would take the day to return to some places I traversed 19 months ago when Ann Marie, Kathy, Mike Thai, and Gabriel Trejos-Duran spent two weeks in-country.  On today’s docket – sunshine, Meiji Jingu, and the fashion district around Harajuku. Fascinating thoughts and contrasts kept rushing into my head during my walking excursion today; I will share a select few.

When I last spent time at Meiji Jingu, it was mid-June, light rain, and a beautiful swath of blooming irises graced the grounds.  Today was bright sunshine, a stiff cool breeze, and a mix of blue sky with browns and greens coupled to the celebrations associated with the New Year, weddings, and an ice sculpture exhibit. As I was meditating in the gyoen (inner garden), designed and built for Empress Shoken by Emperor Meiji I felt a profound sense of connectedness and spirit in this place.  I listened to the fluttering of birds on wing, the pace of fellow travelers making music with footsteps in the small stones, the wind moving branches and leaves, and to the warmth of the sun shining into my spirit.  Opening my eyes, I delighted in many people looking to engage other organisms by capturing imagery (thanks birders!) or simply out walking without being engaged on one’s mobile device.

How often do we really stop to listen to our surroundings?  When did you last delight in temporary art and the dance of sunshine and shadow across the canvas of frozen water – watching a new shape unfold as the initial form changes due to melting (and falling bits)?  How often do you celebrate life’s events in communion with one another and with the rest of nature?  The shared sense of calm, spirit, and connections form the sounds and ideas that still linger in my head hours after leaving Meiji Jingu.  I hope you enjoy these images and look forward to your own sense of discovery and connectedness in spirit whether you are near or far from where you call home.

 

Bird of Prey ice sculpture

Shinto Shrine of Meiji Jingu

Stream moving through the gardens at Meiji Jingu.

Sun and shadow play in this image of a samarai.

Ice castle in the ice sculpture exhibit

Lanterns for the new year.

Path in outer gardens of Meiji Jingu

Gift of the Persistently Possible

Just how does one step into the next story? In the liberal arts sense, we do it with thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness embodied and expressed by people in the careful way they think and in how they care about other people and places.

It’s hard to believe it has been more than a year since my friend, colleague, and sustainability guru Jim Farrell died.  In his honor and for others, I take this opportunity to post some words I shared at the on-campus memorial service.  We all continue to do great work, inspired by those who came before us and who lived and worked with us!

From 25 Sep 2013 – Memorial Service…

I’d like to make an offering, some brief thoughts about Jim, a teacher, mentor, colleague, friend, writer, author and lover of all nature, especially human-nature. This is not the human nature we typically think about when those words are uttered, but the connectivity between human cultures and the rest of Creation. Jim frequently reminded us that we are nature, we are gifts – to nature and to each other, and we are engaged in the continuing, evolving human-nature enterprise as stewards of God’s Creation.

I recall the first time the Sustainability Task Force read, in full draft form, the principles we had been talking about, principles that came to life in words Jim penned to paper. Here is an excerpt about energy. “Environmentally speaking, a college campus is a place for converting natural energy to human thoughtfulness. It’s a place where people employ natural resources to refine and transmit the intellectual and artistic resources we call culture. Like all other colleges and universities, St. Olaf College is an organic machine, where nature’s energy is shaped by nature’s human energy, and vice versa. We think of a campus as a place, a location, a space – and it is. But more importantly, it’s a relationship, where human designs intersect with nature’s designs in food and water, heat and electricity, cars and computers, lawns and gardens and natural lands. A campus is one way of making love to nature – or of making war on it. It’s a way of caring for the Creation. A campus is, like it or not, an ecological design.” All of us were astounded by the conversational character of the writing, the relationship centered core of the story, and the imagery it conjured. It provided the group and campus with fuel to keep doing good work, no matter the obstacles.

Friend and colleague, Jim Farrell.
Friend and colleague, Jim Farrell.

This pursuit of good work is framed by what I call ‘embracing the cycles’ or the ‘gift of the persistently possible,’ a gift Jim consistently doled out. Rather than lament about a particular situation or become mired in despair and anger, the Daniel Quinn novel Ishmael and the words story and opportunity soon would pop up in discussions with Jim. The narrator says, “They failed because you can’t just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in.” A given story might come to a close, yet another takes its place. The challenge is to rise up and recognize the new opportunity, the opportunity to use your gifts and talents to work with others who feel as passionately as you do to unfold the next story. This is jumping from the downcycle into the upcycle which can, at times, feel like you are actually in the spin cycle! Jim consistently encouraged all to step into their next story and to do so with gusto, whether it was students attempting to start an on-campus organic farm, a department trying to develop a revised curriculum, or a friend struggling to make sense of a life-changing event.

Just how does one step into the next story? In the liberal arts sense, we do it with thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness embodied and expressed by people in the careful way they think and in how they care about other people and places. This kind of thinking and doing is hard work and certainly has its upcycles and downcycles. In parallel we do this as a spiritual journey or leap of faith. Our stories are deeply interconnected – making a tangled web of beauty reflective of God at work in the world. As the earth spins on its axis, meandering through space and time, may we have the courage to embrace our upcycles and downcycles to spin through life and see the gifts of the possible, in each other, in St. Olaf and in Creation. Thanks Jim, for encouraging all to see and practice a different kind of human-nature.

Culture is Knowledge – Knowledge is Culture

From EnvSci Australia…09 Feb 2012

Today’s theme was “Ways of Knowing” as it relates to observing and recording culture.  Our guide for this experience was Dr. John Bradley, simply an extraordinary, gifted teacher, anthropologist and human.  John has worked with the Yanyuwa people of the Northern Territory; home country is the SW coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria.  He challenged our thinking about observing and recording cultures other than one’s own and underscored the importance of language, culture and knowledge as inextricably linked.  During our four hours together we heard and appreciated the complexity of Yanyuwa life and connection to country (for a good resource about what “country” means, see the internet book Nourishing Terrians by Rose).  Here I must stop to thank John, Stephanie and Elizabeth for all the conversations about different ways of knowing country.  What would the world be like if we all embraced an ethic about home or country that encapsulated just a fraction of knowledge held by original land owners or guardians?  Would we hear the ecological stories in the songs and dances shared among one another?  Would we see earth, sky, land, sea, all creatures as a living, breathing, sentient presence and our ancestors?  We can learn much if: 1) we have the courage to allow each person to embrace their full humanity rather than elevate one particular way of knowing above another; and 2) we see life and spirit in all elements of the world around us, not just the human part.