Earth Consciousness
As the name of the seminary suggests, the role of the Earth is central to all aspects of this school. Religious institutions and dogma, as well as spiritual frameworks and individually held beliefs, are powerful sources for shaping how we see and act toward the Earth-both as a whole and the individual living beings who share our world with us. Over the centuries of human culture-building the voice of the Earth has become muted at best and at worse extinguished. Such an absence in the daily lives of women, men, and children has created avenues of illness, disillusionment, and loss. Many individuals can feel this loss while others simply act in increasingly consuming ways to fulfill the needs left raw from separation. As such, the school sees its position as a vital source of change and advocacy on behalf of the Earth itself and on restoring the human community to the Earth. In this fashion, the education of each student is framed within a growing sense of their own reconnection to the Earth and the development of a spiritual language to articulate the value of the Earth and our relationship to it.
