Author Archives: Dennis Rivers

Joanna Macy Video on Nuclear Weapons
The Challenges of the Poison Fire


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Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy explores the spiritual challenges to humanity presented by nuclear weapons.  She is filmed by Cynthia Jurs, Director of the Earth Treasure Vase Project, a Tibetan spiritual practice of filling clay jars with prayer scripts and small objects of deep meaning to the givers, and then burying the vases at trouble spots around the world.  The Treasure Vase ritual asserts the power of consciousness and intention in a world imagined as full of only inert objects.  Several Treasure Vases have been buried at nuclear weapon sites.




the ecological imperative to love all creatures great and small

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A one-page mini-manifesto by Dennis Rivers
and uncounted zillions of ecological kindred spirits  – 2018 revision

Most people accept that life, to at least some degree, depends on love, because we recognize that babies need food, shelter and affection, which they cannot arrange for themselves in the absence of loving parents and kin. But the idea that we have a need to care for the entire web of life and people, well known to many native peoples, is only beginning to be explored in Western countries.

The emergence of industrial society and its long-lived toxic by-products, from pesticides to leaking nuclear waste tanks, has fundamentally changed our relationship to the natural world, the ground on which we stand. For eons, wrecking the planet has been beyond human reach. But our impact on the Web of Life is now so large that I am drawn to the conclusion that complex life will only continue on Planet Earth if we care for all people as our beloved kin, and all creatures as if they were our beloved children.
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The Spiritual Significance of Gaia Theory
A Talk by Dennis Rivers — March 1, 2018

A Vision of Gaia — Artist unknown but deeply appreciated

March 1, 2018

Gaia Theory is the proposal by scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis that the Earth is like a giant organism, with many balancing factors (soil, atmosphere, ocean, web of life) acting together through complex feedback loops to keep an environment favorable to life. 

This talk about Gaia Theory was presented to the Word and Life Study Fellowship in Santa Barbara, California.  Over a period of ten weeks, The Fellowship asked a variety of speakers to expand on the themes explored in a recent book, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth.

The chapter I was invited to expand on was about Gaia Theory and the soul of the world, written by Jungian analyst Jules Cashford.

Gaia Theory

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Awakening-to-Connectedness Meditative Prayer — Long version

Awakening-to-Connectedness Meditative Prayer — Long version

(or pray the prayer of your own heart for the benefit of all life)


With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I open my life to infinite well-being.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I open my life to beautiful aliveness.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I open my life to radiant compassion.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I open my life to see more deeply into the heart

of everything and everyone around me.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I open my life more deeply

to the creative unfolding of all my abilities



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I deepen my commitment to respect, to nurture, to awaken

the well-being of all people and all sentient creatures.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I deepen my commitment to respect, to nurture, to awaken

the beautiful aliveness unfolding in everyone and everything.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I deepen my commitment to respect, to nurture, to awaken

the radiant compassion yearning to be expressed

in all my brothers and sisters.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I deepen my commitment to respect, to nurture, to awaken,

the capacity for transformative understanding

in all my sisters and brothers.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I deepen my commitment to respect, to nurture, to awaken

the creative unfolding and full development

of all my brothers and sisters.



With every breath, with every step,

with every dream, with every lifetime,

I deepen my commitment

to nurture and protect the web of life.

David Attenborough: The Truth About Climate Change (BBC – Part 1)


A two part documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough – The Truth About Climate Change. Like us https://www.facebook.com/CarbonControl Follow us https://twitter.com/CarbonControl

Some extraordinary phenomena have taken place in recent times; Hurricane Katrina, the heat wave of 2003, polar bears swimming in search of ice and vast swarms of insects enveloping an African village. But are these isolated incidents or are they omens of a greater global change?

Sir David discovers that the world is warming at an unprecedented rate, and finds out why this is now far beyond any normal allowance for cyclical fluctuation. But are humans to blame? These changes are already in motion whatever we do now, but Sir David believes that we may be able to act to prevent a catastrophe. People around the world are having to adapt their way of life as the climate changes; the Inuit in the Arctic whose hunting is now limited, the Pacific island inhabitants forced to move as their homes disappear beneath the waves, and the Siberian homes slowly sinking into the permafrost. Sir David investigates some of the possible scenarios for the future, including rising sea-levels, insect plagues and an increase in diseases.

All rights: BBC

David Attenborough: The Truth About Climate Change (BBC – Part 2)

 

Two part documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough – The Truth About Climate Change. Like ushttps://www.facebook.com/CarbonControl Follow us https://twitter.com/CarbonControl

Some extraordinary phenomena have taken place in recent times; Hurricane Katrina, the heat wave of 2003, polar bears swimming in search of ice and vast swarms of insects enveloping an African village. But are these isolated incidents or are they omens of a greater global change?

Sir David discovers that the world is warming at an unprecedented rate, and finds out why this is now far beyond any normal allowance for cyclical fluctuation. But are humans to blame? These changes are already in motion whatever we do now, but Sir David believes that we may be able to act to prevent a catastrophe. People around the world are having to adapt their way of life as the climate changes; the Inuit in the Arctic whose hunting is now limited, the Pacific island inhabitants forced to move as their homes disappear beneath the waves, and the Siberian homes slowly sinking into the permafrost. Sir David investigates some of the possible scenarios for the future, including rising sea-levels, insect plagues and an increase in diseases.

All rights: BBC

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 Years Later



August 8, 2015 — Mary Burton Risley — Op/Ed: Silver City Press

In August of 1945, I was a saucy three year old, daily comic relief for my eight month’s pregnant mother, my grandmother and my already war-widowed aunt, all of us living in Roswell with my gravely ill elderly grandfather.

As a career Marine officer, my father had already fought in the bloody South Sea Island battles of Guadalcanal, Saipan and Tinian and was training for the planned invasion of Japan at Kyushu.

Then, on August 6th and 9th our country detonated the first atomic weapons ever used over the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Estimates of the death toll during the first days and months after the explosions range from 225,000 to 240,000 human beings. The visual target building at Nagasaki was the city’s Urakami Cathedral, in which 6,000 of the city’s 12,000 Roman Catholic parishioners were worshiping, all killed instantly by the explosion. People died horribly for years after, as well, from radiation-induced cancers. Continue reading →

A Song for Los Alamos

Los Alamos Fire Burns Near Nuclear Weapons Factory
July 2011

set to music by don michael sampson .

los-alamos-album-cover

“los alamos”

 

The mountains, the forests, they’re all on fire

No sweet healing rain, situation’s dire

Flames crawling up the canyon, trees burning down

Smoke everywhere, choking the towns

Could be Armageddon, flames getting close

Running down where they built the bomb at Los Alamos

 

You see the devil moved there before World War II

It was kind of like a hideout, kind of hidden from view

He and his evil henchmen gathered around

To build a bomb that could bring the whole world down

So they worked and they slaved, they knew they were getting close

To the ultimate killing device up at Los Alamos

 

So they built them a bomb, the atomic kind

They set a small one off, man it did shine

A nuclear sun exploded with mushroom cloud flames

They called it fat boy, that was its’ name

They dropped it on Hiroshima, Nagasaki too

They said it saved democracy, saved me and you

Death and destruction, nothing even comes close

It all came from the town of Los Alamos

 

I’m writing this song from the mountains nearby

On an early morning, smoke covering up the sky

Flames racing towards tons of nuclear waste

If that blows up, it’s the end of this place

Meanwhile, the devil’s laughing crazy, fanning the flames

Call it karma, just call it insane

I’m sitting straight down wind, is the end getting close

Is it pay back time up in Los Alamos

 

What goes around comes around, that’s what they say

I guess that’s really true there is no other way

When you play with fire, you’re going to get burned

On this beautiful earth, the lesson’s never learned

By the minds of evil, the minds of death

The devil draws up another killing breath

And leaves behind reminders in every place

They stay burned into the ground, can’t ever erase

What he does here, what he lets loose

And the rest of us, we cannot choose

Pray for each other, pray it’s not a lethal dose

That’s dancing up in the flames of Los Alamos

 

 

What do we do to save this place

Deadly poisons trying to kill Mother Nature’s grace

Human voices pleading trying to get through

I’m sure the Lord is weeping, angels crying too

Say a holy prayer, shed your sorrowful tears

For this type of poison last for 10,000 years

If the fire gets knocked down and this place doesn’t blow

There will be a next time, everybody knows

It’s the yin and the yang, the good and the bad

Fighting each other always, it’s so sad

The bad hangs around forever, on it the door you can never close

For future generations, more trouble and woes

Off in the distance sits Los Alamos

 

So I drink a cup of morning coffee, close the window up

Wrapping nervous hands around my nervous cup

Pray it will be alright, pray it will be ok

That the flames will stop, the smoke will go away

Disaster will be averted, the blue skies will show

As I look twenty miles up the road to Los Alamos

 

Pueblo warrior raises up his powerful hand

Angry at what has taken place on his sacred land

Again call it karma, call it reaping what you sow

But the truth of all things remain, the truth always shows

And the fire light’s shining harder now, it can’t be slowed

Burning straight up toward the mesa and Los Alamos

 

 

 

written, produced and performed by

Don Michael Sampson

© 2011 Wind in the Trees Music

B.M.I.

Pope Francis’s Encyclical on Ecology

Presented in cooperation with www.LiberationTheology.org.


pope-environment

Download the PDF of the Encyclical:
English :: Español :: Française :: Deutsche ::  italiano :: Português :: Arabic :: Polski

10 key excerpts from Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment 
(Washington Post 6/18/2015)

History is Made as Pope Francis’ Encyclical is Presented in the Vatican
(America 6/18/2015)
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