Spiritual Healers and Earth Stewards

This web site was born in the aftermath of America 911 over lunch with the founder of SHES, Ed Campbell. Basically, it emerged from one statement I made:

Ed, I'm on fire and unless I do something, I will burn up inside. With the presidential admonition to demonstrate our patriotism by fueling the economy with our spending, we are neglecting the one most important factor: if our dollars have the power to save the country from economic ruin, they also have the power to decide which segments of the economy succeed and which fail because we do not use our resources to sustain them.

In short, never have we had such an opportunity to vote with our dollars as now, and never has it been more important to vote consciously, keeping in mind the world that we pray will survive the current tensions, chaos, and uncertainty.

Everyone lives with more fear today than they did a few months ago. We are all witnessing the erosion of freedoms our ancestors fought so hard to win for all mankind, but more importantly we are seeing the outcome of decisions made in the 20th century to develop and dominate through all the various applications of science and its wedding with the military-industrial complex.

Growing up, I heard my uncle, a professor of oceanography, describe the diseases of oceanic fish, and my heart sighed for the fish and the portents that were not being taken seriously by those with the power to make a difference. At the end of his life, he published a small book of his favorite thoughts. Of these, the one most cherished by me was that to understand Nature, we must not disturb her.

Yesterday, one of my dear friends, featured in the showcase of the premier of this web site, quoted a story from the angelica plant told by Stephen Buhner in his book Sacred Plant Medicine:

Do you think it possible to dissect a human being, render it down into its constituent parts, feed them into a machine which measures such things and determine from that its ability to paint or create great music? No? Then why do you think that once you have done this with my body you know anything about me?

This is my point exactly, in our tedious dissection of our world into minutia, we are neglecting the whole, eradicating diversity in favor of megalomaniacal uniformity. We want children to master the same curricula, medicine to be standardized, and our own values and way of life to be accepted by Aboriginal Peoples as well as tribal elders of the last vestiges of the enormous ethnic richness of the citizens of our Planet.

Yes, we are all carrying passports with temporary visas to dwell on the surface of our fair Lady Gaia for the duration of one lifetime, a long or a short life depending on the vagaries of health, health care, food and food distribution, and the dispositions of those with the power to destroy through exploitation of our botanical resources, experimentation with pathogenic and mutagenic foods and medicines, economic lack of integrity, and war.

In the face of these great dangers, I wanted my own concerns and cries to be heard. Somewhere between the powerlessness that I feel on a microcosmic level, there is a feeling of infiniteness when it comes to the Divine Dream, the belief that this Planet is truly a Paradise, a place of incredible abundance of plant life, enormous variety of animal life, and equally amazing diversity of human cultures, beliefs, and life styles. The colorfulness of life on Earth is nourishing to me. I love the different perspectives and the languages used to express those perspectives; and I would feel remiss as a soul if I failed to do my part to preserve what I can through my own efforts.

Thus, it has become a question of how to achieve the goal of Planetary Preservation. Ed suggested starting a web site and inviting everyone who cares to join in an effort to raise awareness around environmental and ecological well being. For my part, I felt that a strong commitment to lend our economic support to deserving enterprises would gradually shift the balance of power towards those whose goal it is to maintain harmony on this small piece of Galactic real estate.

Therefore, we would invite everyone to participate, to make suggestions, to provide links and information to others . . . and wherever possible, spend your money where you know you are supporting the world you want to be part of your future.

Blessings,

Ingrid Naiman, Wednesday, February 13, 2002

 

International Assembly of Spiritual Healers & Earth Stewards
9534 14th Ave NW
Seattle, Washington 98117-2308

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Photo credit: cropped jpg of painting by Nicholas Roerich