The “Spiritual Infrastructure” of Climate
Rooted By Pain; Fueled By Hope - Wisdom from Christiana Figueres
Last week,
and I hosted “A Deep Breath Amidst The Storm: A Climate Leaders’ Retreat”.As we closed, I was feeling tender, open, and hopeful. Softened by a powerful grief ritual, inspired by the vision of our participants, and rejuvenated by two days of deep presence in stunning natural beauty.
The morning after, as I headed out for a run, I received a ping about a podcast on “Ecological Hope and Spiritual Evolution”.
Twenty minutes later, I was leaning against a tree, in tears.
Christiana Figueres gets shit done. She led the UN Climate Committee through the signing of the Paris Agreement, the most meaningful international accord on climate policy to date. There are few individuals who have moved the needle more on a global level on climate.
She’s been in the room where it happens, navigated difficult tradeoffs, endured many sleepless nights and disappointment, and been a relentless public servant. Having grappled with these realities, she’s arrived at the understanding that self-inquiry and a revolution in consciousness is foundational. In this conversation with Krista Tippett, she calls for an evolution in our spiritual and emotional selves as essential to our response to the climate crisis.
Her experience navigating the hard realities of decarbonization makes her argument more compelling. Spiritual teachers have long advocated for the need for individual and collective transformation in response to our changing world, but I find it striking that Christiana implores us to do the same.
“How do we manage our emotions better? How do we choose to act out while staying grounded in our emotions, which means understanding, embracing the pain, the suffering that comes to us every single day; and, at the same time, understanding that that pain and that fear and that grief is an alarm bell. It’s an alarm bell to not sink into the bed covers again, but rather jump out of bed and do what needs to be done. And it is that grounding in our emotions that, again, puts those two things side-by-side: “Yes, I am in deep pain, and yes, precisely because of that, I am committed to do everything within my sphere of influence.”
In addition to the other challenges of the modern world, each of us is wrestling with the “chronic emergency” of climate change - a crisis that is simultaneously urgent, unrelenting, and unlikely to be resolved in our lifetime. Our bodies and minds aren’t designed to navigate a struggle like this, and so we must be intentional with how we relate to it.
Last week in our retreat, participants explored the way we flagellate ourselves for not doing enough, our patterns of taking personal responsibility for the entire climate crisis, and our fear for future generations. These are heavy burdens to bear - they are what drives many of us into this work, but also come with a cost. How are our minds and hearts shaped when we’re fueled by fear?
Christiana offers a new way to relate to this pain and fear. She invites us to use the depth of our pain to root us, and to use hope, joy, and beauty as the fuel that drives us.
Rooted by pain; fueled by hope.
Without the pain, we’re bypassing - avoiding emotional discomfort by refusing to engage with the difficulty of this moment.
Without hope, we slide into despair.
We must develop the emotional and spiritual infrastructure to do our work sustainably, willingly, and joyfully.
Last week in the foothills of the Rockies, we built a bit more of this infrastructure.
We welcomed our pain, honoring and releasing it through rhythm, song, and flame in a grief ritual.
We welcomed our doubt, examining our old stories and finding new visionary intentions to light our path.
And we moved a little closer to changing our fuel source - from pain and fear, to hope and possibility.
Some final words from Christiana:
Climate change is the arena in which we as human beings are being called to strengthen our muscles - to evolve to a higher sense of awareness, consciousness, and action. We measure that evolution in the way that we understand our relationship with nature.
Change Your Fuel Source
Inspired by this conversation and our retreat, I’m hosting a free workshop next week on transforming challenges into visionary action.
FUELED BY HOPE
Join us if you resonate with any of the following…
You feel stuck in an ongoing issue or emotion.
You feel overwhelmed by the converging crises of our world.
You crave a middle way - neither bypassing difficulty nor becoming mired in it.
You sometimes take yourself too seriously ;)
You’ll walk away with…
A clear sense of what the issues are that are most draining your energy (this can be surprising).
A visionary intention - a statement to guide how you navigate any upcoming situation.
A toolbelt of practices and perspectives to help navigate the inevitable challenges of the future, both personal and collective.
Deeper roots in the natural world, to steady us in the storms to come.
Great article!
I'd be curious to hear more about the connection between our lived experience of pain and spirituality. It seems there is a deep longing in many who commit themselves to work on climate, and yet I don't see much rich dialogue about the spiritual aspects of this work.
My sense is that our culture has swung so far away from institutional structures of religious practice that we have lost the ability to understand ourselves as spiritual beings in the way that indigenous communities would.
I know there are people in the climate movement who don't believe in 'spirit' or 'soul' and instead are compelled by the connection to the great symphony of life itself expressed in material form through mother earth and all her beings.
My personal journey has been one of untangling the power structures and cultural heritage of religious dogma to understand the deep essence of self outside of space and time. Nature gives us a glimpse into this transcendent understanding of self and my hunch is that many working for nature are actually in pursuit of this deep spiritual longing that comes as we discover our rightful place as one with nature, as stewards of nature, as co-creators of life.