Art of the Earth

Chapter One: What is Art of the Earth? I - To Be Well is To Live in Deepening Connection to Creation The title of this book, Art of the Earth: Ancient Arts for a Green Future, boldly states that the arts which originated early in human history have something of vital importance to contribute to our cultural search for a healthier, more environmentally conscious, greener future. Art-making, this book insists, is essential to human well-being and our relationship to the planet. This introduction provides a multifaceted discussion of the problems and promises such bold assertions imply. We must begin this discussion by answering the following questions: What is health? What do we mean by wholeness and well-being? How we de?ne health affects how we live in the world. Because of this we need to understand what it means to be whole so that we can live in ways that honor, protect, preserve, and engender wholeness. We need a holistic view of what health is and how a healthy life is lived if we are to make the choices that will nurture such a life. We need to know - in our hearts,our bodies, and our minds - what it means to be well before we can practice well-being or truly begin to heal our own wounds or the world’s. As people living in industrialized nations, we are participants in a culture that claims to know how to create progress, how to develop lands that are undeveloped, and how to improve living conditions for those who do not live as we do. It could be argued that there is much evidence of well-being in our culture. We can expect to live into our 90’s; we have great material wealth. Are these not signs of the health that our culture offers? Yet there is also much evidence that all is far from well, that, in our rush to improve the world from only a human perspective, we have caused great damage to the Earth and brought about dangerous imbalances to all the natural systems by which life is sustained. The air is polluted; the polar ice caps are melting; the rain forests are disappearing; countless numbers of species are being brought to rapid extinction; we produce toxic and radioactive wastes that we bequeath as unwanted gifts to future generations; the soils that grow our food are eroding away and have been severely depleted through misuse. Amidst such environmental degradation, we describe feeling increasingly afraid of violence in the form of urban and corporate crime, children using guns in schools, sexual exploitation, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, road rage, suicide bombings, terrorism, and war. All this is evidence that things are not well in our culture, and that, in our naive efforts to improve life, develop and modernize, we have forgotten what it means to be whole, to be healthy, to protect our own well-being. We need a broader vision of health and well-being than our current pursuit of immediate material comfort and gain. Too often, in our culture, we look at disease as an enemy we must wage war against; we fear death and try to defeat it and keep it at bay. We understand health merely in terms of the machinelike functioning of the body. As long as the individual components of the body are functioning well enough to keep the machine running, we say we are healthy. Yet, consider carefully the following two descriptions of health: "Health involves an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals, plants, minerals and stars... seeking out all the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one’s singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe." (Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine, p. 19) "The Okanagan [of Native American culture] teaches that emotion or feeling is the capacity whereby community and land intersect in our beings and become part of us. By this capacity, we are one with others and all our surroundings. This bond is a priority for our individual wholeness and well-being. The strength with which we bond in the widest of circles gives us our criterion for leadership. It is the source from which the arts spring in celebration and affirmation of our connectedness." (Jeanette Armstrong, “Sharing One Skin,” in Mander and Goldsmith,The Case Against the Global Economy, p. 465) As you read the statements above, you will recognize many ways in which they differ from our cultural notions of health.