“WE ARE JUST ONE MEMBER OF A GREAT COMMUNITY OF LIVING BEINGS.”
– Aldo Leopold, American Conservationist
How might our view of the Earth crisis change if we were to remember that the world is not solely what humans perceive it to be? How might it shift our own perceptions of the world to realize that the entire planet comes alive through the perceptions and experiences of all life here, not just human life? And that all of this life – human and other-than-human – is in danger of being lost due to climate change and environmental collapse.
“ABSOLUTE, UNMIXED ATTENTION IS THE PUREST FORM OF PRAYER.”
– Simone Weil, French Writer and Philosopher
If you were to look out your window right now, you’d see an entire world paying absolute, unmixed attention: the bee to the flower; a spider to its web; a bird to its nestlings. Every species on the planet experiences its world through its senses, a concept German biologist Jakob von Uexküll called “the umwelt”. The bee outside your window sees ultraviolet light; the bird has four color cones where we have three and can, by extension, perceive colors we literally can’t imagine. The spider, who has no ears, can nevertheless “hear” with its legs. And far outside your window somewhere, whales are singing songs we can’t understand and diving toward depths we can’t fathom, let alone survive. In other words, every species – including humans – bears witness to the world in its own unique way, constantly attuned and paying attention to aspects of its environment that are most material to its survival and, by extension, to the survival of the entire planet as well. It is a vast communal effort of paying attention.
“I’M SO GRATEFUL TO BE ALIVE AT TIME WHEN THERE IS SO MUCH WORTH SAVING.”
– Ethan Tapper, American Forester, Author
So, if each species brings the planet to life and plays its own part in the survival of the whole, might we then ask: What about us? What part do humans play in this stewardship and what is our uniquely human “umwelt”? How are we meant to pay attention and bear witness to the world?
Among our many capacities, from creativity to reason, we seem to have been gifted with an umwelt that also enables us to not just survive in the world, but to perceive – with all our senses – the beauty of the world. We have the ability to be swept away, stunned, stopped short in our busy tracks, bowled over and moved to tears by the sights and sounds and smells of this world. We have the capacity to feel wonder. We can be awed by the world. Surely, this human superpower to not just perceive the world with our senses, but to behold it with our entire being, is itself a profound and beautiful gift. Because it means that we – each one of us – has been blessed with the extraordinary ability to fall in love with the world.
If this loving way of paying attention to the world is fundamental to our humanity, then how is it we’ve lost our way and brought our planet to this dangerous tipping point? What else are we losing by losing sight of our own gifts, our own humanity? What have we forgotten about ourselves? And how do we bear witness to it all – to the joy and the beauty as well as the sorrow and the suffering? Because this is also part of our humanity, this ability to not just rejoice, but to grieve.
“ONE WAY TO OPEN YOUR EYES IS TO ASK YOURSELF: WHAT IF I HAD NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE? WHAT IF I KNEW I WOULD NEVER SEE IT AGAIN?”
– Rachel Carson, “The Sense of Wonder”
As far as science can tell, humans are the only species that can cry emotional tears. We have the astonishing ability to lament the loss of a river, an ocean or an ecosystem, a planet. We can mourn the loss of a species other than our own. We have the capacity to realize that this loss means there is now one less way of perceiving the world, one less way of paying attention to the world – and if poet J.D. McClatchy is right, if love is the “quality of attention we pay to things”, then there is also one less way of loving the world. Since we have this ability to pay attention not only to the parts of the environment that directly affect us, but to the whole, shouldn’t we ask: what is our responsibility to that whole?
Please join us and register below for the next Earth Crisis Forum, where we will ask these questions in an effort to discover how our shifts in attention have contributed to the problem and in what ways we can pay better attention to what is happening around us – so we might remember that our uniquely human way of paying attention is one of our most beautiful gifts to the world.
There will be a twenty-minute meditation led by Fr. Laurence Freeman prior to the panel portion of this event for those wishing to participate. The meditation will begin at 11:30am EST. You will receive a link the day before the event.
Speakers
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Laurence Freeman OSB
Laurence Freeman OSB is a Benedictine monk of the Monastery of S. Maria del Pilastrello, Lendinara, Italy, in the Benedictine Congregation of Monte Oliveto. He is Director of Bonnevaux and of The World Community for Christian Meditation. Laurence studied English Literature at New College, Oxford University. Before entering monastic life, he worked with the United Nations in New York, in banking and journalism. He is the author of several books, including his latest Tasting Wisdom. Father Laurence has collaborated with the Dalai Lama on many dialogues and the groundbreaking book, The Good Heart.
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Kaveh Guilanpour
Kaveh Guilanpour is the Vice President for International Strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, overseeing the international aspects of the work of C2ES including in relation to the United Nations negotiations process. He has worked in the environmental sector in policy and legal roles for more than two decades, with almost 15 years of experience on international climate change issues related to the UNFCCC. More recently, he served as a senior member of the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Team.
MARGARET RENKL
Margaret Renkl is the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss and Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South (which won the 2020 Reed Award for Environment Writing), and The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year (NYT Book Review Editor’s Choice, winner of the 2024 Southern Book Prize, is a New York Times bestseller as well as Reese Witherspoon’s 100th book club pick). Her next book, Leaf, Cloud, Crow: A Weekly Backyard Journal is a companion to The Comfort of Crows that offers 52 writing prompts and plentiful advice for studying the natural world. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear each Monday.
Dr. Lyla June Johnston
Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is an Indigenous musician, author, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her multi-genre presentation style has engaged audiences word-wide towards personal, collective, and ecological healing. She blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, her graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.
Ethan Tapper
Ethan Tapper is an internationally-recognized forester, bestselling author, and content creator from Vermont. His first book — How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World — was published in September, 2024. In 2017, Ethan bought the 175-acre forest that he now calls “Bear Island.” When he bought Bear Island, it had, as he says: “every problem that a forest could have.” As Ethan worked to help this forest heal, Bear Island helped him crystalize many of the ideas that would eventually become How to Love a Forest. In 2025, Ethan partnered with illustrator Frances Cannon to publish Willow and the Storm, a children’s book about forest ecology, resilience, regeneration, and the end of human life.
Rosanna Xia
Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. She directed and produced the award-winning feature documentary film, Out of Plain Sight, and her celebrated book on climate adaptation, California Against the Sea, received the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, a gold medal from the California Book Awards, and a Great Reads from Great Places citation from the United States Library of Congress, among other honors. She was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for explanatory reporting, and her work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series.
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Tom Mustill
Tom Mustill is a conservation biologist turned filmmaker and writer, specialising in stories where people and nature meet. His first book How To Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication has won several awards, been translated into 13 languages and was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022. His film collaborations, often with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, have won two Webbys, a BAFTA, and an Emmy nomination, gone viral, been played at the UN, in Times Square, and on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. He lives in Brighton and is an ambassador for Whale and Dolphin Conservation. He is beginning a PhD on dolphin cultural behaviour and how to represent their agency and relationships to help resolve human dolphin conflicts with Animals In The Room.
Registration
There is no cost to attend this event. However, if you’re able to give a little something we would be very grateful. Please, click here to donate.