What Does It Mean To Sustain?

For me, sustaining means providing a means of nurture, of knowledge, which will not be consumed by itself. I think the culture we live in is "running on empty," is "devouring its young," is "burning the candle at both ends," (you can play this game, choose your own metaphor).

We can do something to change the direction of this behavior. I learned more about it by training as a "facilitator" for a group that calls itself the Pachamama Alliance. They conduct seminars that explain the relationship between environmental sustainability, social justice, and spiritual fulfillment. Click on this link to see a schedule of their upcoming seminars (these are held periodically at sites all over the world; locally there is one in Basking Ridge, NJ on March 9).

http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org/beta/component/option,com_events/task,details/Itemid,3/

Of course, you may do other things to help achieve the 7th Millennium Development Goal:

ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY.

We are a part of the whole universe. One way of understanding this is to hear the stories of people who live more sustainably than we do. Here is a passage from my poetic paraphrase of Dine Bahane, the Navajo Creation Story, that I think expresses this idea:

The white corn became a new man,
The first father of the first son,
And he had a willing partner:

The yellow corn, the first woman,
The first mother of a daughter,
And these two were our ancestors.

It was the wind that gave them breath.
They could know life before their death.
And so it is with us, today.

When this White Wind ceases to blow,
We become speechless, then we die.
All people in this world, today.

In the skin of your fingertip:
Before your eye there, hold it up;
You see the trail of the White Wind.

There you will see where the wind blew,
When first people from corn ears grew.
I say, may this wind never end!