Order of the Sacred Earth

An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action

Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson & Jennifer Berit Listug

Paperback
978-1-939681-86-7
US $16.95 /CAN $22.99
Ebook
978-1-939681-87-4
US $12.95 /CAN $16.99
July 2018

Matthew Fox, a 76-year-old elder, activist and spiritual theologian, along with Skylar Wilson, a 33-year-old wilderness guide, leader of inter-cultural ceremonies, and an event producer, and Jennifer Berit Listug, a 28-year-old writer, spiritual leader, and publicist, are presenting a challenge and an opportunity in the vision launched in this modest book. That vision is about creating an Order of the Sacred Earth. Essay contributors to the book and its vision include Mirabai Starr, Brian Thomas Swimme, Adam Bucko, and David Korten.

Matthew Fox has been called a maverick, a rebel, and by some a heretic. In his quest for a viable spirituality he discovered the ancient (but often suppressed) creation spirituality tradition that honors the sacredness of all creation. He has worked closely with Native spiritual leaders, feminists, activists, and others, and got himself in trouble with his mother church and the pope. He has written 34 books on spirituality and culture now translated in 67 languages and has taught in many schools including Stanford, the University of Creation Spirituality, which he founded, and the soon to be born Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality in Boulder, Colorado. Among his books are Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journal, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Times.

Skylar Wilson, MA is a graduate of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies and founder of Wild Awakenings, a wilderness journey and rites of passage organization dedicated to the thriving of Earth, life, and humanity. Skylar has experienced the healing power of wilderness over and over while guiding trips around the world for adolescents and adults over the past 15 years. Skylar is director of an inter-cultural ritual called the Cosmic Mass, which attempts to bring together the world’s spiritual traditions into an embodied, transformational ritual that builds community through dancing and the arts. He serves on the Vision Council at the Stepping Stones Project where he continues to lead two on-going rites of passage groups for teenagers. He enjoys surfing, swimming, climbing, writing, giving and receiving bodywork, officiating weddings and end-of-life rituals, as well as one-on-one integration sessions with people of all ages and backgrounds. www.wildawakenings.com

Jennifer Berit Listug works in book publishing as a private consultant for authors assisting with manuscript editing and book publicity. She is also the co-director of Wild Awakenings, an adult rites of passage organization dedicated to fostering the thriving of earth, life, and humanity. Jennifer was on the Board of Trustees at the Unity in Marin Spiritual Community for three years, serving as the Board President for 18 months. Also at Unity in Marin, Jennifer was a guest speaker for Sunday mornings, she led Rites of Passage groups for teenagers, and founded a young adult interfaith group committed to conscious connection, community service, and social activism. She is a passionate hiker, reader, writer, and public speaker.

“The Order of the Sacred Earth is a vision as vital and inspired as any on our planet in this time of cultural collapse and regeneration—a gathering together of mystic warriors and visionary artisans of cultural evolution. There are now millions of us—imaginal cells of emerging ecocentric cultures—but what is needed is a consciously convened community that brings us together to synergistically deepen and amplify our artistry and to train and initiate others. Fox and Wilson’s co-dreamed vision draws from the very heart of the dream of the Earth.”—Bill Plotkin, author of Soulcraft and Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche

“The Order of the Sacred Earth not only calls us home to our true nature as Earth, but also offers us invaluable guidance and company on the way.”—Joanna Macy, environmental activist and author of eight books, including Active Hope

“The creation of he Order of the Sacred Earth is a magnificent step forward for humanity. What we need now are sacred activists willing to come together to live conscious and sacred lives while pooling their resources and passions to preserve the earth and humanity. I am honored to celebrate and join this great adventure!”—Andrew Harvey, author of over thirty books, including Way of Passion and The Hope

“I feel grateful for this inspiring book and the inspiring initiative it launches. The Order of the Sacred Earth gives me new hope; its founders are visionaries who set out a plausible program to engage all aspects of our life, and motivate much-needed change. I hope and pray that their message and their Order will spread and transform our relationships with the Earth and with each other.”—Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, author of Science Set Free

“In this timely book, the authors provide a blueprint for creating a sacred community, one united by compassion, social action, and a commitment to protecting the sacred earth. The historic framework of spiritual renaissance outlined in the book provides a helpful perspective for relating to this call to a new order. May everyone who reads this book be inspired to take the vows of The Order of the Sacred Earth so they may find the clarity in commitment, direction, purpose and vision the authors so generously offer!”—Isa Gucciardi, PhD, author of Coming to Peace and founding director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream

“It is with great joy that I discover this vision of an Order of the Sacred Earth….Everywhere I go now, as I travel and teach, I am seeing these seeds bursting through the ravaged landscape. The youth I meet are hungry for meaningful spiritual practice and are wary of organized religion…..I want to be part of this revolutionary effort to build a holy container in which to access and express the deepest truths of love echoing from the heart of the world’s wisdom communities in honor of ‘Our sister, mother earth,’ who sustains us.”—Mirabai Star, spiritual teacher and author of God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity & Islam; Caravan of No Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation

“'I promise to be the best lover and defender of Mother Earth that I can be.' Might this sacred pledge required of those who join the Order of the Sacred earth save humanity and our Earth Mother? It is surely worth a try....I welcome the opportunity to find a spiritual home and intellectual identity in an Order of the Sacred Earth in fellowship with other spiritual-intellectual— activist seekers/doers seeking a deeper truth beyond the partial and outdated cosmologies of established religious dogma and political ideology.”—David Korten, author of Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth; When Corporations Rule the World; The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

“What we are facing demands a strategy and commitment of this magnitude and this courage! We cannot stand isolated and expect to make any real difference. I thank Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Listug for gathering us together.”—Fr. Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

“The Order of the Sacred Earth has the potential to be a shapeshifter of our culture, transforming humankind on the individual and community levels to nurture our relationships with all of life. This powerful vision will touch the hearts of sacred activists while helping to heal our Earth.”—Michael Murphy, co-founder of Esalen Institute and author of The Future of the Body and Golf in the Kingdom

“Creative and sensitive humans alive today yearn to make a difference in the world. They can feel the creativity that surges within them….What they need is a way of activating these creative powers. That is what the Order of the Sacred Earth is.”—Brian Thomas Swimme, cosmologist and author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe

“Every human being benefits from intimacy with a place where the original wild temple is still present as a felt-sense, not just a gorgeous view. We have psycho-spiritual receptors for an experiential, embodied, mystical sense of the sacred Earth….Yet we are a long way from such a world. But now, with the emerging Order of the Sacred Earth,…we are closer to an articulated vision of what such a world might be. We are generating new communities who react and participate in a profoundly meaningful, mystical relationship with our shared larger body, Earth.”—Geneen Marie Haugen, loves to intertwine mysteries of nature and psyche and has contributed to many spirituality journals

“We need a new interspiritual order. One that exists outside of the current (or failing) institutions and that encourage us to, in the words of philosopher Ken Wilber, ‘show up, wake up and grow up.’…It is my hope that this new order serves as a mark of identity—a form of tribal war paint—so that we can see each other more clearly,….Only then can we become more human and less alone….Only then can we, as a species, live to tell a new story and find each other inside it.”—Joran Slane Oppelt, international speaker, author, interfaith minister and singer/songwriter and founder of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and Integral Church there

“The Order of the Sacred Earth enables us to integrate our varied actions worldwide, energizing our quantum connectedness for greater personal and planetary well- being. Accepting our roles as visionaries, co-creators, and Earth lovers, we can be daring collaborators with each other and nature.”—J. Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus, DHL, award-winning radio broadcaster (www.21stcenturyradio.com), author, social justice, environmental and animal activist

“The Order of the Sacred Earth can provide not merely new ideas and practices, but also a community in which to grow and to nourish them. Just as plants require soil in which to flourish, ideas and practices require strong communities….Our work succeeds when we can create caring communities in which young people are free and trust one another….So the work of the OSE is deeply revolutionary, for it challenges our most fundamental assumptions in capitalist culture. To re-image a core narrative…can, and will, be done, through the commitment to creating, through the order, a new kind of caring community.”—Theodore Richards, educator and founder of the Chicago Wisdom Project, author of The Great Re-imagining: Spirituality in an Age of Apocalypse

“The Order of the Sacred Earth will be like that—full of joy, because it is an invitation to participate in the evolutionary intentions of the Universe. What could be more purposeful and fun than that?! The revolution that Matthew, Skylar and Jennifer are ushering in and leading is perhaps the most important ever, because we really are on the precipice and everything, everything is at stake. So let’s take the vow: I promise to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that I can be; roll up our sleeves and get to it! Don’t forget to bring your banjo and dancing shoes!”—Kristal Parks, activist whose special commitment for ten years was to defend elephants in Kenya, author of Re-Enchanting the World: A Call to Mystical Activism

“We can begin to feel our own ‘impeccable warrior’ rise up to participate in what Joanna Macy has so aptly called ‘The Great Turning.’ For Macy, to participate in the restoration of the earth community’s body and spirit is to find ourselves engaging in any or all of the following dimensions: Holding Actions, propagating Shifts in consciousness, and generating structural Changes. I contend that every individual can participate in this Great Turning, and that one of the great challenges of our time is for each of us to figure out how and where we plug into this psycho-spiritual current. Perhaps the OSE can be a guiding community, helping us put our revolutionary passion into action.”—Trevien Stanger, tree planter who has planted 100,000 new trees and who teaches environmental studies at a community college in Vermont

“It is this broken world that is ‘waiting,’ as Henri Nouwen wrote, ‘...for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God’ that they are free to imagine a radical new political and social reality that reflects compassion and justice. It is this broken world from which Matthew Fox’s dream of the Order of the Sacred Earth has emerged. And it is this broken world that has called forth the Holy Resistance we witnessed at Standing Rock.”—Adam Bucko and Rev. Chelsea Macmillian

“As an African American male, witnessing the suffering of poor health quality within my community, I felt I had to do something about it….Over time, I soon came to understand that the well-being in the black community is inseparable from that of everyone else and the planet as a whole. The Order of the Sacred Earth calls on us to take full responsibility for our connection to this Earth. It recognizes that we are the Earth. It understands that care of the Earth is care for ourselves, and that its health reflects that of our own. The OSE offers a great opportunity for us to come together to not only solve the problems that face our existence but to become more fully human…..the more fully human we become, the more we’ll embrace a manner of living that is sustainable, communal, affable, loving, kind, and compassionate.”—Broderick Rodell, PhD, ND, whose passions include capoeira and yoga along with other learning systems to awaken values that support human evolutionary consciousness

“The idea and vision to have a spiritual order to celebrate, heal, and protect Mother Earth is a gallant one. To dedicate ourselves to this community will require deep prayer and the practice of nonviolence as we witness the destruction of our planet…..I hear the earth crying for people to rise up and act as if every decision we make will either destroy or protect the planet….The OSE is asking us to serve, give back, to become part of a spiritual order. They ask us to hope….I commit to defending mother Earth and to being in circle with those who say 'yes' to this vision.”—Deborah Santana, activist for peace and social justice and documentary filmmaker

“As I turn the last page of Matthew’s, Skylar’s and Jennifer’s writing, my heart leaps with a sound ‘Yes!’ One year and a half ago, when I started contributing to the Italian Association for creation spirituality, I did so out of a desire to bring the experience of the sacred out of the cage in which it has been convicted by both religious fundamentalism and materialistic atheism, and I intuitively feel that OSE may be just what we need to accomplish this….Many of us have lost a framework where our ‘experience of the sacred’ can get nurtured, cultivated, and hence bear fruit.…OSE, as I understand it, is precisely such a framework: its openness to all wisdom traditions, its independence from all dogmas, together with its being deeply rooted in what we all share—a life-on this wondrous planet—can thus be the key to open the cage.”—Claudia Picardi, seeker, scientist and teacher born and living in Italy who is foremost a person who is constantly striving for creative, spiritual, and intellectual freedom

"I knew on the night of the winter solstice, sitting next to a graduate student at the Fox Institute of Creation Spirituality who was of Mennonite background, that the evening would have a very inclusive cast. We were all there to celebrate sacred earth and to begin the journey of Commitment to this Order of Sacred Earth. Now that I have had more time to spend with the various components of the book, Order of the Sacred Earth, I realize the seriousness of this challenge: the realignment of my life to commit to saving sacred Earth. A reading of the book really fills one with the serious nature of this new Order of Sacred Earth. Restoring a sense of the sacred to our present day population is the medicine needed to saving planet earth. There is no doubt in my mind that my sister, Dorothy Stang, known world wide as 'the angel of the Amazon' had a very 'active sense of the living landscape' around her in the Amazon. Her appreciation for Sacred Earth was enhanced by her mentor Matthew Fox when she attended the Institute of Creation Spirituality. Murdered in the Amazon, she paid the ultimate price for standing up for the rainforest and the peasant farmers earning their modest living there. This book has Dorothy written all over it. I can hear her saying, with all the hope and joy her voice can muster, 'See, we can do it, together we can save planet earth.' Just as Dot reached out to the young around her, Matthew reaches out to all the young through the likes of Skylar Wilson who has painted a challenging mountain to climb and Jennifer Lustig who explains the commitment mystic warriors will need to climb this mountain." —Tom Stang, brother to Dorothy Stang

“Hats off once again to the inimitable Matthew Fox who refuses at the age of 76 to still his voice or diminish his vision.”—Spirituality and Practice

How did you three meet?
Jennifer Berit Listug: Skylar and Matthew met when Skylar was finishing up his master’s program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Skylar went to his advisor, Brian Swimme, and told him he was looking for a mentor. Brian thought of Matthew and connected the two of them. Shortly after, Matthew asked Skylar to become the director for the Cosmic Mass, a interspiritual dance ritual that Matthew had started in Oakland in the 1970s. I came into the picture because I was working at one of Matthew’s publishers at the time, New World Library, and had a chance to see him speak in Marin County. At the end of his talk, he said that he was looking for volunteers for an upcoming Cosmic Mass. I volunteered for several Masses over the next year and developed a friendship with both Skylar and Matthew.

How did the idea come about for the founding of the Order of the Sacred Earth?
Matthew Fox: The idea came to me from a voice in a dream which woke me up at 4:00 a.m. It said, “DO IT!!!!” “Do what?” “Launch an Order that is not indebted to any religious institution as such, but is embracing of all, since the plight of Mother Earth today challenges all humans and all our spiritual and scientific traditions to wake up and be counted and work to heal the earth by healing ourselves so we work out of a deep, contemplative place and not just out of action/reaction responses.”
     It is the direness of this moment in history that most propels me forward and the obvious need for young and old to work together, thus intergenerational wisdom. Having been a member of a religious order (the Dominicans) for 34 years, I know something of both the light and the shadow of that tradition; and having studied religious orders of the West in particular, I am aware of how swiftly they can respond to the signs of the times. And we need a swift response today. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for a new religion to appear, or for our current religions to shed everything they must shed to move swiftly but deeply. But an Order can move much swifter, and one that is deeply ecumenical and inclusive of all including science seems appropriately timed. It is the one vow we share that binds us together and allows us to travel lightly though deeply.

Skylar Wilson: The idea came to me in two recurring dreams in which small groups of people were joining together in new and ancient ways to participate with the Earth's intelligence. Matthew Fox and I shared our dreams with each other and with others in the summer of 2014, and it felt like we were tuning into something relevant and important. While co-leading a workshop at the Esalen Institute, I remember a dance ritual in the hot springs overlooking the ocean that embodied the intensity and connection to the elements of my dreams. Shared experiences like these, as well as synchronicities and mystical experiences of awe and wonder, have given me the sense that we are in the midst of a species-wide transformation. This impulse toward healing comes not a moment too soon as the destructive shadow of industrial capitalism continues to poison our precious planet.

Jennifer Berit Listug: I was raised in the Unity Worldwide spiritual community and had become very active as a young adult. I started a young adult volunteer group who would meet every Tuesday evening for spiritual and philosophical discussion. In our weekly meetings of about 15 young adults from ages 18 to 35, it became clear to me that all of us were there because our lives were missing a sense of spiritual community and deeper connection with our peers, but that we also mistrusted the form and structure of a traditional “church”—even a progressive one. That’s when I began to envision what it would look like to congregate with people in the context of exploring our spirituality and in the context of meaningful service to our community, but without the dogma and the baggage of institutionalized religion. When I heard about the dreams that Matthew and Skylar had had about this same concept, I knew we were aligned. It was Matthew who deemed this new vision an “Order.”

Is your book a kind of manifesto?
Jennifer Berit Listug: This book was indeed a manifesto for this Order. At one point we considered using “manifesto” in the subtitle. We decided to write the book as sort of a grounding for starting this Order to channel and focus the energy building around it. We wanted to include many voices, not only our own, so we collected essays from many great thinkers and new voices of our times.

How did the various contributors react when you asked them to write essays for it?
Jennifer Berit Listug: It was all totally positive feedback. Even people who were not able to write an essay in time for our deadline were excited about what was forming and wanted to stay involved. The beautiful thing is the Order is much like a prism—this divine creative idea enters into our consciousness and is refracted into an entire rainbow of colors and perspectives. Our contributors each came at the Order from a different angle and perspective and contributed a unique vision of their own.

Why take a spiritual approach to environmentalism?
Matthew Fox: The ecocide that is facing our planet and our species is, at heart, not just a political or technological problem, but a spiritual problem. It derives from a false consciousness that claims that humans are more important than other species and that other species exist to serve our needs. It derives, as Pope Francis has put it, from our narcissism as a species. Therefore, we must do our inner work to liberate ourselves from anthropocentrism and greed and power-over dynamics and economic systems that appeal to these shadows in human consciousness, in order to succeed in making the next and big leaps to a healthy relationship with the Earth and her creatures.

Skylar Wilson: A spiritual approach to our ecological crisis is needed now because time is of the essence. We need to muster all of our energies and guidance to shift our human presence on the planet while creating a way of life that works for all (humans and other species alike). Spirituality is at its best when it is helping us to gain clarity, self-awareness, the ability to listen and to feel compassionately connected to the Earth and all life. Nothing short of a complete transformation in how we relate to ourselves and the world will suffice in meeting our current circumstances. Spiritual resources are also needed to calm and center ourselves in the face of such vast and incomprehensible challenges as climate change and exponential population growth.

How do environmentalism and spirituality overlap?
Jennifer Berit Listug: The intersection of spirituality and activism is at the precipice of human evolution. I do believe we are on the brink of evolving—spiritually, politically, socially, technologically—and when our philosophies and technologies and ideologies find a meeting point, we will experience a great leap in consciousness. Neither social justice movements nor spiritual practices will be sustained without the other. Each one is ultimately empty without the other. Einstein said, “We cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.” I believe we cannot solve the world’s problems with the same consciousness that created them. All of our political and social efforts toward equality and sustainability need an inner transformation and evolution of consciousness to mirror in the inner world what must happen in the outer world. How can we change or save a world that we do not experience with awe, wonder, and enchantment, that we do not experience as sacred?

Matthew Fox: The movement of “Deep Ecology” from decades ago also recognized the need to go deeper than just “fixing things” with political and technological solutions and called for deepening human consciousness so we would be more effective warriors for saving the Earth. Deeper levels of consciousness include gratitude and forgiveness and letting go and creativity that serves transformation. Bringing such values into the struggle along with creative science and technology and community organizing and media telling the truth is all part of the movement to preserve the earth in all her beauty. Beauty is spiritual. So is healing and health. A return to an understanding of the Sacred is at the heart of combating the forces of evil within and around us that would just use the Earth instead of celebrating her and preserving her health and beauty for future generations.

Why is an intergenerational approach needed?
Jennifer Berit Listug: In Matthew’s essay in the book, he describes how humans evolved exponentially when we developed longer lifespans. This was because living longer meant there were not only two generations of humans at one time, but three. There was an elder community. The relationship between elders and youth is an essential part of our humanity, and part of why we exist today. Youth need the wisdom the elders carry. Elders need the energy the youth embody. Everyone in between can learn from both. This is what we have intentionally modeled in writing this book together.

Matthew Fox: OSE reflects an intergenerational energy and commitment. No generation has all the answers today; we must learn to listen to each other and learn from each other. And the young need support of the elders, whether that includes support for acts of moral courage or vision or institutional experience or stories of the past or financial if one has such resources. By mixing and getting together about so important a commitment as loving and defending the Earth, new relationships will be formed and grounded.
     It is appropriate that young adults lead a movement that is as much about the future as OSE is. Baby River (Jen and Skylar’s child) is teaching all of us as well. The children, the newest generation, are the recipients, either of our efforts to heal the earth or our continued neglecting to do so. They are our ultimate. True morality means thinking about the children seven generations from today (while paying attention to those alive today). A new baby offers both optimism born of the wonder and beauty of existence and concern about how deep and effective our caring will go. A child who faces toxic air and soil and dying forests and species going extinct and poisoned oceans and disappearing waters and drought and wild and frequent hurricanes and wild fires and rising seas will be radically shortchanged about the sacredness of existence.

Skylar Wilson: An intergenerational approach is needed because we hope to continue to learn from the past as well as the present to create a more coherent and integrated future for our children. We each bring our different shapes of experience into conversation now to humbly see where our gaps in awareness are and where we need support. Diversity is key to finding more and more wholeness together.

How does the absence of community relate to the state of our planet?
Jennifer Berit Listug: The breakdown and absence of community is not only related to the dangerous and dire circumstances we find our planet in, it is the root cause of our complex situation. In this world that so values independence and “self-made” people, we are isolated, lost and alone and afraid. This sense of isolation and fear and emptiness is extremely helpful to the capitalist agenda. Our need to fill ourselves with material goods and substances and distractions keeps the economy running. If we were all truly to live in a communal way, we would each always be reflecting our true essence back to one another: that we are whole, that we are cared for, that we are each a vital cell in a great cosmic body. In a communal world, we would share our resources, support one another, learn from one another, care for our common mother, the Earth, together.

What do you hope to accomplish with OSE?
Jennifer Berit Listug: I want to see OSE spread as far as is necessary to support a global shift in consciousness.

Matthew Fox: To light a fire for the elders so they do not fall into the trap of retirement, but into a lively state of “refirement” and the young to WAKE UP and GET MOVING. The Earth, as we know it, is dying right before our eyes, with our blind and self-serving and in-denial politicians and corporate fossil-fuel billionaires notwithstanding. It is time for all hands on deck. Young and old and in between.
     This crisis is an opportunity, this apocalypse is also a revelation, a taking off of the veils of illusion that we are wrapped in. We can work together—people of all religious traditions and none along with scientists and inventors and artists and business people and politicians and the media and educators—to save our species and the Earth and so many other species on it. We can and must reinvent economics, education, religion, politics, media. Now. To ignite a fire of recovery of the sacred. The Earth is sacred, and with it all bodies in it. The cosmos is sacred.
     Our species has been given an immense and gratuitous gift to just be here. Are we grateful or not? Our choices will demonstrate our answer to that question. Hopefully, OSE can provide a vessel by which to answer YES by our actions and our lifestyles. It can provide a bridge to the next level of human evolution and awakening. One based on gratitude.

Have you seen anyone's attitude change dramatically toward protecting Mother Earth?
Jennifer Berit Listug: My own experience, after taking the vow to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that I can be, has been surprising and wonderful. I believe that the purpose of taking a vow and making a commitment of this depth is that once you do, your life will begin to orient around that vow in ways that are out of your control and that you might never have imagined before taking it.
     It is as if, after taking the vow, living my life in a sustainable and eco-friendly way has stopped being a choice and has become a necessity. Here is a short but poignant example. Skylar and I had been planning for a year to spend this last summer traveling across Europe, visiting friends, introducing them to our new child. We took the vow in December. A few months later, our publisher gave us the release date for the book Order of the Sacred Earth: July 17. He told us that we absolutely had to be here at home when the book came out, and we knew it was true. So we cancelled our Europe trip and found ourselves instead drawn out into the woods, camping in a Volcanic National Forest for two weeks leading up to the book coming out. This trip used less gas, fewer resources, less time and money than our great euro-exploration would have.
     I am not saying anything against travel as I believe it is essential to developing the human psyche. But what struck me was that by no choice of our own, our summer decompression changed shifted focus from a resource-heavy urban experience into a beautiful adventure in the wild. And sitting underneath the stars one night, looking across a pine forest toward the monumental volcano jutting up into the night sky, the full moon hovering above it like a spotlight, it was clear that this was where we were meant to be. Where we wanted to be. Close to the ground, in communion with the earth. This is the powerful impact of taking the vow.

What are some of the most interesting reactions people have had to OSE?
Matthew Fox: One 26-year-old woman said: “This is just what my generation needs. We are so dispersed because of social media and a thousand distractions, we need to focus. A vow will help us do that. And what is more important than to focus on saving the Earth? It will bring us together. A 28-year-old woman at the first taking of the vows said: “I am an atheist. But I am seeking a community with whom I can share values, and this seems like an excellent fit for me.”
     One person said to me: “It’s about time. Religion is so stuck in its past with its dogmas and structures and petty little rules. We need a movement with energy and spiritual depth that can bring diverse peoples together. Hopefully OSE can fill that need.” Another person said: “Sign me up. This is the most important thing happening on the planet today. A rare sign of hope.”

Jennifer Berit Listug: Here I will excerpt from the Afterword of the book, as there are a couple of questions that always come up that are very important and interesting:

We received many poignant questions and wise insights and stories from the participants, and we encourage you to visit our website and watch what transpired (orderofthesacredearth.org). There are two very important questions that continue to come up about the OSE and we want to answer them, one more time, as succinctly as we can.
(1) Yes, I feel inspired by this vision, but I still don’t understand—what is the Order of the Sacred Earth? What is its form?
The Order of the Sacred Earth is a self-organizing, emergent movement—a network of individuals and communities who are committing to the pledge “to be the best lover and defender of the Earth I can be.” We use the word self-organizing very intentionally because we do not want to operate in the old, patriarchal paradigm where we create a rigid structure and set of rules and implement that on anyone who wants to join, and therefore spend inordinate amounts of time, money, and energy on the bureaucratic process of managing the form. Instead, we leave it open. We are encouraging local groups to come up with forms that work for them, and to share them with the three of us so we all might collaborate. We want anyone who feels inspired by our vision to contribute to the form, to share their ideas and visions, and to co-create with others in their area as well as with us.
We have also used the word order very intentionally, understanding its double-meaning. The Order of the Sacred Earth is an Order, mirroring revolutionary religious Orders of the past which arose when society’s spiritual (and in this case, sociopolitical and environmental) cultural needs were not being met. The word order also indicates the natural order of the Earth, and our use of the word mirrors our desire to bring order to the many disparate movements and organizations who are already doing the Great Work, as well as to bring order to these chaotic, turbulent times.

(2) How do I get involved?
It is of course a little difficult to tell you how to get involved with a movement whose shape is not completely formed. But there is a fundamental way you can join right now, and that is on the individual level. Create for yourself or better, with others living near you, a time and space and a ritual, and take the vow.
What we are now calling OSE Pods are beginning to form in communities all over the country: groups of people who are inspired by this message and are starting their own communities of vow-taking sacred activists to carry on the work and are discussing its fuller implementation in actions they can take. Find one and join it. Or even better, start your own.
The Order of the Sacred Earth is launched! Here are many more ways you can become involved:
1. Take the vow to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that you can be.
2. Start an OSE Pod where you live. Talk about the Order with others where you live and create your own vow-taking ceremony or event.
3. Visit our website to learn more and watch the video of our launch celebration: orderofthesacredearth.org
4. Sign up for our mailing list on the website to stay connected and be informed of all future goings-on.
5. Donate to our cause on our website. If you are moved to donate, we promise a transparent
reporting of the use of funds—they are intended to support the building up of the program, including awareness building, correspondence, and future events.
6. Share the book and create study groups to discuss it.
7. Stay tuned for more information about formation classes, including initiation retreats and other classes as well, which we will keep you posted about very soon.
8. Join our blog, and share your story about what you do, and how you are cultivating change in your communities and what visions for the OSE you carry inside. Or, tell us about another community/organization which is participating in change-making and implementing values of the OSE into their work and citizenship.
Let us rise up together as the mystic warriors that we are!