Permaculture 2

I am still thinking about the presentation on permaculture Heather and I heard at Uvic.

The solutions permaculture offers to human and environmental challenges are deeply radical. They require a change in our thinking and our behaviour on an order of magnitude that is hard to imagine.

We were told we must slow down; consider the possibility that “more” may not always be better. We were encouraged to contemplate the possibility of living deeply in harmony with our given context and to consider “harmonizing with what’s there.”

How, I wondered, are enough people ever going to embrace such radical, counter-cultural values to make real change possible?

The speaker suggested an answer that on the surface sounds perfectly simple. He said, “We just have to change what our priorities are.”

What are the priorities we need to change if we are to live more harmoniously within the community of all creation? What priorities hold power in our lives that cause us to live in unhealthy and dysfunctional systems? What patterns best function “to benefit life in all its forms”?

But, most important of all, and most challenging - how do peoples’ priorities change? Is it adequate simply to say, “We just have to change what our priorities are” and assume that everyone will wake up in the morning having adopted a radically altered value system?

What values dominate my church culture? Are there priorities that must change in the church if the church is to be an instrument for transformation in peoples’ interactions with one another and with the rest of creation? How can the church model a pattern of being “which functions to benefit life in all its forms”?