The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth, back upstream so that Earth's evolving consciousness may explore the headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E. is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.

The difference between a rock and a bush
Both a rock and a bush within a stream channel will obstruct the flow of water and therefore make the flow just upstream slow down a bit. But they do it in different ways. A rock sits there unyielding. It occupies some of the stream's cross-sectional area. The water that splits around it is forced to flow through a more constricted space. In order to keep stream flow steady, the water must accelerate as it flows by the rock. This acceleration boosts erosive forces around the base of the rock, often causing undercutting which leads the rock to tumble downstream.

A bush, however, works in a very different way. Some of the water flows through the branches of the bush. There is lots of friction in all that surface area. In addition, the branches vibrate within the rushing flow; some of the water's kinetic energy is transformed into the branches' oscillating movements. The vibrating bush absorbs much more of the water's potentially erosive energy than the unyielding rock does.
 

Steepening the Slope
On the evening of Saturday, March 25th, I will be giving a keynote speech to an environmental education conference in the Bay Area. (If you are interested in attending the talk, e-mail or write and I can give you directions.) I am really looking forward to this opportunity because the audience is young adults who already love nature, who have already dedicated their life path to serving Gaia. So it is a chance to concentrate the deep heart of Shifting (which is erosion work as an allegory of what life is about) into an hour presentation. I'm calling the talk "Steepening the Slope."

Much of the talk will present the science of erosion and divergences. I'm photographing this work so the talk can include images. My goal is to inspire the audience to go out and do similar work in the areas they teach so they (and their students) can learn first-hand from water and life. But I want to end with the image of steepening the slope.

There is a paradox about erosion. When we think of erosion, we often think of slopes steepened by gullies. Erosion creates locally steep areas (often an undercutting plunge pool) that chew their way updrainage. Through this process, the whole drainage is worn down. The headwaters are worn down, the area downstream is built up with sediment so that the effect is to reduce the steepness of the overall area. So though the most visible evidence of erosion is the steep slopes of gullies, the real result is the wearing down of slopes. This is particularly obvious wherever slumps occur. The soil always slumps to a lesser angle than it was before.

A slope held together by life, on the other hand, can exist as a steeper slope than it could without the network of roots and surface coverings that hold it together. This binding together makes possible steeper slopes. I love the steep meadows of the mountains and so I love this image as an allegory for life. So the allegorical conclusion I want to get to is that this is what we do for each other and what the environmental educators are doing for kids. We are roots, entwining our love for this world with all that is around us. May our roots connect the lives of kids with the health of the natural world. May we help hold the fabric of this world and this culture and its people together in a tightly-woven mat that won't slip, that will hold together even when great erosive forces are at work. Through our work, may slopes steepen so that our lives take on the proportion of mountains.

As the outline of my talk grows clearer, I'll be putting it on my web site (along with some illustrations) so you can get a more detailed sense of the talk.
 

Internet
I finally went ahead and got my own web site. (The politics of public schools makes them unstable hosts for web sites.) So check out my homepage at www.krafel.net It has past issues of Cairns along with an appendix of photos illustrating some of the ideas in Shifting/Seeing Nature. I intend the site to keep growing with new, good things. You can e-mail me at my previous address or use my new one: paul@krafel.net

If you loved Shifting (or love Seeing Nature) and have Internet access, here is a favor you can do for me. You can write an on-line review of the book for possible buyers. To do this, go to my homepage (www.krafel.net) and follow the links to Seeing Nature. Then follow the link to Chelsea Green. Scroll down that page until you come to Seeing Nature. Click on Buy this Book. (Don't worry, you won't have to buy the book.) That takes you to Amazon.com. Scroll down and they will give you an opportunity to write a review of the book. Be sure to use the title Seeing Nature, not Shifting. Thank you.
 

Personal Spiritual Journey
Nature inspires my spirit. The more I learn from science, the more deeply and readily nature inspires my spirit. For this reason, the scientific and the spiritual are a co-evolving dance for me. Part of my "work" is to help our culture transcend an attitude that sees a conflict between the two.

Usually I write about nature. Now I am going to share part of my current spiritual journey. The last several years have been an obscured time for me. Mid-life crisis perhaps. I was sitting too much. My lower back hurt more and more. I tended to hold back and so got less exercise. I was slowly growing overweight. My willpower was collapsing. I was too often sleep-deprived because of poor time choices. All these effects spiraled together. I did not like the changes and yet I felt powerless to check them. I could sense ten or twenty areas where balances had shifted against me. I felt like I could shift the balance in any one of these areas if I simply got my intentions and energy focused well enough. But my attempts were scattered over too broad an area; my efforts lacked consistency. And so I slowly, morosely slid down the spiral, coming to feel this as the inevitable deterioration of advancing age.

This sliding lacerated my spirit because of what I had written in Shifting about a personal downward spiral of cynicism reversing to become an upward spiral of hope. I had experienced the joys of the upward spiral and I dearly longed to soar in it again. But I somehow lacked the will to shift balances (if shifting balances was even relevant to what was happening). My optimistic spirit was quietly fading into silence.

Then, last December, while sitting on a sunny, grassy hill I realized what my first priority was. If I don't believe that I have sufficient willpower to accomplish anything, then any other attempts to change are undermined from the start. So my first priority was to reawaken and strengthen my "will". That decision and that focus led me to experiences which suggested that my will had a specific location; it's in my belly a few inches below my navel. I can feel it a lot of times when I breathe deeply (or feeling it leads me to breathe deeply). (When I realized this, I sensed a profound connection between the collapse of my will and the collapse of my lower back.)

The last two months have been very, very interesting. My back pain is now minor and does not inhibit my initiative like it did just a few months ago. My weight is almost back to normal. I've caught up on my sleep. I walk in a different way and I look at the world in a different way.

But more important is the spiritual growth. A few days after reawakening my will, our church announced a series of classes called Creative Living. My will responded with a "Yes"; I signed up for them. They have been a blessing. During the class, the minister has said several wise things about the role of the will, two of which I will share. The first was that the appropriate job of the will is to create a space within oneself for the spirit to fill. However, if one then lets that space fill with will, one becomes willful. The will's proper role is to be servant to the spirit, to help provide the discipline to help us awaken to our true spiritual nature.

The second thing he said helped clarify the question I had struggled with for several years of "If I had limited reserves, where should I put the effort if I want to change course?" He said that to make a change, there needs to be both intent and then the practice of putting that intent into action. Intent and practice are two different things and to sustain them both is challenging. (A lot of times we have the intent to change a habit but lack the ability to follow it through to a complete change.) However, if one already has made "practice" a regular part of one's life, then change is easier because the practice of transforming a new intent into a habit can draw on the power that accumulates from an already established habit of practice. That is why one of his most regular messages in church is "Do your spiritual practices." It's a very eclectic church so he doesn't insist on a particular form of "spiritual practice". For some it might be prayer. For some it might be meditation. For others it might be communing with nature. With others it might be dancing. It's whatever brings one in greater awareness and alignment with one's spiritual nature. But whatever it is, create room for it in one's daily life so it becomes a daily practice. It then can gather the power to deepen one's faith so that following through later on a new intent becomes easier.

What's been interesting is that about a month after my will reawakened, Chrysalis was ravaged by internal politics. Far more time and energy than I would have chosen has had to go in to defending our vision of Chrysalis. I probably could not have made it if I hadn't been doing my spiritual practices for a month already. What is really interesting is how, because of the church classes, the "crisis" has inspired a deeper desire to operate from the purest intent. I have contemplated long in search of the line between defending and attack. I have had to behave more bravely, to speak more forthrightly than I normally feel comfortable doing. The last month, though I would never have chosen it, has become a time of growth for which I feel great gratitude. The events created by this crisis seem to be carrying Chrysalis toward a clearer, stronger definition of what the school is about. The past few months have deepened my faith that the world responds to a pure intent if it is aligned with spirit.
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Business Stuff

My book, Seeing Nature: Deliberate Encounters with the Visible World, may be ordered from me. Prices are $16 for one book, $29 for two books, $64 for 5 books, or $112 for 10 copies. All prices are postpaid and include any sales tax. Mail orders to Paul Krapfel, P.O. Box 609, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609.

If you are reading Cairns for the first time and wish to continue receiving it by e-mail, just e-mail me at  paul@krafel.net

© 2000, Paul Krafel, 18080 Brincat Manor, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609
Permission is granted to copy and distribute (for free) this material as long as you attach this copyright notice and my addresses so that a future reader can track down the source.

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