About Gaia's Voices
Earth is Alive!
When we open to this reality it changes everything – how we see ourselves, the actions we take, the language we use, and most especially how we relate to the non-human beings who share the living Earth, Gaia, with us. The implications of this reality are transformational on every level, most especially at this moment in time, at the level of healing ourselves and healing the planet. Just as our bodies respond to love, attention, good food, rest, and appropriate medicine when necessary, so does Earth. Just as our bodies have incredible powers of regeneration, so does Earth. When we awaken to “the Earth is Alive!” everything shifts, and we also realize that human beings are not alone in the essential work of restoring and regenerating the planet – the planet itself – Gaia – participates with us.
Our Senses Lead the Way
Our senses are how we participate and communicate with each other and with Gaia. Over the centuries, since the beginning of the industrial revolution (and some would say since the beginning of agriculture), our senses have become dulled, even atrophied. Yes, we see, hear, smell, taste, feel. But did you know that our skin is a sense organ? That our intuition is one of our senses? That feeling we get in our gut – also a sense? Even the hairs on our bodies are sense receptors, picking up invisible information that for the most part we no longer even realize exists or know how to interpret. The senses we have, that we are aware of and use every day – even those can become more sensitive, keener preceptors of the world around us. When we consciously re-enliven our senses, we begin to remember who we are – as a species and as individuals – and why we are here.
Rights of Nature
Once we wake up to our true nature and to the reality of living within a living being, we will want to do everything in our power to protect the life that is still with us, and to heal and restore and regenerate the beauty and diversity that surrounds us and upon which all life depends. This life, this beauty is threatened every second by the fact that today corporations have more power than people, and that profit and power are enshrined in our laws and regulations at all levels from local to global. Trying to save or protect one species, one river, one site at a time while others are destroyed or become extinct is not only heartbreaking, it is unsustainable. Rights of Nature is the most important tool we have right now that would protect whole ecosystems rather than bits and pieces. Indigenous peoples have always known that Earth is alive and that all species have standing. This knowledge must become universal. There are seeds being planted now, and there are some success stories, and people and organizations who are leading the way. This must become a global effort if we are to halt climate chaos, restore degraded ecosystems, clean the waters, and heal where so much damage and pain has been inflicted.
I’m a mother, grandmother, writer, published author, herb lover, organic gardener, maker of herbal skin care products and medicine, and natural perfumer. In the 1980s, I was one of the first people to integrate Earth awareness into economics. My books, Economics as if the Earth Really Mattered (1986) and Invested in the Common Good (1995) both published by New Society Publishers, were among the first to describe a Gaian Economy, looking to healthy ecosystems for inspiration as well as specific values and principles upon which to create an economy for the Living Earth. My articles, presentations, and workshops integrated the reality of living within a living planet, with activism, research, networking and coalition building. In the 1990s, my organization (Catalyst, now defunct) worked to stop clearcutting the Old Growth (temperate and tropical), organized conferences to stop global free trade agreements, co-founded a community currency in Central Vermont, fought Hydro-Quebec’s expansion in James Bay. I researched and published on corporations destroying the Earth as part of ongoing corporate divestment, boycott, and corporate charter movements, and was one of the first people to look at corporations destroying the forests before there were computer data bases. I researched and wrote about the meat packing industry, food irradiation, the Maquiladoras, genetic engineering, rainforest destruction.
In the late 1990s, I moved, with my youngest son Colin, from Vermont to Fryeburg, Maine, leaving (for the most part) my activist life behind to live with and care for my disabled sister after our father had a stroke. These years were spent starting and growing and loving and learning so much from my beautiful, bountiful, and ever-expanding organic garden of herbs, flowers, vegetables and all the amazing critters who called the garden home. I published a journal, Gaian Voices: Earth Spirit, Earth Action, Earth Stories for nine years, then started Gaia’s Garden Herbals, a home-based herbal skin care business that can be found on Etsy (www.etsy.com/shop/GaiasGardenHerbals) offering herbal skin care products, many made with herbs I grew and wild harvested nearby, as well as my natural perfumes. When Nestle came to my small town in Maine, I became involved in the fight to stop Nestle’s proposed plastic water bottling plant in town, and co-founded and directed Water Waves, a Maine nonprofit dedicated to fight water mining and support local control. There was victory, and there was defeat, friendship and community, and a gradual re-awakening of the warrior of early years.
In the fall of 2018, I moved to NY state to be closer to my sons and grandchildren, assuming my activist years were in the past, and it was time to “retire”. Instead, and thanks in part to the enforced isolation caused by Covid, I realized being a grandmother, as wonderful as it is, is not enough. There is work to be done and it is more important than ever for people to wake up to the fact that we are living within a living Being, not on an inert ball of rock and magma. And that this awareness has the potential to change everything, most especially the choices we make and the healing potential that we all have when we come together with all species with love and respect and an open heart.
About "Interviews"
Many of the interviews you will find on Gaia’s Voices were published in a little journal I published from 2002 – 2011, called Gaian Voices: Earth Spirit, Earth Action, Earth Stories, as a way for me to stay active and have a voice after leaving my activist life in Vermont to care for my disabled sister in Maine. It was available in black & white print, and full-color PDF versions, and had a small but supportive group of national subscribers as well as some locals to whom it was distributed free through local bookstores and natural food stores in my area in Maine and New Hampshire. I also had a website called Gaian Voices, but didn’t keep the domain name. When I decided it was time for a website again, Gaian Voices was not available.
Each issue of Gaian Voices was an offering to the living Earth, with beautiful pictures, poetry, quotes, an interview, and articles relevant to what was going on at the time. I was blessed with many wonderful contributors, some regulars, others occasional, and was so grateful to the people I chose to interview who were all so generous of their time for such a little publication with limited readership.
Because the interviews are still so relevant, and the people I interviewed are still active and committed in their work for the Earth, I decided to share some of the interviews on my new website. I hope you enjoy reading them and decide to check out what these friends and colleagues are doing now.
The picture of redwoods was taken by my son, Colin Lowry.
