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My column in Spirituality & Health as a thank you to subscribers

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Hello Readers,

I write a column for Spirituality & Health magazine and as a special thank you to TRANSCEND subscribers I share the column with you once it has been published. So, thanks so much for subscribing and I hope you like the column.

Title: Seasons, Cycles, Growth & Enoughness

Spring is popping in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. New growth abounds. Tender, tenacious shoots push through soil and squeeze between cracks in asphalt reaching for light. Trees sport young, bright buds. Bees dance on early-bird blooms. There’s a quickening, an expectancy.

New growth is a good thing, whether in a tree or human consciousness, but too much of just about anything can cause problems. The Western industrialized cultural paradigm is growth-obsessed, driven by a consumption-based economic system. Elected officials hail economic growth and the marketing machine tells us we must buy, buy, buy to feel better about ourselves.

Local leaders roll out strategies to spur growth in their communities. I live in a region in Oregon known for its natural beauty and outdoor recreation opportunities. It has been growing so fast it is literally being transformed into housing projects and shopping malls. One huge project razed a large swath of urban forest and dynamited ancient rock formations to put up a Costco megastore. We label all human-generated growth as “development,” but those terms are not perfectly synonymous. Growth is about getting bigger; development is about getting better and stronger.

The difficult truth is that rampant expansion of human activity is taking a devastating toll on the planet that is our home. We’re losing wildlife at a breakneck pace compared to any previous time in geological history. Chemical and plastic pollution is in the land, the waters, and our bodies. Emissions from the fossil fuels that power economic growth are heating the entire planet and driving increasingly catastrophic storms, floods and fires. Sacrificing natural beauties for megastores is growth but I would argue it is not necessarily qualitative development. Rascally western novelist, Edward Abbey, pointed out that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.

The innate wisdom in the cycle of seasons demonstrates the need to balance growth with stillness and contraction. Many plants and animals require the dormant period of winter in order to store reserves for the energetic output of mating, reproducing, flowering and fruiting. In fact, at this very moment, the southern half of the planet is shifting into autumn. Trees are pulling in sap and dropping leaves. Animals are storing food, creating borrows, readying for hibernation and a long winter rest.