farmers transitioning from industrial to 'regenerative agriculture' and mimicking nature's cycles for carbon sequestration, economists creating regenerative economy models that use gifting and sharing, instead of growth and extraction entrepreneurs creating co-living villages with food forests on nearly arid land to nourish the soil.
regenerate
: originally theological meaning to 'bring from natural to spiritual state'. Contemporarily: 'to be restored to a better or more worthy state'.For Vervaeke, the essence of the modern sense that there’s no meaning in life is the feeling of disconnectedness.
"Regenerative leadership is a process of personal development that aligns one’s own way of being and actions with the wider pattern of life’s evolutionary journey within the communities, ecosystems, biosphere and Universe we participate in. As Janine Benyus [co-founder of Biomimicry Institute] has said so succinctly: “Life creates conditions conducive to life.” Regenerative Cultures aim to emulate this insight in how we relate to the human family and all life."
Nature connection => Wise action => Regeneration
We tell stories to make sense of things. I'm telling you a story right now. I'll invite us all now to express and hear some of the stories that are guiding us in life today.
I'm a person. I walk the land and eat the fruits. I take what I can so I can thrive. I play with my surroundings. I jump in puddles, swim in rivers and oceans. I feed water-weeds to ducks. I spread mulch of leaves and water trees. I walk and ski in mountains. I wear a ski suit. Or a birthday suit. Or a suit-jacket when I have to perform my story. Nature is my home. Earth is my home. Air is my home. What surrounds me is my home. My body is my home. My heart is my home. My thoughts are not my home. My mind is my home. My home is my place of play, leisure, comfort; pain, illness, death; belonging and living.
Most of the time, the story I tell people when they ask me who I am and where I come from is complicated, similar to a jumbo jet: each of its components and the way they relate to each other have been analyzed and crafted to be accurately predictable. If that weren't the case, you'd be unlikely to trust boarding that jet. You'd be unlikely to trust your prediction of how Joshua will behave.Alternatively, every living entity, down do a single cell, including 'me', is a complex system, which means that all of its parts engage dynamically with each other in a vast number of nonlinear relationships, with feedback loops that can never be precisely described or predicted.Perhaps When I realize fully that I am, to myself, the story that I tell myself and I am, to others, the story I tell to them, then that story can shift to include concepts that are more porous and connected to parts outside of "I".
This reductive story is helpful at times. However, the link we often miss to realize and embody is, "I and all of my parts are interdependent and dynamically engaging in a vast number of nonlinear relationships with feedback loops that can never be precisely descried or predicted. I'm encouraging us to embrace this unpredictability through nature connection practice. element in the complex weave of the ecosystem, environment, life."
“We’re awake now, and the question is how do we stay awake to the living world? How do we make the act of asking nature’s advice a normal part of everyday inventing?” – Janine Benyus