Aligning and cooperating

with nature's self-healing power

Dear Brothers and associates,

Our earth is in danger. It is a creeping danger, a slowly progressing deterioration. It is not like covid-19 that flew into our faces and nobody could neglect, nobody could stay in-active. All kinds of painful measures were accepted and applied. Our life was at risk.

Fighting nature?

Climate change, global heating, droughts, storms, pollution of water, soil and air, acidification of the oceans, rising sea levels and floodings, continuing extinction of many species of plants and animals … and so on: all these happen un-relentingly, but not from one moment to the next. Apart from storms, tornado's and the like are creeping in, slowly but steadily worsening situations. Many people think they can adjust to these gradual changes. Others have great con-fidence in the possibilities of (new) technologies. They can leave the responsibility to the scientists and the technicians - and can continue living as they are used to. Others again think: When we are clever enough we can fight the disasters, we can correct nature, we can win the war against all these troubling matters.

We think in terms of war, fighting, trying to be in command.

This war-like attitude pervades our whole society. And war generates war, violence creates more violence. We know this - and yet we believe or at least act as if war, power, clever-ness, forbidding, punishment, pressure and the like are the only (or at least the fastest and most 'effective') ways to solve problems. What we can see, but often do not want to see, is that this war-like approach is the end of healthy growth, that it narrows our minds and kills our creativity. In short it makes matters worse instead of better. We lose the view of the larger picture, we forget that everything is connected, we isolate a certain problem and 'forget' what the deeper causes may be. Instead of paying attention to the real cause or causes, we fight the symptoms and think we have done something meaningful.

This also holds for many measures, laws, regulations regarding our environment and the climate. We do not take time and effort to reflect on the deeper causes but just start doing some practical things, without keeping in view the big and complex total reality.