In the long, long record of human history we have charted the emergence of number of great earth shaking wisdom traditions. The major movements that most people seem to be aware of these days include the eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism and the western Judeo-Christian and Islamic canons. Also, of increasing importance to the technologically developed world, are those belief systems and spiritual practices of extant endogenous cultures of the Pacific Basin, Australia, Malaysia-Indonesia, the Shamanic North, central and South Africa, and of the Americas. Additionally, the beautiful organic mysticism of Celtic arts, music, literature, and musical instruments, both in Ireland and the central Appalachians where it was carried over by emigrants, is being reawakened.

As the world is being ever more connected through transportation, television, the Internet, many people and groups find themselves developing exciting blended versions of these traditions.

Although these belief systems have separate rituals and ways of expressing spiritual life, experts in comparative religion find that there are often many more similarities than differences. One significant discovery is that, at the very core of every one of them, seems to be an ethic of compassion for all beings, both living and non- living. Another interesting discovery is that all the important Western and Eastern religious belief systems seem to have evolved at a time when large urban agricultural centers were in moral decline and losing touch with the land upon which their lives depended. While not much is known about the evolution of the spirituality of tribal peoples, some people believe that their stories, ceremonies, and practices arose after a diaspora when the emigrants had over exploited the resources of new territories. The stories and myths developed kind of as a way of keeping communities in balance with the natural world of which they were a part. They reminded people not to take the land and water and air and the creatures thereof for granted, but to see them as gifts that need to be treated reverentially.

Well, how does all this relate to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy (WVHC) and the Appalachian region that we are trying to protect from being ground into a rubble of bare hills, ash, sludge, chemicals, and six (or more) lane highways?

The way it relates, I believe, is that our society is presently on the tail end of a period in the 20th century in which there has been untold destruction of the world’s important ecosystems and many of its important cultural regions. The toll on places like the Central Appalachians, that helped to fuel the industrial revolution and make life superficially nicer for other folks, has been of course, enormous. Now we are ready for something very different. And that’s where the WVHC and other environmentally conscious folks may come in.

Many environmental leaders and writers like Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, Fr. Thomas Berry, and Wendell Berry feel that we are at the beginning of a new and emergent mythic age (deemed the "Ecozoic Age" by Fr. Berry), because the dynamics of human life are now similar to those experienced by the ancient agricultural centers before the rise of the great Eastern and Western religious institutions. And perhaps a similarity to the once migrant tribal peoples is that the diaspora of western Europeans to the Americas, the East, and Africa is pretty much complete. And like all diaspora cultures, the western European emigrants have heedlessly overused every living thing they could get their hands on.

The way we will get to this new age will most likely be through non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) like the WVHC.

According to writers such as Gary Gardner of the World Watch Institute, Paul Hawken of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and a plethora of recent articles in environmental and religious publications, there has recently been an astounding growth of civic organizations (some 30, 000 now in the United States, 100,000 world wide), both secular and spiritual, concerned with protecting the environment and justice making. And unlike what happened to many religious groups, the new groups are not fighting one another. They are more interested in sharing their wisdom and allying themselves. Differences in approach are better tolerated. They are interested more in evolution than in destructive revolution. They believe that means and ends have to be consistent. They are built on morality and stay there.

And, of great significance to members of the Highlands Conservancy, is that these writers and many of the articles I have read lately all point out that community based efforts will be what saves us from ourselves. Government will not do this, the universities and the public education system will not do this, the private business sector will not do this – because they are all too invested in the philosophical position that ecosystems are endlessly exploitable and that people and nature are separate. It is groups like the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, in cooperation with others, who will do it. It is then that the resources of government, education, and the corporate system will turn their vast resources toward sustainability. And from these civic groups, a new mythos will arise, made of the best of the old, but also infused with a new and life-giving story.

And so, WVHC members, our organization and the efforts we are making are very important. I think what we are in a thrilling time and that what we are doing is much bigger than we have ever imagined: For we are one of the groups that will quite possibly kindle the flame of the new age.