Vivre avec la Terre

By Jana Milbou

The creation and the becoming of the residential program we propose with the sprouts called ‘vivre avec la terre’ brings up the rather big question: what does it mean to move, to act, to reflect and to think with a living earth?

With requires a sensitive observation, a conversation and a participation. As my teacher in Schumacher College, Craig Holdredge states; “Living thinking is a participatory way of knowing that transcends the dichotomies of man-nature, subject-object, or mind- matter, which are so ingrained in the Western mind and form the bedrock of object thinking.”(1) The ‘thinking about objects out there’, implies a distance rather than an interaction.

Healing this existential disconnection from the living world is one of the intentions of our program. As I studied biodynamic agriculture for a few years and then continued in Schumacher College, studying holistic sciences, I realized that our (agricultural) practices come forth out of our perceptions and cosmologies and vice versa. Ideally, practice and reflection are cross pollinating each other all the time to keep and enliven our participation with(in) nature and ourselves.

Learning through action, through the physical, through hands and body have been feeling more wholesome to me and have the capacity to bridge the illusionary gaps between us, human beings, and the Earth.

A learning community is the ideal way to reflect on these experiences, to discuss and question these noticings and themes. As David Abram encourages in his writing: ‘Huge centralized programs, global initiatives, and other “top down” solutions will never suffice to restore and protect the health of the animate earth. For it is only at the scale of our direct, sensory interactions with the land around us that we can appropriately notice and respond to the immediate needs of the living world.’ (2)

1. Holdrege, C. (2013). Thinking like a plant: a living science for life. SteinerBooks 
2. Abram, D. (2012). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Vintage.