Category: Mike Bell

As the title of this chronicle indicates, it is about the urgent need to reframe on a spiritual level in a world undergoing the increasingly severe effects of climate change. (First, In terms of Spirituality–Full Disclosure: I am a Christian and a former monk and Roman priest practicing my faith in a Unitarian Fellowship.) So what is a frame?

In the mid-90s in the run up to the creation of Nunavut, I was running a reframing workshop in Resolute, a small community in the high arctic. The participants were newly hired civil servants, all of them non-Inuit, preparing to enter their jobs in the new Nunavut government.

Aldo Leopold was one of the founders of the environmental movement in the mid-1900s. Many of us first heard of him when we read his book A Sand County Almanac. For me one of his quotes still has special significance today. He said, “We must think like a mountain.”

Last Friday, March 15, a few of us older folks joined a climate change demonstration organized by students at Mark Isfeld School. The event was inspired by Greta Thunberg, a fifteen year old Swedish climate change activist.

Each week I churn out a Chronicle on climate change. I try to base the chronicle on a story. This week I spent many hours looking for a story and travelled down some wrong roads. Then I found one that seems helpful. So here goes.

During the summer my wife and I downsized our possessions and moved into a smaller home. A small pond lies a few yards from our back door. Our favourite pastime is watching the life on and around that pond.