In recent interviews, Berson stated his personal goal is to live out of two backpacks. Instead, he calls for a return to a connection to our bodies and how we might learn to live more simply in harmony with the natural world. Berson’s conviction is that technology will not save us. ‘EarthBeat,’ the National Catholic Reporter’s online environmental publication published a review by the Cedar Tree Institute on Josh Berson’s “The Human Scaffold: How Not to Design Your Way Out of a Climate Crisis” (2021). Kelley continues as a key partner for Institute projects dealing with mental health and underserved populations. The morning explored the puzzle of empathy as a part of effective psychiatric care. On July 19th, the Cedar Tree Institute Director worked with community psychiatrist Kelley Mahar, MD, to facilitate a 4-hour training for five psychiatric residents-in-training with Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine. ![]() Also, to Tim Fillmore and son Welly who served as kayak instructors and guides. Larry Skendzel and Mike Grossman, hospice medical directors in Marquette County and La Crosse, Wisconsin, served as key presenters for this year’s theme, “The Dynamics of Grief and Loss.” Thanks go to Judy Baldwin, Nathan Meadows, Jeff Noble, Melanie Mottinger and little Oakley for providing critical back-up support. You’ll know why.Ī three-day training for hospice workers, physicians, and substance abuse counselors took place at the historic Thunder Bay Inn in Big Bay, August 26-28th. Next time you see me, I may be involved in a spiritual practice. That conversation was a gentle invitation to live a more caring, self-aware, and attentive life. He carried the gift of knowing how to work around equipment with mindfulness, balance, and exceptional awareness. In certain circles, that mechanic remains a legend. Two or three of the others at the table remembered him. ![]() He would leave at the end of the day without a streak of grease anywhere on his clothes or hands. One recalled a mechanic he knew thirty years ago who came to work in a local neighborhood garage dressed in a white shirt and white pants. We were talking about mechanics, garages, and repair of second-hand cars. ![]() I was drinking coffee with a group of older men. It was a Sunday morning, following the worship service. Some time ago, I sat in a local church basement of a once booming mining town. Our neighborhoods, our communities, our health and spiritual lives, are suffering. The free-market mantra to take as much as we can, as fast as we can, isn’t working. Here’s a lesson: We have a chance, if we choose, to slow down, pay better attention to how we eat, drink, and live with our neighbors. Cleaning our water, our soil, and our air will take generations and literally billions of dollars in Michigan alone. The majority of us were not attuned, nor truly present, nor educated about the environment in which we lived. What went wrong? The answer, at least in part, was we were in a hurry. A haunting remnant of past pollution from the chemical, mining, and timber industries. The State of Michigan just awarded another remediation grant of several million dollars to clean up a “brown field,” a euphemism for a dangerously contaminated area of land or water here in the Upper Peninsula. Those of you who know the work of the Cedar Tree Institute are aware that a key focus for many of our projects is deepening relationships with the natural world. ![]() Taking a napkin from the sandwich bag, I dip it into a cup of water I’ve purchased from the drive-thru, to see if I can remove the stain. I see a parking space, turn and stop, shifting the transmission of my 2005 Jeep Cherokee into park. One hand on the steering-wheel, the other holding a fast-food sandwich which is disintegrating in my hand. I’m in the parking lot of a mall, about to pull out unto the highway. A sliver of tomato falls from my sandwich onto my shirt.
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