Gratitude is a Way of Life: A webinar with Kathleen Dean Moore

We are only now beginning to understand how fully we depend on the Earth’s freely given gifts of life, health, emotional well-being, meaning, and so much more – everything, endlessly, on and on. Earth’s gifts call us fundamentally to gratitude, a glad appreciation of the worth and generosity of the gifts. Furthermore, they call us to give our own gifts in turn. Like the cormorant, like the salmon, like the yammering gulls, we reciprocate when we use our gifts well for the benefit of the Earth’s systems and the inhabitants who depend on it. In this way, gratitude for our abundant gifts is the root of our moral obligations to the past, for the gifts it has protected and passed on to us, and our duties to the future, to keep the circles of reciprocity spinning, to avert the coming environmental calamities, and to leave a world as rich in possibilities as the world that has been given to us.

In this webinar conversation, Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore discusses gratitude, the joy of restoration work, and how to be strong in the face of the grief and fear that climate chaos and ecosystem collapse engender.

Register Here

Kathleen Dean Moore, Ph.D. is a prize-winning author of more than a dozen books about our cultural and moral relation to the wild, reeling world. Formerly Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University, Moore left academia to focus on writing and speaking about the moral urgency of action on the climate and extinction crises. Her most recent books include Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World; Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change; and now the illustrated Take Heart: Encouragement for Earth’s Weary Lovers. Her co-edited book, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril has just published its tenth anniversary edition. She often works with music and film, having written the scripts for a number of short films produced by the Spring Creek Project. In the winter, Moore lives in Corvallis, Oregon. In the summer, she writes from a wilderness cabin where two creeks and a bear trail meet a tidal cove in Alaska.

This webinar is part of our “Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves” series. Sign up for other events in the series on their Eventbrite pages, linked below.

Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves

A reciprocal healing series from the Natural History Institute

There is a growing awareness of the positive mental, physical, and physiological benefits that humans can reap from time spent in nature. Join the Natural History Institute in this new series where we ask: how can we heal ourselves in nature? And how can we, in all gratitude, work to heal the earth? Joined by a writer and philosopher, a local nonprofit, our partners at Prescott National Forest, and mindfulness leaders, we explore how to heal and how to give back.

Other events in the series:

5/13 – Healing the Earth – a volunteer erosion-control project in collaboration with Friends of the Verde River and Prescott National Forest in which participants will spend the morning helping to build loose rock structures and distributing seed balls. FREE.

Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/586189367177

5/17 – Reciprocal Healing – “Natural History, Reciprocal Healing, and a Sense of Kinship,” a speaker series talk by NHI Director Emeritus Tom Fleischner. FREE.

Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/588345185287

6/10 – Healing Ourselves – “Homecoming: A Journey of Reconnection,” a day-long workshop with Grace Burford & Carol Russell. Participants will anchor in gratitude and experience mindfulness in nature through practices rooted in deep ecology, ancient wisdom, and systems thinking. $75

Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/586216999827