 My name is Orit Kelman and I'm a community member. I'm one of the founders and executive director of the Yellow Conflict Resolution Center. We are a community-based nonprofit organization and we provide restorative-based conflict resolution services. In our work, we strive to empower all voices to be heard and included in our conversations. We recognize that we all have responsibility to listen to share, to learn together so we can turn conflicts into opportunities. Opportunities for change, to nurture relationships, to make a difference in our communities. I feel really honored as a community member to be invited to moderate today's panel. And I was thinking that even before I invite the panelists here that maybe we can take a moment to just honor all of us who have come together today as a community. We all have lots of different things going on in our lives yet we all shared the importance of coming together and having a conversation today. And so I invite you all to just turn to someone next to you, maybe somebody you know or somebody behind you in front of you and just introduce yourself. Share why it was important for you to be here. And just very briefly, you'll have opportunities later this afternoon to talk. But just acknowledge that we're here together as a community. So please go ahead. All right, I'd like to invite everybody to come back. It's what happened when you asked people to just say one sentence. We all have stories and conversations. So I'd like to invite our panelists. And we have a new impromptu. Pastor Dan is brave enough to join us. We're missing one of our panelists, unfortunately. So we have today for our panel conversation, you all had a chance to meet Joan Brown. And you had such a wonderful introduction. I'm not going to reintroduce her. We also have Humberto Comacho. And he's a Hubert Humphrey fellow at UC Davis. He's a Bolivian NGO specializing in water issues. Humberto is pleased this year. He's staying in Davis to study water issues here in the hopes of learning more to help in his country, which also has water shortages as the glaciers are melting. In addition to participating in the panel, he will later this afternoon, as we break into the workshops, he will offer a workshop presentation on climate change in Bolivia and how it is really in Bolivia in terms of climate change and their ideas about figure bien and the protection of Mother Earth as well as the development of extractive fossil fuel and mining industries. We also have with us Pastor Dan. And I'm going to let you introduce yourself. You can stay with us. We can just bring another chair. So go ahead and introduce yourself. So my name is Dan Smith. I'm the pastor at Lutheran Church of the Incarnation here in Davis. And I actually have a PhD in systematic theology. And the topic was Lutheran Ecological Theology. So I was listening to Sister Joan and starting to get depressed about the enormity of the problem, which I think we're going to talk about a little bit. That's my background. Great. Thank you. And we'll wait for our next panelist. All right. And in the meantime, just to share with you, what we've asked our panelists to talk about we in just getting ready for the panel is to talk about their work related to climate change, some of their success stories, because we want to honor and celebrate good work and learn from good work. And as we move forward, so I'm going to ask them to share some of their success stories. And then I'm going to ask them to share some of the more challenging stories. What had not worked? And why? And what can we learn from it? And ideas of how we as individuals, as communities can do more things and support all these efforts. Welcome. We're hoping that at the end, we'll also have a few minutes. So everybody, we can ask if anybody has questions or if you want to share just your own reflections about what based on what you've heard. Yes, that's for you. So I want to introduce to you Chief Kailene Sisk from the Winnerment, Winter Tribe, Indigenous Tribe with well-documented history and the slopes of Mount Shasta and the banks of the McLeod River, the middle water for which they are named. The small tribe has persistently worked to maintain their culture by continuing their traditional customs and religious practices. Chief Kailene Sisk is a chief spiritual leader of the Winnerment, Winter Tribe. And she had led them wisely through difficult struggles and continued to do so. Last December, she traveled to the Paris Climate Summit and participated in some of the Indigenous people events there. And we look forward to hearing more about your experiences there. In addition to her part in the panel, she will also offer a workshop presentation in this room in the afternoon. Welcome. And so I just let everybody know that I'm going to ask you to all share your successes, nuggets of wisdom, and then we're going to talk about challenges and what we can all do moving forward. Would you like on climate change? That's why we're here. Would you like to start? I'm Chief of a small tribe in Northern California by Lake Shasta. We believe our creation story tells us that we came out of inside Mount Shasta through a spring, and that that's how we populated our homeland, the McLeod River watershed. I guess a success that we have had through the ages, I guess, of modernization in the coming of the state of California is that one, we're still here, in spite of the extermination policies of California in the beginning. There was a mass killing that took place from the 1850s to the 1900s. And there used to be more than 20,000 winimums on the watershed. And at 1910, there was only 395 of us left. And so that in itself is a success cast because many other tribes didn't make it at all. Many other tribes, including some of our southern groups, got wiped out in the Sacramento, the Redding area. So that's one thing that we're here. But along the lines of another thing is that in the 1970s to 80s, 15-year spiel about the ski lodge on Mount Shasta, he might have heard of it, we fought against the ski lodge from being up there to the point that the avalanche happened and had that ski lodge been up there, it could have been a pretty bad disaster for skiers that day. And so I think that's a success in itself that we prevented this beautiful mountain from further destruction by skiing and protected our sacred spring. So we had that success. But the fight never stops at those things. So I'm going to pass it on now so we can keep going, yeah. So success stories? I would just share this. I saw I've had one foot in the academic world and one foot in the real world, the practical world, working on my doctorate. I needed to find someone to help me with that doctoral program. And I found a colleague at UC Berkeley and Richard Norgaard, who is an ecologist, essentially, his background is economics. But we decided to teach a class together that was cross-registered in the Graduate Theological Union coursebook and at UC Berkeley. And for me, that was a real highlight of that whole experience because we brought together students of all backgrounds of religious traditions and science. And we even had a journalist involved one year as we taught it several times. And in a sense, there was that kind of hope in working across disciplinary aisles with other people and recognizing that even though we use different language games to understand the world around us, we shared one thing in common that's very important and that's the earth. And in the process of discussing from our own linguistic ideological traditions how we approach this problem, we actually, something new emerged in that experience, I think. And that was enlightening to me and very hopeful, even though I don't know that we certainly didn't solve the crisis in those classes. It was, to me, a little harbinger of what could be. Thank you. I am Humberto Camacho. I am from Bolivia. I am part of the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program, which brings to USA professionals. We are mid-career professionals who have been working in our countries in issues related with environment, rural development, and climate change. So as part of the work that I have been doing in the last 10 years, I've been working with Bolivian NGO, which is related with the Catholic Church. And so we focus our beneficiaries and the target group that we have are groups of the society that are under risk, mainly located in rural areas. So we collaborate a lot with international NGOs. And I would say that the success that we have been seeing is the opportunity to work with organizations that are willing to learn and share experiences and also to involve the beneficiaries of the projects that we carry out in rural areas that we all come up together to the table. And then we discuss and we analyze the problems that they have that they are facing. We try to see the best possible solutions which are going to be sustainable and are going to address the environment needs and requirements and to do and to carry out that process of addressing the problem involving the stakeholders and coming with solutions that are shared. It's really a challenge. And I think we have been doing that work. Thank you again for being here. I'd like to share just really two short success stories. And they both speak to the importance of persistence, faithfulness, and just keeping at it. And one happened last fall. And this was when Pope Francis was coming to the US and he was going to speak before Congress. And Interfaith Power and Light in New Mexico, we've been working at this for like 10 years. And before then, even in other ways, I've been working at this whole issue of climate change with people of faith. And sometimes it feels like you're not getting anywhere because where is everyone? But when Pope Francis came, it was after Laudato Si. And I have to say, those people that were most excited, in some ways, were those who were not Catholic. And they were right on board. We decided in the fall to have an event that was held in New Mexico in seven different locations. And two of those locations were very conservative politically places and also in terms of church. And we thought, well, we'll just see what happens. And I had key coordinators, organizers, in each of those areas. We had seven simultaneous events. There were Interfaith. There were Catholics, Sikhs, Muslims, Jewish, Protestants, et cetera at these different locations. And one of them in one of our most conservative areas was held on the courthouse steps, a very large oil and gas area. And they had this event with all these faith traditions. And about 100 people came, which was amazing. So it feels like that persistence, keeping at it, putting forth that this is our common home is a huge, important message. The second success story, an entree way in, which is making movement more quickly in New Mexico, is energy efficiency in houses of worship and installing solar. And I have one congregation now that created a new model for financing with a particular way of doing an LLC. And they are volunteering to talk and go to other faith communities free of charge to advise them. So wonderful collaborations. So I love that when we talk about strength and successes, we're talking about the human spirit, resilience, of creating larger, shared, more inclusive stories of how people come together. And I'm wondering if listening to each other's stories, if it triggers for you something else that you want to share by way of successes. So I didn't mention I should. For the sake of those that are here, I've seen a lot of our folks from Lutheran Church of the Incarnation. We were blessed to win an award for energy efficiency from California Interfaith Power in Light. And there was an event last fall where Sally Bingham's in charge of the organization. So my parish work as a pastor, I'm not working on climate change every day, although it's there in my preaching. And I think the folks, what I see is people working towards solutions, even though it's really not obvious what the solution is. There are a lot of little things that we should do. Thank you. Anybody else want to add to the success before we go into the challenging path? All right. Would you like, should we do this again in the flow? I have one microphone. So we wanted to learn from you and hear about stories that represent challenges and climate change efforts. And so if we can hear the story and also what is it about it that has been particularly challenging, even when we know that we do have human resilience and people coming together, there's still challenges in what they are. OK, so let me tell you a short story that usually takes a couple of days to tell. But I want to tell you a short story of this very essence of what our belief is. So everybody knows what a Chinook salmon is, right? Well, we revere the Chinook salmon as a magical fish that receives the messages from the creator for the work that it does. It only comes up the river one time and it dies. It spawns its eggs in the rocks on these rivers. And when the eggs hatch, they swim with the rest of the fish that are in that particular watershed. And our watershed would be trout and suckers and other water animals that are there. And they will swim with them for a very short time. And within that time, it might be months, might even be a year that they swim with them. But when they decide it's like something happens and they get the secret message that nobody else has gotten and they start going downstream. And they go downstream all the way to the delta, to the bay. And when they get there, they find out that it's saltwater. This is the first time the eggs realize that they came from saltwater. And they can't really just go into the saltwater just like that and swim out into the ocean. They have to wait there and change. They have to change and acclimate to saltwater fish. And so once they do that in the estuary, they swim out and they might be out there from anywhere from four to seven years. And then again, something magical happens and they decide that they have to swim up river. And they can't swim up just any river. It has to be the exact same river that they came out. So they have to find the exact same estuary. And when they come into that estuary as adults, they find that they're saltwater fish. They can't just swim right up that river. It's fresh water. So they have to stay in the estuary until they can change. And sometimes that change takes on a physical look with their jaw and their body structure may change. And when they do, they start swimming up the freshwater river. And they'll be swimming up there with the American River Fish and Feather River Fish, many of the fish that go to different places. And so they continue up that river, the Sacramento River, until they get to the place where they're supposed to go. For our fish, we're at the end of the chain, right? We're at the highest place in California that the fish have to swim to. It's over 300 miles, actually more than that, river miles. 300 road miles, but more like 600 river miles. And so when they get there, they find the exact same spawning ground, the gravel area, to lay their eggs. And they lay their eggs. And before any of the hatchlings appear, all of the adult salmon are dead. And so we believe that they're part of climate change. They are a part of the significance of how good our water is or bad. They're the indicator how our ocean is doing, how the streams are doing. They are also a climate changer in that they turn the rocks. When they lay their eggs, they turn all these rocks and they clean the riverbed. And when the riverbed is clean, the temperature of the water is affected. But all of these things are not in science right now. And the purpose for me telling you that is, I think our biggest challenge is to approach people of science and say that you don't know it all. You don't have all the scientific studies necessary to make those kinds of decisions of minimum flow of water or the correct number of wolves that can exist or those things that were put here by nature. And so I think that's one of our biggest challenges is to say that we're not scientists, we didn't go to school, we didn't get our BS degree like you did. And we can't BS like you do. That's our challenge. Yeah, it's a different way of knowing, isn't it? That's important. Yeah. I think for me, one of the biggest challenges is just the enormity of the problem. I mean, the Pope talking about this being a suicidal moment for us. And when you have kind of some of an environmental awakening about 10 years ago, hearing a colleague, an eco-theologian named Celia Dean Drummond talking about this, which sort of inspired me to get into this work and start to think about this stuff. Once you start down the path, it's like you can't unsee things you've seen or unknow things you know. And so, but our daily lives just operate with a baseline of business as usual. And we know we have to get to zero by 2030 fossil fuels. I mean, there's a part of me that's sort of like normal whatever person in the world that wants to say that that's a challenge. And yet, I think our thinking is exactly backwards. We pretend that the baseline is normal when in fact it's exactly the wrong way to live on the planet. It's not that we have an environmental problem, the planet has a human problem. That's the issue. And it's hard to hear this, but we're the cause of a lot of these problems because of the way we live and the society that we've set up. So just knowing that, knowing the enormity of the problem and knowing that as a colleague of mine, Chris Jones who works at the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley and he lives in Davis says we all have a bucket of worry. And there's only so much that can fit in that bucket. So I don't know, we have to be a part of the solution and it's not always clear what that is. So I would say that climate change is impacting at every level. Today afternoon, I'll be presenting about what is going on in Bolivia and how vulnerable we are to the impact of climate change. So we are facing huge challenges. There's migration pattern from rural contexts to urban contexts, which is really a huge challenge. NGOs have been, we have to address somehow the needs of those communities which are moving from rural context to urban context. And then the government is really part of the, let's say, it should be a partner. But in this case, it's not providing even basic needs. It's not able to provide the solution to basic needs of huge communities in peri-urban areas like access to water supply services is just missing. I was sharing today morning that Bolivia is at the bottom of the scale when it comes to access to water supply and sanitation services to the population. And the mortality rates of children under the age of five, it's right now 50 out of 1,000, which is huge, the average level in Latin American countries is 25 out of 1,000. So that's a huge challenge. Bolivia right now is, has a double risk of mortality rates of children because of water-related diseases. So those problems going on about migration rates are a huge challenge. And the development approach that rural contexts are going through, like identifying potential sustainable ways to remain in those contexts, is really under the need to be assessed. Oh my, thank you each. And I just, as each of you share, I just am so aware of so many challenges. And then how do we talk about this? What is it the challenge that we need to address? And as a person of faith working in this area with climate change and energy and all, I guess maybe the biggest challenge is helping grapple with what does it mean to be a human person where I live in this moment? And that's the challenge. And within that challenge is the need, somehow to make connections between issues, between the practices I have in my daily life and with the direction that we need to be going. And in that challenge working in faith communities, it's difficult often because most people of good faith, of good will are so immersed in a certain issue or a certain direction. And faith leaders are as well. And it's the immediate, and actually the immediate right now is being affected by this larger picture. So to break it down, an example I like to use, in New Mexico we have huge immigration and refugee issues that we're dealing with. And I for a number of years have been trying to help people make the connection between immigration and refugees and climate change and our destabilization. And finally that is beginning to happen with Catholic charities in our area with interfaith groups that are working on immigration and refugees and in collaborating together. And we need all of the wisdoms that we have, the indigenous, the academic, the community organizing, the NGOs, the faith, we need all of those together and we can't do it all. But somehow to make the connection with the peace that I am and that is my passion that I'm connected with with this larger picture and it's the challenge I think that Pope Francis calls us to of integral ecology, integral ecology. And so I guess I'll just, and then on a real practical level that enters in with the politics that need to be shifted in this country and that's up to each of us to do that. And with that, a shift of our economic system, huge shift of the economic system and the mantra that I hear so often why we can't act or change from fossil fuels or any number of things. What's about jobs? It's about jobs. How do we care for those who are most vulnerable, poverty, the younger generation that doesn't have jobs and hold all of this? And so what I hear is listening to you is the complexity and the interconnectedness of so many different components of who we are as humans and the environment and how the enormity of it can be so paralyzing because it's so huge and immense and thinking into the future where we are so sometimes stuck in our moment but it's really hard to see and I love the story of the salmon because that is such a great lesson to us that in order to enter into something we need to look inward and transform and very conscientiously enter into something. I think that's a wonderful lesson. And so I'm wondering if you can share some other lessons or ideas or thoughts that can break down a little bit of the enormity or the overwhelming aspect of what it is when we think of climate change and what we can do as individuals or as small groups or communities to just enter into it mindfully and start making a difference and feel that we can make a difference. I don't wanna put you on the spot but you're the closest to me. Thank you. Yeah, you know it is paralyzing when you look around and you think where do we start? What can you do? I mean I just came from a meeting yesterday about the salmon and restoration of salmon up on the McLeod River. And they're not sure that the fish would swim up there if they had a waterway. It's like why wouldn't you be? Why wouldn't you count on the fish being able to do that since they always did it and they were created to do that. The creator put them down here to do that and you block the river so if you open the river don't you think they'll swim back? Well we don't know that. We have to study it. We need like $300,000 to study it. And then we might build a waterway. And so a lot of this is like crazy talk to me. You know you wanna do something about climate change and you tie your own hands so that you can't do anything about climate change because everybody has to be convinced that if that's what you do it might have an effect on climate change but we don't know that because we didn't study that. We don't know that salmon have anything to do with climate change because it's not been researched. Right and so we're unwilling but one of the things I think that the common people, everybody, the good people of the state could come together on their own within their own houses, their own communities and start talking about living off the grid. Everybody used to live off the grid. Remember back when? Before all the houses were hooked up to electricity before all of the communities were hooked up to water systems? Everybody was off the grid. And now we're waiting for all of these big energy agencies to think of how they're gonna take care of us next. Since what they're doing with coal and the tar sands and all of that is harmful to our environment, then what are they gonna do for us next? And of course the president is talking about clean coal. It's like when is coal clean? But also about the solar systems and the wind power. And the only problem that I have is that when we build these mega systems, it's just as harmful in other ways to our environment. You know, when we build mega solar farms, we are a state of a flyway, meaning birds from South America fly all the way to the Arctic through our state. And already they know scientifically that when they have these mega solar panel farms that the birds that choose to fly over it ignite they catch on fire and they die because of the heat of these solar panels in mega distribution. So we need common people to look at the technology that's out there. I mean, right now you can even Google some of this to say your house could be on a wind power generator that's the size of a swamp cooler. Your house could have solar on it. But when you do these mega wind power, you're changing the cloud systems even. The clouds are changing by having these big giant windmill farms up on the ridge. And it changes the weather patterns and the rain patterns and the snow. But scientifically, we haven't got there yet. But I think that everything that anybody can do within their own, I really got excited about the organic coming back. It's like, before GMOs, we're all organic. And food was really food at one point in time before we got to this place. Meat was really meat. It wasn't hormone affected. And we have to start thinking back like that. If everybody could think back like that, we live out in the country a little bit and people from the city move out there and you see them coming in with their little four wheel runners with their little tank of Roundup to spray around the mailbox. It's like, we got to rethink things. We have to have a place where we can talk about really not a good idea. Roundup is not a good idea. You want organic farming, but we don't have any organic communities. And I think that if we could think like that our people, our families, to think about having an organic home, stop using the fertilizer, stop using the Roundup. Weaves have a place here too. And we're from a place where we don't have lawns. And so we get to see grass year round. The changes in it, the kind of bugs that come to it when it dies, when it's brown, what support it system it gives. I mean, it has a role, that's why it dies. And then it comes back, now it's coming back. But it also tells us about the seasons. And so I think if common people could begin to think about organic life and getting along like that, because we're all trained that we need antiseptic soap. We really don't. It doesn't do any more good than regular soap. But we're trained to think those things. And so I think common people, just getting some common sense about our life would do a world of good. It really is this issue of listening to other creatures and learning from nature, which is a great challenge, I think. Sometimes I'm caught up in this question, can one be optimistic with the data that we have from climate change and environmental degradation, garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean, blowing the tops off of mountains for dirty energy? I could go on and on and on. There's a long list of very depressing facts that scientists have taught us. Can one be optimistic or must one be pessimistic? And one thing I gleaned from my dissertation research was something that's both in a secular scholar, Gus Speth, I saw one of his books out there on the table, and a theological scholar named Jürgen Moltmann, who was the key figure in my dissertation, German ecotheologian, that optimism and pessimism are not the right categories for thinking about this problem. They both agree that this wasn't a conversation. I just saw it in both of their work. We need to be realistic and hopeful. So we have to face the problem honestly and look at the facts and be honest with ourselves, just the way we would, for example, if we wanted to lose weight, we need to be honest about how much we actually weigh, or we have other problems. We need to assess the situation honestly, but we cannot live in despair. It's so easy to go there. I was just doing that as I was listening to the talks today. We have to live in hope. And hope is, from my faith traditions perspective, a theological virtue. It's, there's a persistence and a resistance to hope that doesn't allow itself to despair, even if the facts look hopeless. So that's something that's tried to guide me, and yet I know there's way more work that needs to be done practically, especially in terms of civic action. There's hope in that, I think. When people come together like this, talk about the problems, and start to think creatively about solutions, there may be a path forward. So I would say that the fact that being a Humphrey Fellow is an opportunity to learn from what is going on beyond your country. What I've been seeing here in Davis is a unique model of sustainability in every sense. I would say that when I think about the developing country, when I think about my country, I would say I can see the huge gap within rich people and poor people. Rich people are living and are consuming so much, I would say as much as any single individual which are claimed here in USA to be a consumer, a normal consumer. That's happening the same way in a developing country in an urban context. So there's so much still to do, maybe one approach is to share knowledge, to share experience. I was having a nice conversation today morning how to build a bridge within the experiences here you have in Davis with my country, Bolivia, how to do it, knowledge, transfer, know-how. Education has a huge potential of impact. Let's start with our children, let's work with them. Then we might have some more conscious people in the future about the environment, about climate change, about consumption patterns, how to move from this point to this point. So right now I'm really, yeah, I have many things going on, many ideas, how to do it, how to do things like cool Davis is doing here, how to involve the society to realize that they have to, yeah, realize that we are impacting the environment in a negative way. We can expect that the agreements reached in Paris are going to do something. Let's wait that the money that the developed countries are going to put in the table are going to solve my problems in my country, but I will go the other way around. I would see what is really going on right now in my reality, in my country, to see that we are really impacting also this whole thing of climate change. The forestation is a huge example about what is going on in Bolivia right now. So, yeah, knowledge transfer and know how transfer from experiences that and those who already have the approach. And I would say that Davis is a unique place where I can see people biking in the streets. I can see how they manage water resources, solid waste management, public transportation. So those basic approaches are, I would say, easily to be transferred to our context as well. It seems like it comes down to a basic level that then has to spiral out. And maybe that is something like mindful living, the choices that each of us make and living those out. We seem to be on the wagon of the next technical thing that I'm going to have or the next gadget or the next iPhone, but maybe do I need that? Do we need that? Mindfully, what does it mean? Have I even considered that I have just purchased whatever that is that I don't really need that I could live without, that I could live more simply with? And I think that that's a spiritual practice. Those are spiritual practices of living, living mindfully and consciously and intentionally. And that's the basis of it and the root of it. And I believe intergenerationally working together to live that way and with one another because I think many young people are searching for that as well. And we have a responsibility to share, not in a condoning way, but really also to listen to what wisdom the generations have, different cultures have, so that together we might live more in that kind of mindful way. I think food is kind of a basic. Food and water, eating and drinking are some basic ways to begin. And in my work I'm finding that and with some young people and people in very economically strapped situations and doing some working together around that and taking their lead in it. Thank you. I like the idea of the spiral where you start with the individual and you talk about self-knowledge, personal responsibility, mindful living, starting with the self and then building out, making sure that you have your organic home, that you're really mindful of what are the basic needs versus the frivolous that may have other impacts and the need for looking outward into civic engagement, connecting with others. This is what we're doing today. And even further, I heard, Umberta, you talk about when they, when you do have experiences that are transferable, making sure that we educate each other worldwide on experiences and learn from each other because education is such a key thing. So I like the spiral image to really capture the different levels that you brought up. And I'm wondering if I want to open it up. We have a few minutes. If you have any comments or if you have any questions that you want to share with our panelists, just to let you know that because of the speakers you would actually have to come and join us to share your comment and or question. Anybody wants to share? Thank you. Thank you, Art Reed. I am Judy Morris. I'm on the cool Davis board and I'm of hearing all the ideas. But one of the things that I personally find grounds me is every morning when I get up, the very first thing I do is say to myself, what am I thankful for? I look out the window and I watch the blossoms coming out on the trees and it brings tears to my eyes. I go out into the garden and pick the orange off the tree, the lemon. And I just feel so grateful to be in this place, in this town, at this time. And also to say to myself, you're getting older, it's okay. Use every moment of your time to help others learn about climate change and what it's doing to the world and help them to start their own journey to live a more natural life with the planet and to take care of it, of here at home and all around the world. Thank you. We're gonna try another microphone, see if it works. No, is this working? Yeah, okay. So I'm Sky Kelpie and I'm a grad student at Davis. That one's not okay, that's for sure. Hi, so I'm Sky Kelpie. I'm a grad student at Davis studying environmental toxicology but I had a question for you guys about your kind of initial spark or your like aha moment when you got drawn into this movement because I think that's where a lot of people are right now is they're kind of interested but they haven't had that just pull into this movement and you guys have obviously done a lot of work. So you must have something driving you. So I was wondering if you could speak to that. Okay, you know, being native to this country and the fact that California didn't become a state until 1850 and that we were still on the rivers. When my grandmother was born on the river, my dad and mom was born on the river. So our perspective of the spark comes from the change that we have lived through. The change to us isn't climate change, it's people change, it's GMO change, it's food change. That's the changing part that, because climate always changes, drought is always here. You know, wet years are always coming. These things are normal in the laws of nature that we don't have control over but we do have control over how much water we need for GMO farming. How much water do we need for fracking, you know? And so my tribe, we're still from the river, we still go there and we still sing to the water and we still do our dances for the salmon even though there's no salmon in our river because we believe that we are attached to Mother Earth and that we have jobs to do for her and to teach that kind of thinking and we are trying to reach that younger generation. You know, we bring up a lot of youth groups from San Diego and LA and Oakland to our ceremony on the river now because we want them to see a real river. We want them to see real people who are attached to that river and why they are because this, what my grandmas would say, artificial living in these communities that have been developed and she calls it artificial because people don't want to get too cold, they don't want to get too hot, they don't want to get too wet, they don't want to travel too far, they don't want to, you know, it's all built for whatever they want. It's not built for seeing, like I said, the brown grass. It's not built for recognizing that the little white butterfly that flies in the pine trees is so necessary for that tree to exist. Without that little white butterfly, it would not reproduce. And knowing those kind of situations about our life and about our connectedness to that life, but from our perspective, we see that dwindling and dwindling and dwindling. So that spark for us is to remain to exist. It's different than maybe other people because we know that whatever happens to the salmon happens to us, what happens to that little white butterfly happens to us. And so that spark is like, we still want to survive. We're in this for survival, not for getting along or getting ahead or getting a big bank account or using the fancy products out there, but it is for striving to hang on to what other people think that we shouldn't. We should be Americans. We should give up that old way of life and just continue down this road. And so for us, that's the issue. And I do see a lot of young people in the campus programs that we do and we do talks at that are looking for exactly what she said, that spark or that direction or that purpose. And I'm not quite sure how we get that with this kind of society. That's the challenge, I think. I would just say for me, it was, I'm a dad. I'm a pastor and I started to study the subject. I needed a topic for my dissertation, frankly. And I heard the talk I mentioned Celia Dean Drummond as an English ethicist. And I started to think about the planet and its future and my children and what it would look like. And then the more I learned, the more I realized, it's not just about human babies and their future, but other creatures. We're part of what Multimon calls a community of creation and anthropocentrism is this kind of academic word that people worry about. Concerned only about human beings and their well-being. Well, our ethics need to be bigger than that, certainly from my faith tradition. But it started as the spark of thinking about future generations, specifically my own children. That's my story. Yeah. So I would say that, I don't know. I have to say I've been lucky. I have had the opportunity to live in a, I'm growing a developing country with, yeah, let's say restrictions, like not having water running through the tap every day. I've been living in some countries and I was doing a course in Holland a few years ago. And then I used to ask people what's the first idea that comes to your mind when it, when I ask you or when I, yeah, when I say water and they just think about having it available 24 hours a day, three, six, five days a year with no restriction. When, for me, the concept behind the word water is really something else, like boil it before drinking it or not having it available all the time. So those things really made me think further about the impact that we have in this world. Right now I have two beautiful daughters and that's the main thing for me to go beyond the, let's say the regular approach. And whenever we do something, analyze the impact that decision is going to have for the future generations. When I was studying in university, we were through this exercise, how you understand the sustainability and the basic concept was like be able to make the resources that we have available right now to be in the same way available for the future generations. And that's really a complex equation, right? It's not as simple as one plus one equals two, it's really something else. So thinking about future generations is the mainly driven factor for my perception and my personal opinion to analyze the impact that we have in this world, yeah. For myself, it's not one moment, it's many moments and I call them spiritual moments or and I think everybody in this whole room is really called to in whatever language to use some kind of a spirituality or even being a mystic I think in order to move through this climate change challenge, we need to be mystics which means seeing the communion, the relationship with everything and then acting on that. So for myself, maybe my earliest memory is when I was four years old, we didn't have an indoor bathroom going outside one night, I was very afraid, the world is huge, I'm very small, I see the stars and I'm overwhelmed. And I think, oh my, I'm part of this and not understanding it in my little child's brain but somehow that image stays with me. There have been many other spiritual moments, one that was significant was before I made vows as a Franciscan, I took a month off and I camped by myself in the mountains of Colorado where I was living at the time. And I had this experience one day when I was with the stream and a ritual of letting go of some things and cleansing and forgiveness and I laid on a big stone and the aspen trees with their leaves shimmering spoke to me and said, you know, you are our voice in this world and you need to work to save this planet. So I think each of us in our own ways, those spiritual moments, mystical moments, I think have to be the foundation of whatever our talents, gifts, paths are that we're given to work, to live mindfully. Thank you, we're all part of this, as you say, we're all very small part. So I wanna thank the panelists if you can help me thank them. And of course there'll be opportunities in the workshop this afternoon to continue these conversations and build on these conversations and do more sharing and learning together. And before we break to lunch, a couple of things I'd like to invite Lynn to share a few words and then we have a prayer before lunch. Thank you. I'm Father Jim, myself and my parish is so honored that you guys are here and anything that we can do for you. I would have loved to be here today. I was up in Woodland and a few other things to do. I'm running, Carol, Rita, just psychologically been here with you guys. Listening to these talks right now just fires me up. The idea of just a short time ago, the people of this country living on the river is something we don't hear about a lot. And I think what always comes to my mind is how did we let go of the spirituality? You know, a lot of liberals, it's like we've become so, dichotomous with everything. You have to believe this if you're a Republican, you have to believe this if you're a Democrat. And remember when Jesus was a hippie? When it was God's spell and Jesus Christ's superstar and he had long hair? Anyway, somehow we gave the power over to the merchants and they won that they could get a generation to stop drinking fresh squeezed orange juice and start drinking Tang. Or when people used to percolate their coffee with that little glass knob at the top and they went to instant coffee. I mean, who were people giving their power to? Who are we listening to? So yes, I think that we have to remember that spiritually we can't disconnect and if God is the creator of all we see His face in creation. So I hope that as we learn to be more unified people will learn to honor the earth. And I think that as whole, we have infinite supply and if you don't like it throw away, it's easier to throw it away than it is to fix it. And I think this in the back of our mind carries over to earth. It's easy, let's just throw it away, there's another one coming. And it's not infinite. As you know, preaching to the choir around yourself so smart. All right, so I have a little prayer. Blessed are you God of all creation whose very life permeates our world and whose goodness fills our hearts with joy. Bless you who are, bless you who have brought who have brought us together as friends and colleagues to be present to us. Continue to work in us the wonder of your grace forming us as your people committed to justice and mercy, healing and compassion in a world burdened by violence, injustice and indifference. Pour forth your blessing on us renew and refresh us for our mission making us effective leaders and wise stewards of your bountiful gifts. Bless this food we are about to share a sign of your goodness to us. Bless those who prepared it, those who serve it and keep ever mindful of those who go hungry tonight. May our meal and our celebration nourish our bodies and strengthen our bonds that unite us in love and faithful service. We ask to this to the God of all. Thank you for your patience. Wayne Provecho.