At one of our first workshops on becoming guardians of future generations, someone said, "All we really have to do is awaken the sleeping guardians within us."

The person who said this was not asleep in any sense of the word, and she was in a circle of wide-awake people who had been drawn to this workshop by a combination of curiosity, commitment, and hope. Still, something waits within us to be stirred. An archetype? A knowledge? An imagination?

I am beginning to think that everyone already knows how to be a guardian; it is just a matter of awakening sleeping knowledge. Modify that: Everyone knows how to learn to be a guardian of future generations. Training is needed, but the training course and the teachers, the required knowledge and principles, the steps of certification and recognition become clear when we awaken the sleeping guardians within us.

This is especially true of the personal kind of guardianship, which is where most of us will begin. But it may also apply to the legal and communal dimensions of guardianship.

To flesh out the idea of future generation guardianship, we need the collective wisdom of these individual guardians within. This site is a collection point for that wisdom. I am about to start a new How To book in the Living Library because that wisdom is starting to gather… but meanwhile, what follows is a group exercise in awakening the guardian, with thanks to Joanna Macy. Try it and let us know what you learn.

. . . to carrying my own bags to the supermarket.

1. My collection is miscellaneous. They don't match my outfit. People will call me the bag lady behind my back.

2. It's hard to remember to take bags when I'm going out.

3. I never say "I have my own bags" fast enough and the cashier starts putting my stuff in a plastic bag and then has to take it out and then I bet he throws the bag away anyhow and the whole exercise becomes pointless.

4. At the regular checkout they have these new carrousels specially made to hold their plastic bags. My bags don't fit on them. . .

I sat down the other evening with my trusty pencil and scrap paper.  I had been asked if I wanted to go out for dinner and I wanted to know what dinner actually cost.  We ate pb&j sandwiches while I did my figuring.  Yes I have a patient husband.  First it would cost me at least 2 dollars to wash and dry the clothes we would wear to go out.  Another 2 dollars for gas(precious fossil fuel) to get there and home again.  Say 20 dollars for food, half of which would be put in a styrofoam container (booo hisss) for me to throw out later.  Maybe 3 dollars for a tip, I am such a cheapskate. 

But it went deeper than that- the cost to the environment was just too much for me to bear.  Silly?  No.  the use of fossil fuels to ship the nutritionally challenged food to the restaurant.  The waste of the food when I cannot eat all on my plate.  The nutrition deficit to my body due to all the white carbs restaurants use as filler.  The use of fossil fuels for my waitperson to get there.  The use of electricity to run the restaurant.  The massive use of water in the dishwasher to clean my plate and glass and silverware. 

It doesn't end at the restaurant either. 

I was talking with a friend and I told her that I felt today's dying sense of community contributes greatly to environmental peril.  I said this because I remember the good old days when I knew my neighbor's name and they were comfortable with that.  We would call each other when headed to the store, offering either a ride or to pick up what was needed.  If one of us was ill, the other would cook dinner that night.  If one of my father's kids was being punished it meant using a push mower(no motor) to cut the grass; and the neighbor's grass, also.  Boy did we behave better after a week of that!  None of us dropped dead from the physical exertion, nor do we claim any psychological damage.  Not from the mowing anyway. Now the time he wrapped a curtain around his neck and shot the neighbor's cement deer......Anyway.