A Workshop and lecture series for teachers, activists,
and concerned citizens of an endangered planet.
Panels: June 29, July 6, & July 13; Workshop: July 16 – 18
(All details below)
Register for event at https://www.lamatogether.org/events/contemplative-environmentalism
Teachers: Lena Fletcher & Paul Wapner
Days & Times: Friday, 7/16, 3:30 – 5:00 MT, Saturday, 7/17, 10:00 – 12:00 MT,
Sunday, 7/18, 10:00 – 12:00; 3:30 – 5:00 MT
Cost: $100 – $150 sliding scale (financial assistance available)
Where: Online/Zoom
ow do we live meaningfully in this moment of environmental intensification? How can we find greater purpose and more sanity as teachers, activists, and concerned citizens?
This three-day, virtual workshop explores ways of cultivating insight, courage, and sensitivity to navigate escalating environmental dangers. It focuses on the interface between our inner lives and planetary realities, and offers tools for teaching, mobilizing, and living on behalf of a sustainable future. We will use meditation, yoga, small group sharing, and other contemplative practices to dig more deeply into our own psychological and spiritual sensitivities and use such insight to become ethically more alive and better equipped to respond to global environmental endangerment and searing injustice.
The workshop will be small to allow intimacy and personal exploration. Everyone will be on a single screen. Sessions will be interactive, and we will use breakout rooms for in-depth inquiries.
The workshop is linked to a speakers’ series that will take place before our actual gathering. Everyone is encouraged, although not required, to participate in these free talks.
The workshop is sponsored by the Lama Foundation, American University, and the Center for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.
Panel Discussions, Tuesdays, 5:00 – 6:30pm MT, by donation (entrance to these included with workshop):
6/29/21 – Architecture For a Finite Planet, with panelist Jade Polizzi
7/6/21 – Contemplative Environmentalism Panel, with panelists Malini Ranganathan & Lena Fletcher
7/13/21 – Environmental Activism in a World of Wounds, with panelists Bill McKibben & Lyla June
Workshop Teachers:
Lena Fletcher is a professor of Environmental Conservation in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass). Her work focuses on teaching and advising undergraduate students in Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation. Lena uses innovative and contemplative teaching in large classes focused on the Environment and Society, with increasing attention around climate justice. She is also a mom to four sons and an outdoor enthusiast. Read more >
Paul Wapner is Professor of Global Environmental Politics in the School of International Service at American University. His research and teaching focus on environmental ethics, climate suffering, and environmental activism. He has published six books and numerous articles. His latest work, Is Wildness Over?, explores the challenge of opening to uncertainty. Paul teaches workshops on contemplative environmentalism and serves on the board of RE-volv, an organization that funds and installs solar on the roofs of nonprofits.