Through experiential practices, we opened our hearts and senses to the wisdom present all around us in the more-than-human world. We also explored where to find the voices of nature in the midst of the city and dialogued about how nature inspires, sustains, and informs us as we endeavour to transform ourselves and society and restore ecological health. 

Mark is an adult educator who researches and writes about the interconnections between ecology, economics, social justice, spirituality, and cosmology. Mark worked for many years as an ecological and social justice activist. After completing his degree in math and physics, he lived in Peru for eight years where he helped co-found a small non-profit working in alternative literacy and leadership training using popular education. More recently, Mark has worked with ecumenical social justice coalitions, interfaith ecology initiatives, and in the eco-justice and partnership work of The United Church of Canada. He is currently completing a PhD in adult education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto) where his research focuses on transformative learning, worldviews, and the cultivation of ecological wisdom. He also teaches an undergraduate course on ecological worldviews. With Leonardo Boff, he co-authored The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the Ecology of Transformation (Orbis Books, 2009), a broad synthesis covering such diverse fields as economics, ecopsychology, cosmology, and spirituality in the search for wisdom to address the challenges of the times we live in.