Without a doubt, this word has come to mean something far from its roots. To make this easy, here it is right from www.dictionary.com:

sus·tain /səˈsteɪn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[suh-steyn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–verb (used with object)
1. to support, hold, or bear up from below; bear the weight of, as a structure.
2. to bear (a burden, charge, etc.).
3. to undergo, experience, or suffer (injury, loss, etc.); endure without giving way or yielding.
4. to keep (a person, the mind, the spirits, etc.) from giving way, as under trial or affliction.
5. to keep up or keep going, as an action or process: to sustain a conversation.
6. to supply with food, drink, and other necessities of life.
7. to provide for (an institution or the like) by furnishing means or funds.
8. to support (a cause or the like) by aid or approval.
9. to uphold as valid, just, or correct, as a claim or the person making it: The judge sustained the lawyer’s objection.
10. to confirm or corroborate, as a statement: Further investigation sustained my suspicions.

What adds to my particular dilemma is that I have come to use the word regarding healing environments: to create and sustain a therapeutic space. Meaning, 30 minutes or one hour, or one day is not enough. This is about continuous…sustainability. However, the word is confusing. Well, maybe not.

Dallas and I recently attended a Sustainability Intensive sponsored by the Fielding Graduate University at the O.U.R. Ecovillage in British Columbia (www.ourecovillage.org). The whole weekend we talked about it, ate it, breathed it, soaked in the rain within in, and talked some more. Knowing that we were not going to suddenly pack up our high-tech, computerized home, rid ourselves of the many electronic technological advances that have allowed us to record our music where we sit, put away our HD television that brings us Sunrise Earth every day…it just was not going to happen. However, something else did happen.

I had not linked it all before. Consumerism = environmental decay because we take one substance born of the earth and transfom it (production defined by Marx)…and have done so in a way that throws it back to the earth, but hardly dust to dust. It is more like tree to paper cups. Or, oil to plastic blister packages. Or, …well, you name it.

So, what kind of definition could I use about sustainability when it comes to compassion, caring, skill, generosity, forgiveness? Is it possible to take it and not give it back? Could we run out of any of them? Well, we have transformed some into economic windfalls. Hmm. Compassion, according to latest television commercials, is offered through your local HMO. Caring is one every mission statement. Skill..a promise to deliver. Generosity…has not yet been found in an ad lately. And, forgiveness…well, short shelf life it seems.

However, all sarcasm aside, having lived for three days among people who are really putting their word into action, I believe and keep saying that the healing environment is, by definition, sustainable, if we sustain it. That, human interactions are consummated heart to heart in ways that are non-disposable.

I am no longer buying paper plates; I am using real cups at Starbucks; I am using my handtowels more than my paper towels; I have already switched our marketing to more online exchange than paper stuff through the mail. Most important, however, I am reassure that global warming and heart warming are related.

How is it for you?

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