The hundreds of people who participated in the Religion and Ecology conference came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Members of a Jain youth group, Buddhist nuns, and students from Harvard Divinity School shared ideas with representatives from Brown University's South Asian Students Association, members of the Theosophical Society, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Most participants seemed to agree with ecologist, author, and filmmaker Michael Tobias, who spoke on Jainism during the second weekend of the conference. Their answers on the subject of what awakened them to the environmental crisis evoked some of the most intriguing and poetic responses. But others have woken up to the threats of environmental instability through concern about nuclear radiation or toxic waste or factory food farming.
Moral issues abound, from pesticide cancer links to third world sweat shop exploitation.
Speaking on Pacific indigenous traditions, John Grim, professor of religion at Bucknell University connected the intuitive ecology often associated with traditional lifeways with a mystical experience of his own. He was a high school student at the time, working on a survey crew laying plot lines for lake lots in northern Minnesota. He remembers looking off into a field and seeing the field fall away. It suddenly opened up, and I was simply looking into the darkness. A voice came and it said, 'When your life goes to pieces, come back and stand in this place'.