Julia Butterfly Hill climbed up into 1,000-year-old redwood tree which she named "Luna" in 1979 and began a two-year campaign to prevent this great lady from being destroyed. Although criticized by many as "the crazy lady in the tree," she became an ecological heroine for many more people who admired her reverence for nature and her awesome ability to suffer for her love of the natural world. Julia Butterfly Hill is a writer, poet, and founder of the Circle of Life foundation. She lectures across the United States and is the author of The Legacy of Luna and One Makes a Difference.
This two-and-one-half hour presentation is divided into two parts. On the first disc, Hill is heard lecturing in front of a live college audience. She talks about her disdain for celebrityhood and her sadness over the ways in which so many people project their own gold onto media and sports figures rather than realizing their own divine potential. She recounts how her life was turned around by an auto wreck — afterwards, she no longer felt committed to a life in business where the chief goal is to make money. The most difficult moment in her two-year experience with Luna was watching the trees around her being chopped down. Hill considers nature to be her spiritual teacher.
On the second disc, this activist is interviewed by Tami Simon of Sounds True. Hill contends that it irritates her to see the word "and" connected with spirituality, such as "spirituality and social action." For her, spirituality cannot be segregated from any dimension or aspect of life as we experience it every day. Hill laments the fact that so many organizations for social change are competing with each other; she has modeled her own Circle of Life Foundation on the principle of synergy. Sharing, not competition, is what organizations working for societal transformation should be demonstrating by word and by deed.
Hill also discusses how she has conquered the fear and anger than can consume those trying to make a difference in the world. She cries freely and believes that her ability to care is what matters most. For her, optimism means letting go of attachments and just staying with the process of activating our spiritual selves. She concludes: "We are all powerful beyond our wildest imaginations. We are all the one who can make the difference."
