By David A. Sargent,Special to the Sun Journal

LEWISTON – With references ranging from Gandhi and Dr. Albert Schweitzer to a number of contemporary advocates for organic farming and holistic living, Steven Drane spoke to a Bates College audience Thursday afternoon about his spiritual life-journey.

Drane, an Auburn resident who immerses himself in world faith teachings regarding human relationships with the earth and with the plant and animal worlds, said, “We are in a polluted world that doesn’t respect the good earth.”

In a talk titled “Coming to our Senses: A Spirituality of the Earth,” Drane discussed how the various paths in his life have intersected. The program was the first presentation in the series called “Spiritual Journeys: Stories of the Soul 2005-06,” sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain at Bates College.

Drane is an ordained minister, environmental activist, master gardener and herbalist.

“Learn to read the earth,” Drane advised.

“It’s important for people to get their hands dirty,” he said. That can mean working directly with the hard issues as much as digging in the soil, he explained, adding that he believes such effort can lead to a deeper sense of spirituality.

“In our time, we are called to get more in touch with who and what we are and, literally, our roots,” Drane said.

He criticized established religions for extremes and said, “This has to be challenged from a personal perspective to make a difference.”

“As human beings, we have to look at holistic living,” Drane told his audience.

Noting that probably no one in his audience “has ever been truly painfully hungry, like those recently in the Superdome,” Drane said that one-third of all the plants at our feet in fields and forests are good to eat.

Drane, who has studied edible plants and wild foods, offered a list prepared by the Garden Club Federation of Maine. He urged the audience to “take a couple of years and, like a life bird list, see how many you can check off.”

Drane’s study of Native American botanical traditions inspired him to form a 10-year teaching partnership with a Cherokee medicine woman and botanist. They founded Maine’s “Native American Appreciation Days” and they have taught edible-plant courses to adults and children for more than 25 years.

“Native American healers always have had a very broad perspective,” he said. “They have a feeling not only for their people, but also for the earth.”

Drane advocated benefits from participating in new experiences that are often offered at workshops and retreats. He said forms of Eastern meditation help calm our harried minds, while today’s world of reality TV and advertising presents “all kinds of allurement and quick fixes with a pill that can lead us down some very unhealthy paths.”

Drane also ventured into comments about paranormal experiences that he said may be called “non-local consciousness.” He talked about a Native American healer who sat with a woman in a coma and, while in a trance, was able to draw her back from an experience that influenced her coma.

“All of us have had these strange experiences,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of things like this happening. We need to have a community where we can talk about such things.”

“There are ways to break the cycle and get outside of the rut of our lives,” Drane said. “There are many new ways of seeing things.”

“Too much information is forced into our minds,” Drane said. He compared it to filling our brains with hundreds of floppy disks without knowing how it will all be used.

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