by Raven Burrell
The following is a reflection and summary of a conversation that I had with Hanne Strong in February of 2022. Hanne Strong is president and co-founder of the Manitout Foundation, a sustainable interfaith community that hosts sites for spiritual, educational, and environmental groups from all over the world in Crestone, Colorado. Hanne has advocated for environmental conservation and restoration for many decades, establishing conservancy and educational programs and organizing large, world-wide conferences, such as The Earth Summit in 1992. The list of Hanne’s achievements is long-winded. If you want to find out more about her work, you can read about her on the Manitou website here: https://www.manitou.org/foundation/directors/
It didn’t matter where we were at in the conversation, from light-hearted banter to full-hearted frustration, what really matters was always front and center. Her vision, her stories, her laugh, all point back to the core of her life’s purpose, what she calls “a revolution of consciousness.” This is not just an abstract concept for Hanne. There is direction and purpose attached to her understanding of human awakening. In her words, “as conscious revolutionaries, we need to focus on restoring the environment and empowering young people and future generations.”
Albert Einstein once said, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” I always imagined that he gathered this wisdom from his experience in solving physics equations, but I have found that it smoothly translates to just about any of life’s problems, from the mundane to the catastrophic. Hanne understood this in practice throughout her entire life and has come to immaculately embody its principles in her vision and work. She does not allow confusion to harbor in her presence. She sees right through the empty promises of political jargon and the all-too-common attempts to “solve” the climate crisis from a consciousness steeped in a paradigm of dominance. On the Manitou website, this message shines through: “Our present solutions to environmental and social problems are only Band-Aids. If we want our external world to change, we must first create change within ourselves.” After spending years in conferences with world leaders and the top climate scientists around the globe, Hanne sees the climate crisis beyond a petty political debate. She transmits the clarity that there is nothing more to discuss, only a reality to face. For Hanne, facing the dire reality of climate extremes simultaneously means facing ourselves. When speaking to her, she transmits a seamless understanding that one cannot happen without the other. “So, the writing is on the wall,” she exclaimed after discussing some of the dismal findings from climate scientists, “which way is it gonna be? Is it gonna be a massive change in human consciousness—which is the only chance we’ve got—or, are we gonna go down the drain?”
Hanne is no stranger to the radical changes that can occur when we are willing to surrender ourselves to a shift in consciousness. She has put her body in the way of this kind of transformation in her personal life, which is what makes her so apt for the message she carries. When I spoke with Hanne it seemed like her small life was enveloped inside a much greater purpose that had been running the show for several years now. I was curious about her initiation on this path of purpose. In what form did her calling come and how did she make way to hear it? Although she had been a seeker from a very young age, Hanne found herself in her early adult life working as the head of a commercial design firm and living on Broadway. She was having fun attending lavish designer meetings and prominent receptions, but her curiosity for Spirit had taken the backseat. One ordinary night, she was meandering back from one of these swanky receptions. Minutes away from the comfort of home, she was walking by her apartment building when a large boulder fell off a balcony several stories above her and just barely missed her nose. The way she described it was like turning on a light switch. Her close encounter with the boulder was simultaneously accompanied by epiphany, there was no lapse of time between the fallen boulder and a breakthrough in her consciousness that instantly understood something in her life had to change. She told me that she immediately went upstairs to her apartment and opened the window. As she stood there looking over Broadway, she found a deep and powerful place of surrender, saying to herself, “creator, I give you my life, show me what to do.” At this point in our conversation, she paused. I sank into the gravity of that moment with her years ago, now being relived on a dial-in conference call with me, a relative stranger, unfamiliar to the world of business and design that filled up her previous life. I attempted to fully comprehend all of the ties that locked her into that life; the familiarities and nuances of human drama that anchored her identity into the world. It felt important to run my fingers over the texture of who she was before in order to sense the weight of what she was shedding at that concentrated point in time. Indeed, it felt as heavy as a boulder and as close as death. It held within it the unmistakable power of night and day, softened by the dissolution of dusk and dawn. It offered the promise to another Self, both personal and collective; a commitment to another way of being human. “And after that,” she concluded, “everything started to happen.”
It wasn’t long after that fateful night that Hanne met her husband, Maurice Strong, who was working under the Secretary General of the UN at the time, mainly in charge of environmental issues. Their coupledom was swallowed by the greater purpose that had previously captivated Hanne the night of her close encounter with the falling boulder. Maurice initiated the first big UN environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972. Hanne was in Stockholm on a press pass commissioned to interview Maurice, the title of the article was “What Makes Maurice Strong Tick? When Maurice headed up The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, raising enough money to bring in 10,000 nongovernmental organizations, Hanne worked to raise an additional 1.5 million to assure that indigenous peoples were also represented. “The governments were furious,” she made this side note with a hint of satisfaction in her voice. After their work in Stockholm, the couple moved to Kenya to start up The UN Environment Program (UNEP). During her time there, Hanne founded The Foundation for Social Habilitation, an NGO that worked with children who lived in squatter settlements, teaching them to plant trees in their communities. She gathered prominent leaders to serve on the board, such as Wangari Maathai and Richard Leakey. Throughout her life with Maurice, Hanne worked closely with top climate scientists, spiritual teachers, indigenous wisdom holders and world leaders. She explained, “we were totally engulfed in the environmental world, so I got a really good picture of what’s going on.”
Hanne’s initiative in Kenya foreshadowed her later work with The Earth Restoration Corps (ERC), a vision she maintains today. Hanne clarified that, all along, the question guiding these projects has been, “how do you restore the planet?” The ERC is a global environmental educational program designed to train young adults in ecosystem restoration and green livelihoods. The training is holistic and includes different kinds of non-denominational spiritual practices that teach the youth to balance their energy and ground into something deeper than what the eye can see. I could tell this is where Hanne’s heart was. With warmth and enthusiasm, she described, “We get stories that are so beautiful about what happens to these kids when they’re out there. Absolutely incredible.” Currently, the program is going through a time of renovation, and they are reworking the board and thinking of new strategies to get support.
When asked what her contribution is within this larger, shared vision of the ERC, Hanne said, although she loves working with children, she knows how to speak to the people in power. “I had access to a lot of big-thinking people, and I know their language. My job right now would be to talk these people into doing something real. I think my next thing will be to persuade NATO and the military regimes to take this on.” Honestly, when I heard Hanne include the military in this plan, I wasn’t sure if she was being serious. Teaching young people to care for the earth and themselves seems like a far cry from the U.S. military that I know. The confidence that Hanne exuded over the phone was steady. “They are the only ones with the capacity to do it on a scale that it needs to be done,” Hanne affirmed. Yes, the military. Her unwavering certainty gave me a chance to consider the possibility further. At first a questionable joke, it was now looking like the only possible solution. Of course, the military—an organization best known for its exorbitant funding and meticulous training. It would be like going directly to the wound of dominance and violence and extracting the medicine for a world of balance and care.
The knot of modernity has tightened us into an insoluble dilemma, which seems to call upon unthinkable solutions. The climate crisis is pushing us to the edge, to either jump into new and unknown ways of being human or go extinct. Like Einstein said, we can’t solve this problem with the consciousness that created it. As our global issues become more acute, perhaps governments will be looking for unthinkable solutions, and Hanne’s vision may be exactly what the world needs. She seems to think so, and she has living proof that it’s possible. They already implemented this strategy in the Philippines 25 years ago with The Secretary of Interior, Rafael Alunan. Hanne reports that it was a success; in the end, they had them training “environmental warriors instead of killers.” In South Korea, Hanne and her team worked with a group of Chi Gong masters and had the Korean army practicing Chi Gong. Hanne told me about similar projects in history with high success rates that have encouraged her to maintain her vision. For example, after the Biafran War, General Olegesum, now a former president, was left with a quarter of a million young, machine-gun toting soldiers. He provided them all with vocational training—such as farming, baking, or plumbing—so that they would have a livelihood when they were sent home. “He put them back in their villages with something to do,” Hanne summed up in her simple, straightforward style. It took me a second to consider the military as a source of public service that seeks to restore rather than destroy. With the way the world is today, it is hard to imagine. Then again, creating a new anything must come from the unimaginable, and the birth of a new world is no exception. Mother Earth is demanding a heightened level of faith in the unknown from us at this time, and Hanne’s vision seems to steer in that direction.
Together, Hanne and Maurice founded The Manitou Foundation in 1988 to create a sustainable interfaith community in Crestone, Colorado. Hanne Strong knew that Crestone was where she needed to be as soon as she stepped off the plane. They purchased the land and Hanne moved into the Luis Maria Baca Ranch along with her mother, daughters and sister in 1978. She was just settling into her new home when an old man knocked on the door. “I have been waiting for you to arrive,” he said (I could imagine Hanne shrugging on the other side of the phone to underscore her ease with absurdity). She continued, “he was 85 at the time, so I invited him in.” Hanne and this man spent the next few days together as he related to her the prophecy of the land that had so clearly spoken to Hanne upon her arrival. Hanne described the man, “I immediately sensed his kindness and a certain light in his eyes.” His name was Glen Anderson, and he was known as “the prophet” to the locals. He proceeded to tell Hanne that she was to bring the world traditions together right there in Crestone and demonstrate to the world “how to live simply.” He further conveyed to Hanne that Crestone’s destiny was to bring forth a new civilization of evolved beings. After receiving this information, Hanne fasted in the mountains for four days and, through her own communication with Spirit, confirmed the prophecy. During her time in the mountains, Hanne also came to know that the land she was on was Hopi territory and that she must consult with the Hopi elders about this prophecy. She already had an established relationship with Hopi elders and was able to speak with them from a place of trust. After travelling to Hotevilla and attending a Kiva ceremony, the Hopi elders confirmed Glen Anderson’s prophecy and further stated that she was to build near the Eastern Mountain, “where the light comes into the world.” So, Hanne received their blessing to go forward with the project, she was told it was also part of Hopi prophecy.
Over the years, Maurice and Hanne gave away land to various religious traditions and spiritual lineages to build places of worship that would become refuge to seekers around the globe. Before the pandemic, Crestone was taking in about 20,000 people on retreat every year. When I first read about Crestone on their website, I felt a sense of relief in my body knowing that a place like this existed in the world. Hanne believes that Crestone will continue to offer support and shelter for people as our climate crisis becomes more critical. How things evolve and what “shelter” will look like is unpredictable, but the resource is there, thanks to the Strong’s offering and vision. Indeed, the word resource seems to ripple with ease when I think of Hanne. Coming from the French noun resourse, “a source, a spring,” and the Latin verb resurgere, “to rise again,” the word fits Hanne’s ability to pull from Spirit and transform the human realms of wealth, power, and systems into something of Service. Hanne has learned to move nimbly within the world of human politics in a way that does not forget what truly matters. This invaluable place of contribution allows her to access societal resources of money and power and transform them into an offering that returns us to the genuine resources that life on this planet so abundantly provides. There was a point in our conversation when the tone of Hanne’s voice became more transparent and revealed the underlying well of rage and grief that runs through the collective in response to the possible end of a beautiful world. “Nobody is giving thanks!” She gave herself permission to express the truth in her heart, “what is wrong? We get everything! All of the food we eat, all of our medicines. Everything that keeps us alive comes from earth and the elements.” Her honest sentiment struck a chord with me. Wake up! I heard, we can’t keep going on like this. It was a boundary, a limit that had been reached within Hanne—years ago, lifetimes ago—and she was refusing to let ignorance steer the ship. This is her prowess, her valor. It is a tenacity that holds her intact enough to continue to surrender to the vision of what she cannot yet see.