Essays

Insights from our community

Relationship

The Way Out | End of the Egoic Era

The image of a healthy world lies deep within our own souls. There is a spiritual willpower where this image can no longer be destroyed by external counter-forces. Today, many people who do their service in helping humans and animals have learned to work with this image.

Keynote

Envisioning the Beloved Community

By John Bell

After edging close to the brink of ecological and societal collapse and after enduring enormous suffering on our precious Earth, enough people of good will and skillfulness were able to do just enough to pull us back from that brink so that complex life on earth might continue. We now live in the Beloved Community.

Self-Care

The Eco-Institute at Pickards Mountain | My Experience as a Black Participant-Turned-Leader

By Psalms White

Once I had the conviction that rest as a black woman is a revolutionary act and therefore my rest WAS essential to the current strivings for freedom, I set my mind on going and getting as much from this program as I possibly could.

Governance

A US Department of Peacebuilding?

By DJ Chandler and Laura Brown

Soon after the pandemic began in 2020, the authors separately found their way to a new community for each of them: the US Department of Peacebuilding Campaign and national grassroots advocacy community. As the pandemic raged, the authors engaged with a growing group of people across the country who were practicing the ways of the Beloved Community. For them, the experience was transformational.

People Power

How to Have a Community Conversation

By Michael Ratner

A growing number of community organizers, hoping to bring neighborhoods together, have successfully used Community Conversations to work through differences and resolve local issues within their neighborhood or larger region.

Wayfinding

The Bridge to Tomorrow is a Work-in-Progress

By Sheersty Stanton

It’s not sufficient anymore to know about the benefits of connection. We must dynamically partake of this capacity to be together in a way that improves our individual health outcomes.