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Winter 2019 Possible Futures | Regeneration, Connection and Values
Introduction
A Story Still Unfolding
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
Holding a Seed for the Future
The future will not be as we have planned—our world is already too far out of balance. But this may be our most important gift to future generations—a belief in living Oneness.
Articles
From What Is to What If
Given the state of the world, the message of despair is pretty convincing. Things look grim. But something about that doesn’t sit quite right with me. In fact, there’s evidence that things can change, and that cultures can change, rapidly and unexpectedly.
Thomas Berry and the Rights of Nature
One of Thomas Berry’s major contributions to what he called the Great Work was his articulation of the principles and philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence.
Ten Economic Insights of Rudolf Steiner
Here is a short ten-point guide that outlines some key ideas Steiner developed. All ten ideas seem to me to be more pertinent and necessary today than they already were ninety years ago.
The Unexpected Journey of Caring
Personal transformation is usually an experience we actively seek out—not one that hunts us down. In the twenty-first century, becoming a caregiver is a transformation that comes at us, requiring us to rethink everything we once knew. When a loved one becomes a caregiver, everything changes...
Re-Imagining America
We are individually and collectively in the same boat; how do we become more caring, loving human beings while creating a society which fosters equality, relationship, opportunity, freedom and love?
The Alchemy of Power
Small and large businesses, schools, governmental, nongovernmental, and civic organizations are demonstrating what decades of studies bear out: operationalizing values is the best insurance for living and working with robust people, within robust economies, on a robust planet.
Conversations
The Next Civilization, with Jeremy Lent
These received ideas that we have about meaning, how do they actually arise? Whose word are these ideas from?
Collective Trauma and Our Emerging Future
When we talk about the current situation in the 21st century, one of the few things most people would agree on is that, yes, we do live in an age of disruption. That means the future is going to be different from the past.
Music
Freedom to Make Music
The Pros and Cons Program in Canada mentors inmates in a music program that focuses on rehabilitation and restorative justice. The program was founded by Hugh Christopher Brown. He and the inmates write, arrange and record songs entirely within the confines of the prison walls.
Sacred Season Gathering of Songs
Music Editor's Note: This is an effort of many hands and hearts - our first ever Kosmos music compilation. We are so grateful to the artists who make this music and thankful that we have your voices in Kosmos and in the world. We are honored that we get [...]
Essays
Global Social Witnessing
You swipe through your favourite news site while sitting in a train, and you enter the typical bombardment of information. Can you feel the contraction of your chest, the narrowing down of your attention, the closing of your heart?
A Cry for Help
I like to consider myself a helper, but when our son, Jon, took his life on Easter weekend of 2019, I could no longer think of myself as a successful helper. In my own eyes, I instantly became a failed one.
Hopeful Essay Penned by Firelight
May I begin my hopeful essay with negatives? We can’t ignore their reality. Can we just get them out of the way? We all know them. Or do we? We know about the bees and the bugs. In my retirement, I am engaged in bee conservation. Unheralded in the [...]
Active Hope | Time with Joanna Macy
She is close to ninety, and I wanted to be able to work with her before she completely passes the baton to others.
Healing the Wounded Mind
To have inner strength requires that we carry vision within us. Also, that we learn, or at least accept responsibility for, transmitting that vision.
Art in a Time of Catastrophe
At such a time, are the arts irrelevant, a luxury? To the contrary, they have an essential place both in grieving for what is lost and in imagining new human possibilities.
Poetry
Three Poems
As a spirit traveling through matter on a journey towards an unknown event horizon, poetry has been a record and exploration of the inner experience, thoughts, and feelings of this human voyage in a world that is beautiful, mysterious, radiant, and at times terrifying.
Our Scarlet Blue Wounds
On the heels of something great, I’ll take you there...
Gallery
Kito Mbiango | The Power of Art to Drive Action
Kito Mbiango’s work speaks nostalgically to our primal intelligence, engaging us in a conscious reflection about our collective evolution. His “Climate Change Collection” is a response to the accelerating environmental degradation we are facing and have imposed upon nature and all wildlife.
Closer Looking | Microscopy and Aboriginal Art
Stories and Structures – New Connections delivers a new vision of Australia and its stories. I hope this exhibition will open new conversations and provide opportunities to make new and lasting connections and cross-cultural reconciliation.
Fall 2019 New Spirit, Wise Action | Aligning Inner and Outer Purpose
Introduction
New Spirit, Wise Action
The times we live in ask much of us. How can we know the best ways to respond to the converging crises we face? How can we live lives of deep meaning and joy in the midst of confusion and pain, and be catalysts for positive change?
Beyond ‘Sacred Activism’
The subtle and tenacious bonds of language shape and express our default beliefs about the world. We need a path beyond such limiting structures, a descent into the substrate, a journey into the interstices of the existential.
Articles
Fourteen Recommendations When Facing Climate Tragedy
How might interbeing raise you from the threat of depression if you sense the end of everything one can contribute to due to near-term extinction of the human race and the majority of species?
Restoring the Housatonic River Walk
The ongoing creation of River Walk also speaks to the human element. It marks the confluence of ecological renewal, environmental and social justice, the underpinnings of the industrial revolution, and the vitality of a downtown.
Shut It Down: Stories From a Fierce, Loving Resistance
Conscious organizing addresses the most fundamental need we have as humans to belong to a community.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s Code of Global Ethics
At the turning of the Millennium, the United Nations chose Thich Nhat Hanh's code of global ethics, the Five Mindfulness Trainings, as the foundation for a non-sectarian ethical path for humanity.
Every Act a Ceremony
The ceremony, which only makes sense if holy beings are watching, draws us into an experiential reality in which holy beings are indeed present.
Inner Work Makes Our Outer Work Massively More Effective
If you are already on the path of your own inner work, you will know how a regular practice of self-reflection can be incredibly useful—not just to you, but to the communities around you, as well as to the wider world.
The Sun of Darkness
The center and the periphery are changing places. This is part of a larger epochal shift that we can best understand through a mythological and cosmological lens.
White Men and Native America
I feel a personal desire to take responsibility to acknowledge and transform our heritage of systemic racism in the United States because of the deeply personal benefits that I have received from the native cultures of North and South America, Africa and Asia.
Gallery
Burning Man | What We’ve Learned
"We don’t need a blueprint, we don’t want a master plan, we just need to practice the skills and create the kind of spaces we want to live in, and share them."
Kathy Thaden | An Inner Fire
“How do I discuss the impact of environmental issues – on both our natural surroundings and the rest of humanity? What can I contribute to the narrative of healing and restoration?"
Music
Big Lazy | Music for Unsettling Times
Simultaneously noir and pastoral, gothic and modern, Big Lazy conjures images of everything from big sky country to seedy back rooms.
Kendra Smith | The Disappearing Art of Living
As a reclusive artist, she’s a mysterious figure, revered, mythologized, and missed with a fervor that most artists would marvel at.
Conversations
Holacracy | An Emergent Order System
BR | Instead of asking how do we get better top-down control, I think a more interesting question is how can we change the fundamental frame to not need top-down control?
The Practice of Liminal Dreaming
JD | The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word limen, which means threshold or doorway, places that are simultaneously both and neither, in the same way that the doorway is part of both rooms and yet is also neither room.
Poetry
God Becomes a Hairdresser
Things are going badly. Handbasket badly.
Men at the End of Their Strings
After the cars carefully search for and lurch into their parking spots and the extra pants are packed in case of a wave's sneak attack...
What You Cross the Street to Avoid
You assume that a blind man can sing and that he can afford a guitar.
A Long Convalescence
It is the small things tell you you are home—cotton sheets, linen clouds, Dutch rabbits, nibbling greens.
Essays
Decoding the Trump Virus
He has clearly become a global meme, capturing humanity’s attention and drawing psychic energy from millions of people hanging on his every word and action. What impact does this have on us and what power does it give him?
Seven Practices of ‘Holistic Activism’
Viewing humanity as a species trying to find its way towards balance gives us a less judgmental and more empathic view of the political struggles that polarize and separate us.
Memes, Mantras, and Modern Illusions of the Eternal
Motivational cats and faux-Einsteinian quotes clog our timelines and manage to give us a short burst of endorphins before they peter out into renewed (and often deepened) frustration.
Including the Earth in Our Prayers
We need to reclaim the simple truth that spiritual life is not solely about ourselves, and open to a larger, all-embracing vision. If spiritual life is not about the whole, it has lost its true nature.
The Paradox of Wise Activism
Somewhat paradoxically, to be effective change agents on the planet, the best thing we can do—for ourselves and for our beloved world—is to keep our spirits high.
Fluency in the Language of Stillness
Not everyone is expected to be on the front lines. Yet, all of us have a responsibility as conscious, breathing, living human beings to work toward the evolution of a good, beautiful and thriving world.
Living In Flow
Listen, Open, Reflect, Release, Act, Repeat (X), or LORRAX. This cycle of steps can be useful in navigating quick, spontaneous decisions.
Values as a Means to Invite Greater Depth
Not everyone would identify as being “spiritual” or connect with the word “sprit”, or it might not be the time and place to have these conversations. That doesn’t mean these people can’t have depth or get started on a path towards more depth. You can still be out there in the world changing things for the better. You don’t have to be spiritual to do that (it might help though).
Summer 2019 All My Relations | Plants, Animals, and Minerals
Introduction
Resonance and Relationship
We are losing treasure – species, ecosystems, and the essential fluids of our planet. If we think of these as separate elements - a species of turtle here, a rainforest there - then we are missing the greater loss. Plants, animals, and minerals are [...]
To All My Relations
Tamera has researched the foundations of a possible post-capitalist society for over 40 years and works on building models for ecosystem restoration, regenerative autonomy and above all, for freeing love from fear and reconnecting society with the “sacred matrix” of life.
Articles
The Holy Grail of Restoration
Over historical time the vegetative cover and evolutionary biodiversity of the Sinai has been in large part lost. Imagine the importance if it were possible to restore the region to ecological health.
Freeing the Dragon
A world without fossil fuels is only possible if we change the system completely. That means building an alternative which works at least as well in all these diverse fields, but which is regenerative instead of destructive. We need to completely change the system if we want to liberate the dragon.
Developing a Mindful Approach to Earth Justice Work
The story one tells oneself about climate change shapes individual feelings and actions. For example, are we on the verge of breakdown or breakthrough? There is ample evidence for both.
Rhino Conservation
There has been lots of press around big cats and elephants. Not as many people know about the plight of the rhinos and, in fact, I did not. I said, "Fantastic. If the rhinos need help, then we are here to help the rhinos."
Bringing Reefs Back to Life
Two years ago, an “obituary” for the Great Barrier Reef flew across the Internet like grapeshot fired from a cannon. But the pronouncement was premature. Coral reefs are indeed dying, but they are not yet dead.
Farming While Black
I thought that organic farming was invented by white people and worried that my ancestors who fought and died to break away from the land would roll over in their graves to see me stooping. I struggled with the feeling that a life on land would be a betrayal of my people. I could not have been more wrong.
Selfcare Freedom
The Diaspora Coalition’s medicinal herb production project interconnects communities which grow their own plant medicine at the hyper-local level.
The Stones Will Cry Out
Animism locates human beings in an expansive family of kinfolk that includes “bear persons” and “rock persons” along with “tree persons” and “human persons.” This sensibility is both ancient and modern.
Conversations
Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon
Bill Twist | What is particularly inspiring about this initiative is that the indigenous groups, although clearly working to protect their territories, also see that this project is for the world and that it is setting a conservation example for the world.
Eating as if Life and the Planet Mattered
Marge | I believe that humans have a very vital, beautiful role by being part of this planet- this living community. I think our role is to use our awareness, our great combination of intelligence and heart to create a harmonious environment for all living beings and non-living beings.
Music
Sam Lee | Birdsong Hits the Charts
Sam Lee is a British singer of traditional folk songs, a collector, an archivist, a conservationist, and a radical re-interpreter of the British folk tradition. He is the driving force behind the eclectic, award-winning folk club 'The Nest Collective', and an emerging figure in the Extinction Rebellion movement.
Essays
Reforestation in Portugal
Although the physical reforestation we undertake is, of course, important, it is secondary to healing the sacred relationship between people and Mother Earth. The loss of the sacred stems from the mistaken belief that we are separate—from Nature, from each other, from anything.
Music
Among the Nightingales in Berlin
David’s latest recording projects are focused on collaborations with nightingales. As part of the work, Rothenberg and an international band of musicians perform music in concert with nightingales in Berlin’s public parks.
Essays
Dancing with Animals
The ceremonial dances at Ringbalin were about the river ecosystem and how the people would have found sustenance from it. Ngarrindjeri elder Uncle Moogy spoke about how the creatures are seen in their culture as Naatchi, meaning their friends...
Cooperation with Wild Boars in Palestine
The systems which keep all other organisms in check don’t work with us. Why? Why are we overpowering the systems of checks and balances which keep everyone else in check, in harmony with the biosphere. We will eventually be kept in check, of course, but why at such a cost to the entire Earth community?
Killing Us Softly
...it's hard to be part of this fossil fuel poisoning, which, ultimately, is a collective suicide. I wish I knew how to save our species, but nobody could save Mr. Stone, or the classmate our daughter lost in high school, or the family friend who left the note pinned to his shirt.
Where Are We in the Story of the Universe?
The systems which keep all other organisms in check don’t work with us. Why? Why are we overpowering the systems of checks and balances which keep everyone else in check, in harmony with the biosphere. We will eventually be kept in check, of course, but why at such a cost to the entire Earth community?
Borders of Our Perception
A few centuries ago we woke up to the fact that the world was not flat, but a sphere; and we realized the earth had always been a sphere, even while we had thought it flat. So now we are awakening to the realization that humanity is one whole society, one global economy, one family of beings in a shared environment.
The Gift of Tears
These writers do not tell us that receiving the gift of tears means we remain in a state of mourning. If we can, we need to keep walking. If we haven’t already done so, we need to articulate what is dear to us, what it is in the natural world that we truly love.
A Song of Pause
Arbor Day of this year, April 26th, a 40-foot Black Cherry tree fell on top of our brand-new electric vehicle while we were driving along a city street. The car was wrecked, totaled. My friend and I survived —alive and unscratched.
Poetry
Three Poems
Something about a Goat | A Divination of Sorts – Portland, Maine | The Minor Poet Writes One More New York Poem
Three Poems
Estero Bay Buffer Preserve | Gated Community | You Pick
Gallery
Captives of Our Desire
Finding beauty where none is immediately apparent and value in banality, photographic artist Cally Whitham’s camera collects images of ordinary things we no longer see.
Documenting Land Trauma
Since the mid-1990s, when I first learned about it, a fervent desire of mine has been for this type of coal mining to be halted and forever banned. If my photos have helped build a movement calling for the abolition of mountain-top removal, then I have accomplished something in my life.
Spring 2019 Rising Earth Awareness | Climate, Consciousness and Community
Introduction
The Earth is Doing Her Best
This stuff of creation we are made from requires something from us now. Animals of the world, trees and flowers, minerals deep in the earth, already know their true nature, how to be. We have forgotten. The species with the most gifts, the most to give back, has forgotten its place in the order of things, has forgotten about stewardship, awe, and grace.
Articles
Dancing with Gaia
It may be difficult for organizers and strategists, planners, activists and environmentalists to comprehend how an event as broad in scale and as detailed as the upcoming gathering, 'Climate Change & Consciousness: Our Legacy for the Earth', was delivered completely through spiritual guidance. But it was.
The Community Awaiting Us
To help us meet the challenge of climate chaos, the biggest challenge humans have ever faced, we have the science now, the telecommunications, and vast amounts of information. What we need more than anything is our natural strength and legacy of being in community.
Turtles Among Us
Shouldn’t we be paying attention when the turtles head for high ground and wander among us with a kind of desperation? When at their most vulnerable, they come to us? There are many ways to ask why and many ways to answer.
Resilience, the Global Challenge, and the Human Predicament
Global strategies are beyond the ken of most of us living ordinary lives. What is firmly within our ken is to make our lives and our communities and organizations more resilient. What that means will differ depending on circumstance. But the shared intention to make future shocks survivable is something we can all share.
Book | Trees of Power
They have come from the mysteries of the deep past. When I look at the sky, what I see there is not simply blue. There’s a radiance, an energy, a power. It is from this power that trees feed. Literally building their bodies out of the radiant sky, trees of power are strong beings to ally ourselves with. Their wisdom and abilities are very different from our own.
Paradise Lost | The Sequel
Just as we’ve mapped earth’s geography to the last square block, we need to do the same with its ecology. A new breed of global power brokers needs to create this new mapping with the goal of it becoming a planetary vital signs monitor that is easily accessible to us all.
Cultivating Right Livelihood
When framed as an individual journey, right livelihood is less about what is right or wrong at the moment and more about our own approach to work, on both a daily basis and over the course of a lifetime.
Quiet Places Initiative
Gordon Hempton is a natural born listener. Known as the Sound Tracker®, he is an acoustic ecologist dedicated to capturing and preserving one of Earth’s most precious experiences on the verge of extinction: silence.
Rising Earth Consciousness
To address the challenges of 'Rising Earth Awareness,' the theme of this Quarterly, we must reflect on a number of questions: Who is rising? What is rising? What do we mean by 'you,' the other?
Conversations
The Lie of the Land | Conversation and Essay
In this crisis to which we’ve brought ourselves, we can only change what is happening through transforming the way we imagine things. That happens through art. This is why I think stories and images are crucial if we’re to cope with our impending fate with kindness and dignity. The story may not actually be about our own survival, but it has to be about how we fit in.
Consciousness and the Combustion Engine
Getting to zero emissions by 2050 as the IPCC Report demands requires a collective detox from our addiction to oil. We are in the midst of a global overdose. We need to enter a universal treatment center with consciousness as the lead therapist. We have to come clean.
Essays
Rejoining the Great Conversation
[Greta Thunberg's words] brought tears to my eyes, as my soul heard her speak about real care for the Earth—for this living, beautiful being who has given us life, who has nourished us with Her endless generosity, even as we have abused and desecrated Her, raped and pillaged Her body, which our culture regards greedily as just a “resource” for our endless use and abuse.
Physics and Spirituality
...this apparently material world is only the phenomenal representation of a much deeper universal reality. Such an assertion is not easily understood, but it does suggest that, if we accept the notion of a cosmic ecosystem, stewardship is not merely related to the material world of people and planet, but indeed is spiritual stewardship.
A Vision for the World
The gift hidden in our unprecedented world crisis is an equally unprecedented opportunity. My vision of the world? My hope for the future? This topic sounds a bit big. Allow me to start small—say, with crows. They are my special friends.
Chama River Revelations
What I love in the world is asking something of me—not only to reflect its beauty, but also to express its vulnerability, its potential demise. I notice fewer songbirds returning to my water fountain each season. I am observing an absence. How do I articulate the hole in the picture, the silenced voice?
Rights of Nature
There are enormous questions and hurdles to contemplate. Does the mountain have the right to exist without being blasted with dynamite for coal or roads? Does the air have the right to be free of the mercury and sulfur in coal smoke?
Council of the Wild Gods
Many years ago, in a wide-ranging conversation with environmental education students, I asked if the human species might have a particular purpose in the planetary ecosystem. The students puzzled for a few moments before one advised me that human beings have no purpose in the community of life. No purpose. Take a moment here.
The Power of Community
‘Ecovillages’—communities that consciously regenerate life within and around them—start appearing when we notice that the world really needs us to wake up and come fully present now. 'Business as usual' is no longer an option. Then we find that we have an endless capacity to find intelligent and different solutions.
Gallery
Gallery 1 | In the Realm of the World’s Heart
Many people have said that creating is a way of loving. And this is what my art is about. If I don’t love the work or the process of creating the work, it is flat and without meaning. When the experience of love opens, I know I am in the realm of the world’s heart. This is what I seek as an artist.
Gallery 2 | Flower Flourescence
The process of UVIVF photography reveals natural fluorescence which occurs any time the subject is exposed to sunlight, but which is usually too overwhelmed with visible light to be distinguished. Working with a strictly ultraviolet light source, all of that obscurity is stripped away, leaving surreal and beautiful luminous hues behind.
Gallery 3 | Guardians of the Sacred in Tibet
The nomads and other Tibetans hold a reverence for the natural world, which ensures that they remain stewards of the land they have lived with for thousands of years. Small pockets of awareness of the land's magic, its sacredness, its deep inner value, still remain.
Music
Emergent Universe Oratorio
The EUO was deeply inspired by the work Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, and Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim from the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University. These seminal thinkers have endeavored to lead us to a new understanding of the place of humans in the Universe.
A Conversation with Alanis Obomsawin
Alanis Obomsawin is a member of the Abenaki Nation and one of Canada's foremost activist documentary filmmakers. Obomsawin began her artistic life as a singer-songwriter in the 1960s, as indigenous artists from across North America were rallying in new assertions of cultural identity, consciousness, and political rights, calling for reckonings with oppressive colonial history.
Poetry
Three Poems from Reverberations from Fukushima
Helen Keller, who returned briefly to Japan in 1948, visited Hiroshima.
Three Poems
The worsening condition of the elderberry is not a reflection of the world
Dear Reed Canyon
I circle you as time circles history first with one dog, then two, then none.
Three Poems
I check current burning regulations on the DNR site, surprised it reports the fire danger is LOW.
Winter 2018/19 Global Citizen | Global Spirit
Introduction
The Practice of Global Citizenship
Global unity is our evolutionary destiny. This is what we believe at Kosmos, and why we continue.
We Are All Global Citizens | Seeing Ourselves in the Advancement of All
Our Keynote authors represent the Coalition for Global Citizenship (CGC2030). The Coalition, based at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, advocates that governments, public and private sectors, and civil society, all work from a basis of values of just and fair treatment, inclusion and cooperation.
Articles
Evolving Toward Cooperation
Of course, the question was—after a century and a half of “Social Darwinism” claiming that it was all about competition, from the lowest to the highest—could our world now dominated by the shark-tank rubrics of business, economics, and politics adjust to this astounding news? Could it realize that because of this basic blunder about Darwin’s message, we had, in fact, ended up with dystopia instead of utopia?
Breaking Out of the Domination Trance
I have been asked to tell you about the findings from my research identifying the core components of a safer, more equitable, and caring world—especially one where women and children are finally safe—a goal that is very close to my heart.
On Edge Work, Migration Flows, and Glocalization
In ecological design, the edge is known as the boundary or interface between two biological communities. It is the region where communities meet and integrate, producing conditions for increased diversity.
Music
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez | Break Free
My identity and my life as an activist has a very specific energy that people associate me with. In many parts of my life, I saw it as definitely putting me in a box in the way people saw me and my story. People didn’t understand the complexity and diversity of what I was fighting for or the way I wanted to use my voice to influence change.
Articles
Returning to Indigenous Worldview
...witnessing brave communities who have managed to hold onto Indigenous language and ways, and continue their advocacy for the Earth, is important. We can appreciate the Indigenous experience unfolding today as a model for what is happening to all of us.
Liquid Democracy and the Future of Governance
Westphalian Sovereignty was created to end the Thirty Years’ War, but is it adaptable enough to underpin our current geopolitical system? It might be time for an update.
BOOK | Farming for the Long Haul
Farmers in urban civilizations have always been subject to powers beyond them. Indeed, there is ample evidence that urban civilizations were invariably built on the conquest and subjection of farming cultures. Our current food industry grew out of the defeat of farmers’ efforts in the late nineteenth century to win fair prices for their production.
Delivering the UN Global Goals | The Consciousness Perspective
The largest impediment to improving the well-being of humanity is not in finding the funding to implement the Sustainable Development Goals; the largest impediment is the unwillingness of the part of the heads of state, senior government politicians, and business leaders to embrace higher order human values.
The Insurgent Power of the Commons in the War Against the Imagination
I believe the commons paradigm can help us develop a new social and cultural vision, and new strategies for practical change. Paradoxically enough, redirecting our attention away from conventional politics and policy may offer the most promising possibilities for developing a transformational vision.
Conversations
FILM | LIFEBOAT, Refugees Adrift at Sea
Kosmos Journal | In 2015, your team produced 50 Feet from Syria, a film focused on the civilian impact of the Syrian conflict. Your new film, Lifeboat, bears witness to refugees desperate enough to risk their lives in rubber boats leaving Libya. What was different for you personally about making those two films?
On Elevating the Human Narrative
Judy Rodgers | ...I think decisions about things like governance or institutions source from our awareness. We can’t build something if it’s outside the scope of our awareness. We can’t design a true commons if we’re in a very limited consciousness.
For Love of Place | Reflections of an Agrarian Sage
How do we cultivate a sense of place in an industrialized, globalizing world? Writer and farmer Wendell Berry discusses the role of agrarian values in nurturing communitarian consciousness with Tellus Senior Fellow Allen White. *** Allen White | You have [...]
Essays
Sacred Diplomacy in the Emerging Ecozoic Era
International diplomats are worn out from the toxic politics, overriding militarism, and positional bargaining for land, money, and power that define present negotiations.
Globalism-Nationalism, the New Left-Right
The Information Revolution is shifting the axis of our contemporary political system. While the old Left-Right divide will remain for the foreseeable future, a new schism is arising to form the crux of our political beliefs—the Globalism-Nationalism divide.
The Economics of Solidarity, Spirit, and Soul
Economics is a scary word. It has this way of making basic, critical questions of life—How shall we spend our time? Who gets access to which resources?—seem impenetrable, none of our business and, of all things, boring.
Global Citizenship | An Emerging Agenda in Education
Introduced at an early stage of child development, global citizenship education enhances mutual respect and understanding, tolerance, and cultural literacy, while substantially weakening the power of radicalized messages.
Caring for the Soul of Humanity
I was 25 years old when I witnessed human misery for the first time. It was 2008, and I had moved to a remote city in the underprivileged state of Maranhão, in Northeast Brazil. Despite moving with the illusion of building a new life, the harsh realities of extreme poverty and structural violence expanded my worldview in ways I couldn’t imagine.
A Pocket Full of Stones
...my home bordered the ‘other neighborhood,’ the one where the Fenians, the Papists, the Catholics lived. The ones I was afraid of. I had stones in my pocket to throw at them if ‘they’ came up ‘my’ street. So I sat on the curb with my friends, waiting for ‘them’ to come.
Gallery
The Most Important Thing
Since 2012 Brian Sokol has focused on telling the stories of refugees, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and stateless people in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The Most Important Thing—his ongoing, long-term portraiture project—seeks to humanize and convey the dignity of individuals who have been dehumanized by conflict, government policies and the media.
Being and Becoming in a Field of Resonance
This body of work was my means of coming back to Life, emerging in a new way, transformed by my own shadow and light, and by the shadow of what our human activities are doing to the planet, the evolution by chance of the past, and the light of our enormous potential to choose conscious evolution and a new story today and every day.
Poetry
Three Poems
She believes because I am Jewish I must understand what she went through after Cambodia was ground down to zero on April 17, 1975...
An Overcast Morning, I Sit Down To Write
Inhalation and exhalation, this just happens and I’m in the middle of it.
Almost Bethlehem
The faint trail of luban scented the sand-cold night.
The Rebel’s Silhouette
That which then was ours, my love, don’t ask me for that love again.
Music
Playing for Change
The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music had the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.
Documents
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations.
Toward a Global Ethic
Toward a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration was prepared to establish a shared ethical framework for all peoples across religious lines. It was drafted by Dr. Hans Küng with input from nearly 200 scholars representing many world religions and presented to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in September 1993.
Statement on the Unique Challenge of Nuclear Weapons
"The destructive capacity of nuclear weapons is beyond imagination, poisoning the Earth forever. These horrific devices place before us every day the decision whether we will be the last human generation. The power to unleash this destruction is in the hands of a small number of people. No one should be holding such power over the very creation, which we regard as a sacred gift for all today and for future generations."
The Earth Charter
"We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny."
Fall 2018 All Consuming!
Introduction
The Four Nutriments
There are four kinds of nutriments which enable living beings to grow and maintain life. What are these four nutriments? The first is edible food, the second is the food of sense impressions, the third is the food of volition, and the fourth is the food of [...]
Articles
un-pick-apart-able
Bringing a morsel of food to your lips or to the lips of another is an act of intimacy. It is a personal contact point with the seasons and the generations...It is in this intimacy that I suggest a possibility for system change lies.
Making Politics Sacred Again
The founding fathers warned us of times like these. Intent on presenting a unified front to the world, they discouraged factions and political parties. I, therefore, characterize the birth of the nation as a form of Unitive Consciousness, even if it was not the most evolved nor long-lasting form.
Tending the Wild
What looked to European settlers like untamed wilderness was actually the product of millennia of intentional human influence. Calling it wilderness, or “virgin territory,” gave them license to occupy it, cultivate it, “develop” it, and “improve” it.
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
If trapping out beavers ranked among humanity’s earliest crimes against nature, bringing them back is a way to pay reparations.
From the Unreal to the Real
The World Goodwill Seminars in London, Geneva, and New York explored the theme: From the Unreal to the Real. The meetings contained some deep reflections on the nature and importance of truth in four main areas: journalism/media, education, science, and art.
The Problem with “More”
Our globalized world lures us to crave more. The culture of “more” is a culture of not enough, accumulation and conquest, and sought but constantly deferred satiety. Every time we text message or update Instagram, researchers tell us that our brains loop in a dopamine cycle of neurological yearning.
The Galileo Project
The world today is dominated by science and by its underlying assumptions, which are seldom articulated even though they generate not only a methodology but also a worldview or philosophy.
Conversations
The Deschooling Dialogues | Ayahuasca and Other Pathways of Perception
Daniel | Since I started this whole journey...it's felt to me that there is the potential that we, in this lifetime, can somehow make a kind of quantum, mutational leap into another dimensional realization.
Articles
Do We Really Want to Be Happy?
Joy doesn’t compute for most of us! We simply are not at all familiar with the energetic state of being consumed by sustained joy, or what it takes to intentionally summon the thoughts that generate it.
Conversations
Eldering in the Age of Consumption
Perhaps more than anything, to become elder is to be comfortable with your place in the world.
Water and the Rising Feminine
Pat McCabe | As women, I see us as the relational glue, the relational builders, so I need to get it really straight in my own mind and heart from what ethic will I address these pressures and potential conflicts around water.
A Tale of Two Pipelines
Malinda | We came together as a community, saying to the corporation, Williams Partners, "We're not going to stand by and let you destroy our land. We will stand between you and the land if we have to."
Essays
Unity and the Power of Love
Oneness is not a metaphysical idea but something essential and ordinary. It is in every breath, in the wing-beat of every butterfly, in every piece of garbage left in on city streets.
Between the Inner and Outer Worlds
Perhaps the living pulse that runs through the network of connections which makes up our life on Earth, and which allows us to fathom a greater, unifying wholeness, is gratitude for what already is.
Wind | A Letter to My Daughters
Before you were born, I went on a journey that would take me around the world completely, a spherical, three-dimensional journey. A journey of dirt and blood. A journey of taste and bodily sensation. A journey of texture.
Healing the Hunger
I live for you, Creator. You came to my call when I had nothing at all. Looking for small crack rocks in the carpet. Maybe one fell off the table. Just one more beer. One more cigarette. One more line before I go into that merciless dream world. I[...]
Are We Addicted to Fear?
We are being called to master our ability to intentionally access the higher brain’s We-Brain capacities as we work consciously and compassionately with our fears.
The Selling of the Soul
Addictions are an indication of where we still long to be loved. What the selling of the soul has in common with trouble and craving is the instant gratification that the ego thrives on.
Nourishment
During the blink of an eye we call a lifetime, change transforms us. Change forces us to see Earth and our place in the cosmos in new ways.
What the Wind Taught
I watched ravens and clouds, jotted random thoughts in my journal, but had no meaningful insights. A day and a night passed. I began to give up.
Gallery
The Prophecy
Through his stunning work, Belgian-Beninese photographer Fabrice Monteiro challenges us to examine issues of fashion, race, consumerism and exploitation.
Poetry
The Fairy Begs for Bacon
Dear Bacon Lady, I’m sorry I didn’t just go ahead and
Three Poems
Incense is burning slowly through this deep night
Three Poems
Reason is a fine thing, but remember there are other ways
Gallery
Green Medicine
I use photography as a tool to explore the raw elemental power of the natural world by visiting and re-visiting places I’m drawn to in order to be touched by their spiritual essence.
Poetry
finals time
in the beginning song before vertical urges
How Love Builds a Home
Replace fences with overturned lawn chairs.
May Everything Flower
Que Florezca Todo
Music
Healing Sound with Jesse Paris Smith
Sound and music are very powerful, and we as emotional beings are sensitive to what we hear. We do not only hear with our ears but with our whole bodies.
Consumption As The Path
I had to consume everything. I had to try every possible avenue of filling the God-sized hole from the outside before I could even fathom the possibility that the emptiness and energy swimming through the cosmos was the same emptiness and energy swimming inside of me.
In Brief
Books in Brief
Reviews of books spanning topics within science, culture, economics, spirituality, and more.
Climate Reports
The power and abundance of our Earth can never be overstated; what is commonly overlooked is humanity's exploitation and neglect of its own life source.
Summer 2018 Unlearning Together
Awake, Awakened, Woke!
In our collective dream, we are racing toward a precipice. Earth’s human children have lost their way, propelled by swift currents of mindlessness and greed. The more we struggle against the current and try to cling to passing debris, the more exhaustion[...]
Articles
Unlearning Together
...We’ve entered the era that the Hopis predicted in their prophecies of the “great purification,” the unstoppable entropy of not only our external political, economic and ecological systems, but above all the unexamined assumptions underlying those systems.
Change the Worldview, Change the World
Gender, like race, is a social construction, which is to say, a story. And the stories of sexism and racism that have cast such a pall over our history and our present illustrate the power of worldview and narrative in generating and maintaining systemic oppression.
Presence at the Edge of Our Practice
Humanity is in a time of transition, one that we can navigate successfully only with a shift in consciousness. How can we wake up from the collective neuroses that have driven our civilization into decadence and decline?
Dynamic Governance
The 21st century is witnessing hundreds of millions of people caught up in cascading systemic transformation. Global society has crossed a threshold. We’ve entered the time of the Great Transition—a time when we hospice outworn ways of living that no longer serve us and the Earth, and give birth to an emergent, more compassionate, and resilient future.
Roots and Evolution of Mindfulness
While mindfulness is certainly widely adopted and practiced, our experience is that surprisingly few people are aware of its deep roots and origins in wisdom traditions—its more profound meanings, value, highest implications, and most intriguing applications.
Indigenous Worldview Is a Source We Now Urgently Need
The Mamos want the world to hear their warning and their deep concerns about the precarious state of all life on Mother Earth: “Our ancestors left us in this space, caring for and harmonizing the Earth and Humanity. We live in harmony with all nature's beings: water, earth, fire, wind, the sun, humans, and also animals and plants, which are essence of the divine.”
The Wanderer’s Preparation in the Death Lodge
A candidate for soul initiation knows what she has taken on. She’s preparing to die in order to be reborn. She must abandon her old home to set out for her new home. She longs for the journey but is understandably terrified by the prospect.
Conversations
The Deschooling Dialogues: Grief, Collapse, and Mysticism
Alnoor: ...There is no doubt that we are in the midst of unprecedented moment where there is no return to old certainties. Part of this pain that we are facing in the world is a pathway toward transformation. Or will we perish in the horror of the onslaught that we are facing?
Social Breakdown and Initiation
Orland: ...A 'right' is not just for me. It's an acknowledgement that the framework that gives me access to my own potential is the same framework that gives access to someone else's potential. So this is the idea of civility. Civility is the framework that allows people to communicate in ways that allows the collective potential to be realized and achieved.
Forgive: The new practice and mantra for Black Men
At the fragile age of 12, Ulysses Slaughter listened as his mother Clarice was shot to death by his father Ulysses Grant Slaughter Sr. Emerging from his bedroom, he watched as life flowed out of his mother. Stepping over her body that day was the first act in his amazing odyssey toward forgiveness.
Essays
The Migrant Quilt
Each quilt represents countless lives lost on border ground, a hundred-mile strip of geography spanning two countries. The interstitial border region has morphed into a distinct culture of its own and the quilts, with their binational contributors, fly its flag.
The Connection
She follows my footsteps in the luxurious boutique. I turn and face her unexpectedly. Her porcelain pink skin blushes, shows she’s uncomfortable with people of color. Her fingers interlace tightly in front of her silk white blouse under a black cardigan, her weight shifts from leg to leg in a chic A-line black skirt. She fumbles the words, “Let me know, if you need any help.”
Resilience
...The car is now standing still. I smell the disaster before I see it. A smell of fuel and burnt steel. Where are the kids? Not in the car. I look for them on the highway. I find their bodies. I take care of them until ambulances arrive. While running from one child to another, I discover strength in me.
Healing Into Consciousness
...What are your beliefs and conditionings; how were they formed; and how can you transform them into consciousness so you can fully live your life and contribute your unique gifts to the world?
Wealth and Abundance
...I imagine a world in which relationships are seen as wealth; in which education, parenting, art making, bio-conscious farming, and reverence toward the world around us, toward all species, people, and the natural world are most prized in our economic and value systems.
Confessions of a Recovering Catholic
Mother’s Day 1972: It was my First Communion and, like all good Catholic girls, I was decked out in my white dress and veil, hands folded in prayer, and head bowed as a sign of my unworthiness. I stepped forward to receive my first taste of the consecrated host, and I was forever changed.
The Habits of Schooling
...One part of me was urging the other part of me to get up, go to the professor, and seek clarity. The more fearful side of myself was anxious about being judged a fraud for being accepted to grad school at all; apprehensive of being yelled at or belittled.
An Uncommon Song
...The relationship between song and education is well-known. Many have written on the subject, perhaps most famously Plato in The Republic. In it, Socrates warns about the dangers of teaching certain ungodly songs. If the gods are portrayed as vengeful and cruel, he says, what will prevent our children from emulating them?
Purposeful Memoir as a Path to Alignment
Most people think of memoir as a recounting of what we already know about our lives. But, in fact, what we already know is only the beginning of the journey of what I call purposeful memoir.
Poetry
Being Human
Over the last 15 years, Climbing PoeTree has inspired thousands through their award-winning multimedia performances, soul-stirring spoken, conscious hip hop, world music, visionary artistry, sustainable touring, and community organizing. Co-creators Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman have independently organized more than 30 national and international tours, taking their work from South Africa to Cuba, the Scotland to Mexico, England to India, and throughout the U.S. including 11,000 miles toured on a bus converted to run on recycled vegetable oil.
Three Poems
Carolyn’s poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout North America and the UK including “Stirring,” “CALYX,” “Persimmon Tree,” “How Higher Education Feels,” and “Antiphon.” Her third collection, Thin Places, was published by Kelsay Books in 2017.
Glide
Andrea Hollander moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, after many years in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she ran a bed & breakfast for 15 years and served as the Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College for 22. Hollander’s 5th full-length poetry collection, Blue Mistaken for Sky, is due from Autumn House Press in September 2018.
The Night I Didn’t Stand Up
Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet in the process of moving to Vermont. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies and has received seven Pushcart nominations. Her collected poetry books include Urban Wild (Finishing Line Press), Ocean’s Laughter (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books), Broadfork Farm (The Poetry Box) and, just out from Antrim House, How I Learned to Be White.
Gallery
absence presence
In December 2007, I was asked to participate in, Pulling Down, an exhibition and performances about the Holocaust, honoring the Day of Memory, held at the auditorium in Rome, Italy in January 2008. I was staying in the neighborhood of the Jewish Ghetto [...]
Sapient
Composer Steven Chesne spent a year unearthing ancient, precious peace invocations and prayers from all over the world: words of the oneness of mankind, spoken by Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Mohammed, the Sikhs, the Hindu, the Jews, the Cheyenne, the Kikuyu, and the Baha’i.
Vessels
We can practice 'unlearning' grasping and clinging by using the beauty of 'Colors In Motion' to entrain our minds and our nervous systems to accept flow. Flow is a healthy approach to the rapid changes humans are experiencing, and can expand our capacity to be present in every precious moment.
Music
Yorkston/Thorne/Khan
"We all have our own subjective beliefs in the band, but the music unifies us regardless. There are certainly moments when we are playing together when I feel genuine elevation, a sense of ecstasy, and a deep feeling of connectivity. That’s magical and it’s a joy to experience. That’s the edge, not found in practice, but always sought in performance. Sometimes it happens, but you can’t force it. You just have to stay open to the possibility."