A New Approach to Stuff

In every episode of the 1970s British children's TV series Bagpuss, a young girl finds a lost and broken object in the village street and leaves it in her shop window for the passing owner to collect. An oddball cast of animal characters inside the shop then repairs the item and imbues it with meaning and value by giving it a history. It's quaint, cute, and a novel approach to jetsam that in…

Collective Presencing: Four Years Later

Four years have passed since the first article on Collective Presencing was published in Kosmos Journal, with three more following in the next issues. At that time, the framework was ready, the outline was clear, it was coherent enough to offer into the world. Since then, the big lines haven’t changed, but my understanding of what the new paradigm is about has deepened enormously. My new book…

gallery two: Falling in Love with Nature

Artist Statement I am not a macro or nature photographer so when I photograph a flower, it's because I find it remarkable. The flower literally captivates me wherever I may be at that time. If I am fortunate enough to translate its delicate beauty to others through a photograph, then I feel blessed. Not only was I present and able to enjoy that beauty, but I also successfully shared it through…

The Animals Are Calling Us to Council

Asking how we can help “birth a new story for humanity” will lead us astray. A more useful and very exciting question is how to help birth a new story for Life on Earth, within which humanity is embedded. We need to think larger than humanity. For the last 25 years, I have had the opportunity to live with rescued wildlife that can never be free: bears, wolves, bison, wildcats, and other…

The New Being of Human Being

Early on we lived in a mesh of power sources that whirled around and through us and we rode the currents, enmeshed in the mesh. Then we introjected the power, took it as ours, and lived the power we had become. From this seat of power, we set boundaries, put things in order, defended ourselves and our property, all while looking back to our ancestors and heroes. Then we introjected that order and…

The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene

Rambunctious garden: Red plastic bags and a lone poppy turn the untended lot between two Berlin traffic lanes into a contemporary wasteland. Key Concepts The current ideology of dead matter, mechanical causality, and the exclusion of experience from descriptions of reality in ecology and economy are responsible for our failure to protect aliveness in our world. The challenge of the…

Building Community: Revitalizing the Whole System Approach through a Renewal of Purpose

The world is in a critical, monumental transition state. While there are still many systemic problems that need to be addressed around the world so that all people can live a life of dignity, privilege, and opportunity, studies have shown that the world is more peaceful now than ever before. So why are we so concerned and more involved in discussions, rallies, forums, and conferences on the…

The Magic of the Earth, She Will Dream Through Us

I am a person who experiences Earth as a living, sacred, communicating Being. Although ecstatic and illuminating, such experiences have intensified an inner tension of being at odds with the mainstream worldview of literal materialism based on separation consciousness. As a licensed, practicing psychotherapist, I have grappled with this tension to the point of not wanting to go public, aware that…

Mirror Flourishing: The New Business North Star

David Cooperrider describes how the Appreciative Inquiry Summit—multi-stakeholder planning with a thousand people in the room—brings out the best in human systems: "What we appreciate appreciates—we become what we study—so let's study the concept of full spectrum flourishing." “We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We…

Book Review | Designing Regenerative Cultures

Designing Regenerative Cultures by Daniel Christian Wahl Triarchy Press, 2016 Foreword by Graham Leicester This is a book about life and the love of life. It is also a book animated by questions rather than answers. A moment’s reflection on our own lives helps us realise why this must be so. We are reflective creatures, always questioning, always aware that every advance in knowledge…