Essays

I've long championed the term “subtle activism” to describe the application of consciousness-based practices like meditation, prayer, and ritual for collective rather than personal transformation. The idea is to broaden the traditional focus of our therapeutic and spiritual attention beyond individual concerns to include the main global issues of our times. And it is in relation to the healing of collective trauma, specifically, that I think an approach like subtle activism has a crucial role to play.

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The sacred within us instinctively resonates with the sanctity of food. Therefore, the growing, transporting, distribution, and consumption of food are sacred acts that deserve ritual and reverence from the moment the seed is planted in the Earth to the moment we have washed and put away the plate on which our food was served.

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I had embarked on a journey to talk with Mugwort because I wanted to understand plants and nature in a new way. To listen rather than destroy. To ask rather than demand. To learn to respect rather than disregard. And also, to find out why it annoyed me so much.

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Notice how the presence of each place influences your movements and practice. Try practicing yoga in water — a lake, river, ocean, or swimming pool. Choose a safe place. If you are near the sea, do ocean yoga. Do Lotus (Padmasana), Half Lotus (Ardha Padmasana), or Squat Pose (Malasana) in the sand close to the surf.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“He was a gaunt looking character, tall and thin. He had one of those long brown greatcoats like you see the defeated German troops wearing in the films as they retreat from Stalingrad. He had a sort of pilot hat with padded ear flaps, white arctic boots, and a rucksack on his back. I could only guess at his age.”

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“Sitting in the large waiting room of a crowded medical facility, I got to witness just how quickly the human spirit can be moved to dance in us when magic is afoot.”

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