Welcome to the Fall 2016 issue, by Editor Molly Brown
Cover art: “Reaching Hands” by Janaia Donaldson. Read more about her work by clicking on this image.
We live in such a time of turmoil and revolutionary change. Most of us are reeling at the now-certain prospect of a Trump presidency, and what that will mean for the health and safety of people of color, immigrants, indigenous communities, women, LGBT folks, and other historically marginalized people; for our survival as a species facing global climate disruption; and for our already tenuous democracy. Now more than ever we need to come together to share our gratitude for life, to honor our pain for the world, to open our hearts and minds to new understandings and perspectives, and to find ways to act courageously and effectively on behalf of life: in short, to do the Work That Reconnects, along with other justice-seeking and spiritually sustaining practices, anti-oppression work, and non-violent civil disobedience. [Read more of Welcome to the Fall 2016 Issue]
Gratitude
A World Full of Gifts
After checking out Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer from our local library, I bought my own copy to read for the second time. This time through, I found this passage on wild strawberries and wanted to riff on what Kimmerer says about them.
Coming Back to Reciprocity
While reading Braiding Sweetgrass, I found myself newly in relationship with five backyard chickens. The chickens have been a powerful doorway into reciprocal relationship for me, a pathway back to starting the day with gratitude, a daily call to presence.
Bird of Paradise
Honoring Our Pain for the World
Poem: The Answer is Always Yes
Poem: Evening primrose
Poem: Destiny
Let’s All Take a Breath Together
Let’s all take a breath together. Take a moment from the perpetual scroll of overwhelm and breathe… I had become silenced by overwhelm, and I just tapped into the truth of it this early morning.
Buddha Told Us Not to Go There
Where was our world? We wept. I had gone looking for Dad’s old office and found out that I was long dead.
Mourning Our Planet
I have been researching and writing about anthropogenic climate disruption for the past year, because I have long been deeply troubled by how fast the planet has been emitting its obvious distress signals.
Seeing with New Eyes
Poem: Stumble
Poem: Blessing the Wasteland
Poem: Grandmother Tree Speaks
Report from Standing Rock
We came over the low rise (which they’ve dubbed ‘facebook hill’), my eyes teared up. I couldn’t help but take a deep breath. There, laid out in front of us, were hundreds of tents, tipis, RV’s and makeshift lean-tos.
Being an Ally Amidst Cultural Genocide
I knew not what I saw when I saw the bulldozers. My brief visit to Standing Rock started out as a trip to deliver supplies …It turned into an eye-opening journey into the heart of the ongoing cultural genocide taking place in our country.
The Ecological Imperative to Love
The idea that we have a need to care for the entire web of life and people is only beginning to be explored in Western countries.
Going Forth
Poem: As Earth
Seeking the Proper Threshold
Today, our cooperative homestead installed composting toilets, replacing both of the flush toilets in the house. It is such a relief to no longer have to poop into clean water!
Behind the Scenes of Sustainable Activism
I am part of blessed legions of men and women who sense deep down inside that we are made for these times, that our life work has to do with preservation of what is sacred and just.
Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement
A cup of tea finds my hand from a vast steel pot, and I feel the care of yet another mobile vegan kitchen collective roaming Paris. We’re halfway through COP21, the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Evolving Edge
Lessons & Reflections from Radical Dharma
What a time to be alive! So many skeletons are coming out of the systems of oppression closets and being made more visible in the public arena, which has been mostly silent for centuries in order to maintain power.
De-colonizing the Work That Reconnects
What inspired me to make the call for everyone to gather to think about decolonising our practice in the Work That Reconnects is that over the past four years or so, it had been gradually dawning on me just how very exclusive a lot of the work that we have been doing is.
Network
Active Hope in Europe
De-colonizing the Work that Reconnects – workshop
Proposed Facilitator Development Program
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