by Molly Brown
Welcome to the September 2024 issue of Deep Times Journal. The theme for this issue is the myriad ways that people in the global Work That Reconnects community experience and participate in the Great Turning. In our call for submissions, we asked for articles, poems, songs, art, and videos that share people’s vision and understanding of the Great Turning as well as stories of facilitating the Great Turning in workshops and in life.
The Great Turning calls us to imagine and work for a world in which everyone is held in community, in which everyone has sufficient food, housing, medical care, suitable employment, and a supportive circle of friends and family, while living in harmony with Earth. This issue explores all the dimensions of the Great Turning: Holding Actions/Resistance to the destructive dynamics of the Industrial Growth Society, Creating “Gaian” Structures (aka Transforming the Foundations of Our Common Life), Shift in Perception and Values, and a recently proposed fourth (and actually central) dimension, Nurturing Life, which Jo del Amor describes in her article with that title.
This newly recognized dimension helps people acknowledge and respect all the forms of care-giving that support our lives and our communities every hour and every day, without which we could not survive. Natalia Parker’s essay on the centrality of the mother/child relationship shines light on this essential life support system. Rae Swenson describes a back-packing trip she and her sister took with their two daughters to bring them all into deeper connection through ceremony and immersion in the natural world. Rae’s daughter Ivy Wade shares one of her poems, “Tears,” to honor her pain–and deep caring–for the world.
Thinking about, envisioning, and embodying the Great Turning toward a life-sustaining, just, and cooperative society brings joy in the midst of all the conflict of today’s world. Leah Pearson, Margo Van Greta, Susan Shann and Rachael Morritt each share their personal journeys bringing the Great Turning into their lives, and how that has helped them endure the pain of the Great Unraveling and find inspiration and joy in the natural world and through acting on behalf of all life. Manon Danker recounts how she works to “strengthen our access to ourselves as healers and protectors in the world” in her Work That Reconnects workshops.
Three inspirational stories of the Great Turning in action follow: Helen Sui brings WTR into China during the pandemic, Heather Leach and Yulia Smagorinsky create a garden at a juvenile detention center, and Katharine Burke works to transform K-12 education.
The prose in this issue is enhanced by poetry (“This Body” by Jessica Zeller and “On the Side” by Mary Rankin), parable (“Getting Too Big for Our Roots” by Hazel Ettridge), and a performance piece (“My House Stands on Stolen Land” by Jaime Howell).
Our issue concludes with Carmen Rumbaut’s report on some Great Turning initiatives shared in recent gatherings of the Work That Reconnects Network volunteers, and with Valia Papoutsaki‘s glossary “Words That Reconnect”- a progressive Work That Reconnects vocabulary for social change.
May you find inspiration, connection, and guidance here to support your work and play for the Great Turning.
