by Linda Seeley and Kathleen Sullivan

Linda Seeley (Seelie) and Kathleen Sullivan, long-time nuclear abolitionists, offered a workshop on Nuclear Guardianship and the Work that Reconnects at the Gaian Gathering. 

Nuclear Guardianship is a philosophy and action idea that entails the responsible care of radioactive materials produced in the manufacture of the twin technologies of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. The Nuclear Guardianship Project was first developed in the 1980’s by Joanna, her husband Fran Macy, and friends. It has been established as a community-based concept that works at the nexus of art, science, and spirituality to protect people and the environment from further radioactive poisoning and to educate present and future generations about the nuclear legacy bequeathed to them.

As Joanna Macy explains: “No technology by itself can banish radioactive material. When we attempt to hide it (or hide from it), the radioactivity spreads beyond our control. . . We can contain the radioactivity if we pay attention to it.  The act of paying attention may be the last thing we want to do, but it is the one act that is required.  An increasing number of citizens and scientists are now recognizing that the only realistic, viable response to nuclear waste is on-going, on-site, monitored storage — keeping waste containment visible and accessible for monitoring and repair by present and future generations.” 

Kathleen and Seelie urge all Gaians to learn the dreadful truth about radioactive violence and use that knowledge to further our collective work to protect our beloved, beautiful, fragile, resilient world. For more information about the dangers of nuclear power visit Mothers for Peace www.mothersforpeace.org.  

For more information about nuclear weapons abolition, please check out the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons www.icanw.org. 

This article is an edited transcription of a talk given at the Gaian Gathering of the Work That Reconnects Network in November 2023.  A video of the full talk is available on the WTR Network website here.

Linda Seeley has served as Vice-President and spokesperson for San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace since 2009 and has been a member of the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel since its inception in 2018. She retired from a 32-year career as a certified nurse-midwife. Mother of 3, grandmother of 3, and great-grandmother of one baby boy, she understands the existential threat of climate change effects on the aging fleet of nuclear reactors. She is very concerned about the triple threat of sea level rise, vulnerable radioactive waste storage and the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Linda lives in Los Osos, California.

Kathleen Sullivan, PhD is the Director of Hibakusha Stories (a partner of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), an arts-based initiative which has brought atomic bomb survivor testimony to more than 50,000 young people. She has supported the facilitation of hibakusha voices in conferences and UN forums on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, and is co-chair of the Nuclear Truth Project. Kathleen lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A Visionary Message for Us from Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe, Diné, Lakota)

Excerpted and formatted by Martha O’Hehir

When I introduce myself,
I name my clans because they are my people,
The people who stand for me
And the people for whom I stand. 
When we meet, we say, “ I can’t be well if you’re not well. 
Is there something I need to do? 
Is there something you need?”

So I want to talk with you about how I came to start using and created this word, or how it came to me: Omnibeneficence.

I hold up the Lakota Sacred Hoop,
the sacred hoop of life.</span
It holds up endless teachings on the nature of reality
With its four colors: the four directions each with its medicine, 
animals, spiritual helpers that we have encountered over time,
the four stages of a human life:
youth, mature (and childbearing), active, elder.

Barry Lopez would say that every member has an impeccable way to conduct life.
Impeccable in the sense that everything that they do 
has such a coherence and an elegance 
with all things around, furthering their life, 
their own kinds life, but also all the neighboring life around them. 
So there’s an inner relatedness, what Thich Nhat Hahn called “Interbeing.”
Not just humanity:
the flying ones, the swimming ones, the plants,  the four legged, the creepy crawly ones:
All of us together is a single organism. The hoop is a reminder of this.

Now, everything out there is doing one thing.
It’s making more life, making more life. 
trying to figure out how to throw the next seed where it’s going to have success and grow, 
how to further the next seven generations.
The plan is LIFE around here, friends. 
We humans have lost sight of that.

We feel like we can put many other things at the very center of our activities,
at the very center of our consciousness 
at the very center of our relationship,
other than Life. 
Okay. And we’re finding that out. 
It’s a powerful thing for me to think that  I’ve been given a seat on this hoop here. 
Somehow or another, as a five fingered one, I also have a thriving design for thriving life. 
A perfect design for thriving. 
But the question is, do I understand what that is? 
Well, I always start here talking about this because 
I don’t think I’m going to be able to catch on to what my perfect design for thriving life is 
until I understand how I am related to everything else, 
and how everything else is related to me. 

( At this point, McCabe explains how we are indoctrinated by “Modern Real Paradigm” to act as if we are separate, how we strive to make money to take care of our own needs, and not care much who is left scrambling below us, people or animals or nature, or soil. She discusses that even masculinity and femininity is distorted by the paradigm itself. This conditioning is counter to being a member on the sacred hoop, of being aware of our interbeing.)

The plan is life, it’s not beating another out. 
It turns out that the way of interbeing is like the organism of our body. 
It’s cooperation and collaboration. It’s coherence. It’s attending to the whole.

I have that capacity, however impermanent as a human being, as a five fingered one, 
wherever I am, 
I have a capacity be of benefit and blessing. 
Omnibeneficence.

I encounter pretty frequently what I call “low self-esteem as a human species” right now. 
I hear people say, “Everything that we touch, we destroy. 
The Earth would do just fine without us.” 
And some people say, “In fact, she’s gonna do just fine without us, 
she’s gonna throw us off, ‘good riddance,’ 
and then go on her merry way, in a much better way.”
“And, you know, we deserve that fate because we blew it. And we’re a nasty species.”
 But this is not the mindset of the cultures that I have been brought into, one by blood (Diné) and one by ceremonial training (Lakota). 
That kind of thinking is not cultivated.

(McCabe describes her involvement in a dialogue group called The Language of Spirit, in which quantum physicists, linguists, native indigenous, elders, some Western educated, some drawing from traditional knowledge were all put in a talking circle. They used different words, but heard each other speak a common truth about interbeing. She also describes how the rainforest, with all its diversity and healthful medicine, is not a natural occurrence, but archeology shows it is the result of human cultivation. The five-fingered ones are ”seed-carriers.” She describes how, when the ships arrived in the Americas, the explorers thought there were no humans there because the land was unspoiled, not like the land they came from where human intervention left barrenness and depletion. In fact, there were millions of humans in the Americas, living in a way that supports interbeing. Living honorably as a unique member on the Sacred Hoop.)

At one point in the meeting (The Language of Spirit), a young person spoke up and said,
“Well, whatever happens, whatever’s coming, wherever we’re headed, isn’t doing the right thing, doing the right thing?

This article is an edited transcription of a talk given at the Gaian Gathering of the Work That Reconnects Network in November 2023.  A video of the full talk is available on the WTR Network website here.

Pat McCabe, or Woman Stands Shining, is a Native American elder whose work explores the meeting point between ceremony and deep social healing. Pat was born into the Diné (Navajo) Nation, and has also received a spiritual training with the Lakota tradition. She travels and teaches widely on the indigenous science of Thriving Life. Her work seeks to revivify human knowledge and meaning-making, by restoring the holistic knowledge practices known to indigenous people.  “To be the disembodied intellect and observer rather than passionate participant, and harmonious co-Creator, has led to a great mis-understanding of who we are, where we are, and how it is.”–

By Nina Simons
Transcript edited by Martha O’Hehir

(Nina Simons delivered a final blessing to the community in the Gaian Gathering)

I want to welcome you into sacred activism, describe how the Work That Reconnects has been helpful to me, and share some observations about how we can be most effective in the times ahead.

I’ll also share what has helped me remain hopeful in spite of incredibly daunting circumstances and existential threats, and some of what’s helped me turn vision into action.

Gifts of The Work That Reconnects

The Work That Reconnects has altered my perspective on time.  When things feel too fast and frenzied, I remember to think in “world time,” to think in an expanded sense of time. 

One of my favorite other teachers is Karla McClaren, and if you don’t know her, I commend  her work to you. She wrote a book called The Language of Emotions and runs online trainings through The Empathy Institute. 

How We May Be Most Effective In the Times Ahead

The world is changing, and in particular, our social ecosystems are changing, and therefore, also what is needed from each of us is also changing, to be most effective at change making in this wild, tumultuous time we face.

First, I believe that, in one way or another, we are all traumatized at this time, whether it be from the loss of people dear to us, recently, or the ecological harm we are perceiving as climate change is ramping up, coupled with the incredible pain and frustration and fear that comes from how slowly our institutions are responding to it. I think all of that creates trauma. For myself, facing the loss of 75% of the birds in northern New Mexico over the last couple of years, is an incredible source of grief, and I weep about it often. I also redouble my efforts to feed the birds and make sure the bird baths are full and revel in those winged ones that are left. 

It behooves all of us to be trauma informed, not only about our own traumas, first and foremost, but also about the traumas of anyone we are relating with. There is an interactive sense of how do you deal with trauma, and there’s also collective trauma. Right now, with all the wars going on in the world, compounded by the climate catastrophe, there is a very available sense of collective trauma going on.

I’ve received some insight about this from Professor Kamilah Majied of CalState University, Monterey Bay, through what she calls the “three pillars of prosocial behavior.” At our core, what we need to overcome, to effectively turn vision into action, is the conditioning that tells us we are isolated, separate from each other and the entire Earth community – the hyper-individualism which is so prevalent in the Western world. We need to shed this so we can effectively collaborate, conspire, collude and work together, en masse, to effect change.

 The three pillars of prosocial behavior that she describes are : 

     1.Cultural Humility 

It’s easy to assume others might have a cultural background like our own, especially  if one is born into the privilege of white supremacy culture and benefited from having white skin. In fact, white people (and people of all backgrounds) need the wisdom of other cultures right now. White people especially, though, need to practice humility, deep listening and curiosity. We all need to do this, to learn, enter relationships and ultimately, to collaborate and become allies.

     2.Discomfort Resilience

It’s far too easy to be reactive these days, and we see examples of it all over the place.

Many of us need to turn down our reactivity, recognizing that we can live with discomforts, like many people who have lived and are living with far greater discomforts the world over, throughout most of their lives.

Van Jones offered a valuable teaching on racial equity, on white supremacy and on how to become a good ally. He said, “There is no way to work on racial equity without walking through a room full of garden rakes.” If you imagine yourself walking through a roomful of rakes, you can’t get through it without stepping on a rake, and when you do, the handle is going to pop up and hit you.  And it is true. I got smacked in the head a few times, and felt embarrassed, kerfuffled, shamed, but it was all so worth it. There is nothing I am more proud of in my journey to sacred activism than embarking upon that work and immersing myself in it.

     3.Fierce Compassion

People are living with so many wounds–childhood, ancestral, and current, daily wounds, the “microaggressions.” I’m not fond of this word because it minimizes the impact of these events for many people of color in our society. The microaggressions are deeply impactful and hurtful.

We need to cultivate fierce compassion for ourselves, for immigrants fleeing war and lack of water, and ethnic cleansing. We need to cultivate compassion for ourselves. Many of us have been raised in a culture that habituates us to self judgment, and shame. Towards thinking “I am not enough,” and blaming ourselves when we do something wrong. Because of this, we need fierce compassion towards loving ourselves. 

Attentiveness

To move from vision to action, it is helpful to be mindful of where we put our attention, especially now, with so many things vying for our attention, and so much distraction. It is an essential practice. For me, it has meant practicing putting my attention and my care into expanding my love for the world, into leading from my heart and not my head.

I used to think that if people knew how much I loved this world, they would think I was crazy. Now, however, I believe we all have to reveal how devoted we are capable of being to whatever calls us. It may be a species, a place, an element, child care, birthing centers, refugees, education, parenting or hospice care.

I want the children of tomorrow to know we all did our best. I want the children of all species to know that when push came to shove, we all stepped up on behalf of what we care most deeply about, whether that’s abortion and reproductive rights, women’s sovereignty, Indigenous rights, defending our democracy or healing our fractured culture.

We need to remember that the Earth herself is sacred. Over the course of the last few years, because of the danger of wildfire where I live, I learned a ritual and created an altar around a tree near my home. Many times a week, I put flowers around the base of the trunk, and pour water or sometimes wine around it. I pray to that tree, asking it for forgiveness and for strength and protection. I send my prayers down into her roots and into the mycelia in the soil, and up through her branches to the star people, and to the mountain nearby. As I do that ritual more and more, it is deepening my embodied sense of how native people relate to the Earth as a living being, and of how sacred she truly is.

Reimagining Leadership

I believe that we are all leading in our own particular ways. Parenting is profound leadership and we need to restore it to its appropriate value. So is making art, and convening your neighborhood, and serving whatever you love in whatever way you can

For me, the nexus of Indigenous, People of Color, women’s  leadership, and climate change is where I most want to serve. And so I practice being a good ally by showing up in whatever ways I can.

 I used to think I was not an activist because I didn’t go to demonstrations and get arrested. I’ve come to believe that’s just one of many forms of activism. Speaking your truth, teaching, singing songs, writing your poetry, strengthening other people’s vision and leadership, are all forms of activism. There probably are as many forms of activism as there are humans on the planet.

It’s important to remember that in the United States, we are in a very privileged position. We live lives of relative comfort. We can leverage that privilege to serve the transformation, to advance the Great Turning that is happening in throughout our lifetimes.

We are reinventing leadership by leading from the heart, and by paying attention to our dreams, to our intuition, to our body’s wisdom, and by caring for ourselves along the way.
There has been a pattern of the self-sacrificing leader and “working until you drop.” We cannot sustain that. We are engaged in a long-haul process, a long-distance run. We need to care for ourselves with the same exquisite attention we give to caring for what we love, or we won’t be our most effective selves, and we will deprive ourselves of the joy that comes from flourishing and regenerative leadership. 

Many of my favorite species rotate leadership when they migrate. Geese do that, and elk do it too. We need to learn that from our species mentors in the natural world, how to lead for the long haul, how to migrate long distances. When leadership is not alone, it is much more fathomable, it is much less scary. And let’s face it, we are living through scary times. There’s a lot to be fearful of, but when we are together, when we can voice our fears and express our grief, and communally discuss and share those emotions and ride them in the ways they are intended to inform our sacred activism, we become much stronger. We become much more resilient.

Finding Your Way

Bioneers is an amazing resource for finding  out what kinds of people and efforts you might want to devote yourself to in this time, to inform and transform your vision of the beautiful world we are all dreaming into action.

Some of what gives me most hope right now are the acts of sacred activism of young people–which are extraordinary–and of Indigenous people, especially Indigenous youth and women who are leading incredibly devotional, passionate, effective efforts to move the needle on climate change. There are social movements like the Working Families Party that are coalescing people across difference. The Othering and Belonging Institute is a remarkable resource for this, too. The work of Saru Jayaraman organizing workers- when you look at the plethora of worker’s strikes that are going on, and the labor unions, and the uprising of people’s demands for fair living wages, and busting monopolies, there is a tremendous amount of good work happening.

But you won’t find it through the mainstream media. So choose your sources well, as we can resource ourselves regularly with articles, videos and podcasts that feature the new world being gestated, readying to be born. 

And since the mainstream media mostly covers the bad news, that’s part of the reason we started Bioneers 35 years ago, to surface all the extraordinary leadership and responses and the effective actions that people and communities are taking. Black Lives Matter started a whole fleet of movement efforts that integrate healing and trauma work at the same time as they are bringing people into community for effective action and policy change.

Invest in your heart to move from vision into action. Trust that your passion for whatever aspect of this world you care about most is what will lead you into right action and the right community to act with. 

Pay attention to all your ways of knowing. Our minds are not enough to get us there. They’re helpful, but even Einstein said, “The mind is a faithful servant, and the heart needs to lead.”

Listen for your dreams, for your intuition, for the guidance of your ancestors.  And, if you can find some form of meditation every day, it will help you find inner balance and equanimity so that all the turbulence that’s out there in the world can be easier to face.

 When we fill our hearts with the work towards the world we are co-creating, that’s what can help us turn down the volume of all that chatter and all that chaos. The cause is not served by attending to chaos. The world we want to co-midwife into form is served best by giving it our full attention, our love, our care, and our devotion.

This article is an edited transcription of a talk given at the Gaian Gathering of the Work That Reconnects Network in November 2023.  A video of the full talk is available on the WTR Network website here.

Nina Simons, as a co-evolver of Bioneers, is deeply committed to reinventing human civilization: healing and addressing the wounds of patriarchy, racism, colonialism and capitalism; changing the world by changing culture, stories and archetypes; and encouraging the power of the grassroots to innovate and mobilize change. Nina cares passionately about strengthening the leadership and resilience of innovative, nature-informed, creative frontline and entrepreneurial women, especially Indigenous and other women of color. She wrote Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from The Heart, and Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. She offers workshops on Relational Mindfulness and Power and the Deep Feminine.