00:04:06.300Real magic can only happen when we let go
00:04:09.020of the levers of control end quote and i really love talking about surrendering control
00:04:19.120it's really challenging for me and i've heard a lot of other people listening but i like one we
00:04:28.100don't ever have control anyways so it's probably an illusion on many levels but i wanted to riff
00:04:35.940with you on how does embracing an aspect of magic allow us to surrender control to the world,
00:04:43.480to the earth? Well, my hands have been on the steering wheel with a pretty tight grip for much
00:04:49.720of my life. And even if I could sometimes get myself over into the passenger seat, my foot
00:04:56.740was always ready to hit the brakes or grab the steering wheel, right? How do we get in the back
00:05:01.520seat of the car? How do we get out of the car altogether? One of the ways to do that, I think,
00:05:07.160is we have to really feel like somebody else is driving. And we have to feel like the vehicle
00:05:15.620that we're in is a different vehicle. And for me, that involves a couple of things. One is
00:05:25.060the intimate experience. This work began for me really intimately with collaborating with the
00:05:31.500dead with those on the other side. And it began in very small ways and noticing the dead and calling
00:05:40.360out to them. And I say the dead, not my ancestors, because although I included my grandparents and
00:05:45.280aunts and uncles, I also included teachers and roadkill and spiders on my windowsill.
00:05:51.920I really tried hard not to leave anyone out. And when I would have worries or fretting,
00:06:00.580I sort of fell into this practice very idiosyncratically as a harried, overwhelmed, financially stressed out mother of two young children.
00:06:12.980And I started asking for help with the other side.
00:06:18.440And the other side started showing up tremendously.
00:06:23.580And the more I asked for help and the more they showed up, grandparents, my impossible father, teachers, all kinds of people have shown up.
00:06:37.240And what I find is that all I have to do is say help and someone from the other side will show up and genuinely help.
00:06:44.640and that has been such a radical change within me because it's allowed me to loosen my grip on fear
00:06:54.460because what we're really clutching when we clutch that steering wheel of control
00:06:58.920is we're holding on desperately to our fears and how do we settle back into a radical faith
00:10:13.580but the earth will take care of itself.
00:10:14.800like, like the difference between trust, faith, and then apathy or something or like a giving up.
00:10:20.880And so maybe you could speak to how you find that difference. Because, you know, just a quick
00:10:26.580example for me, of course, I'm looking at where we're heading with climate change with the fact
00:10:31.980that we're really not as a global community working towards, like, curbing consumption of
00:10:38.720anything, seemingly. And so part of me is like, well, we're just going towards the cliff.
00:10:44.800But at the same time, I want to make sure there's no minds put on salmon rivers. And even if it seems like it's not going to amount to anything because we're going to keep heading towards the cliff, it still matters. It still matters to fight and to protect and to love and to show up, even if it seems bleak or impossible. And so, yeah, it's just like the trust, faith, and the apathy. And where do you fall in that?
00:11:12.620Okay, I'm going to start really big, and then I'm going to end really, really small. How's that?
00:11:20.160The big place I want to start is I often say that my work with the dead, getting to experience the reality of the dead, and I don't really talk much about spirit or God or anything like abstract words.
00:11:34.680I do better with concrete nouns like dirt, grandma Nellie. I can believe in my grandmother.
00:11:42.900She was a gardener. She could make anything grow. I trust her very much. But my work with the dead
00:11:50.120has shifted my entire belief sphere. As modern people, and I mean by people sort of under the
00:11:59.500sway of agriculture for the past 10,000 years, we have lived inside the short story of a single
00:12:06.260human life. And that's a very frantic story. It's very hard to experience mercy and justice and
00:12:15.680love inside the short story of a single life. It's impossible to make sense of most lives
00:12:21.640within a single life. So many of them look too short, too sorrowful, too terrible.
00:12:30.480But for our ancient ancestors, for most indigenous peoples,0.99
00:12:34.780they live inside the long story of their souls, which is not a linear story with a beginning,
00:12:41.400a middle, and an end, but a story that's about birth, death, and rebirth. And that's the story
00:12:46.540that our planet is telling and that our natural world is telling that spring comes and summer and
00:12:53.120then it's fall and winter and then spring comes again and the moon waxes and wanes and the tides
00:12:59.000go in and out and things come and go and we all come and go and we leave and we come back
00:13:07.080and if we can learn to live inside that what I call the long story of our souls
00:13:14.680inside the long story of multiple lifetimes,
00:17:24.840So we better start thinking about the world that we want.
00:17:29.680to be reborn into. We need a lot of help right now. We need everyone on board.
00:17:37.480We need to call on those ancestors who've made it through climate catastrophes in the past,
00:17:45.780who've navigated the Mount Toba eruption or the Bronze Age collapse. We need to learn how to call
00:17:51.880on them and ask for their guidance and learn from their mistakes. And we need to do that,
00:17:57.680not in some generalized way, but in really specific collaborative ways. I begin every
00:18:04.700morning fretting, as I do, about just about everything. I'm an Olympic-class worrier.
00:18:11.640And I have children and friends and animals and the planet, everything I'm worried about.
00:18:18.660And for each worry, I turn it over to someone specific on the other side.
00:18:24.520and so i begin the day asking for help assigning my jobs to various teams on the other side
00:18:34.240and then seeing what begins to happen and i'm astounded at what begins to happen
00:18:41.040and it's like an untapped resource we've forgotten about that magic
00:18:45.480it's available to us i think we're going to need everything for the days ahead
00:18:49.920oh my goodness I there was so much in that response that I was noting in my head like
00:18:56.620oh I want to hear more about this when I hear more about this and and now I'm not sure where
00:19:02.260to begin but there was something that you had said a few responses ago that I don't want to lose
00:19:07.500and you were speaking about animals briefly and in your sub stack article what every animal knows
00:19:17.180you write, quote, what the plants and animals know, I'm sure of it with my whole being is that
00:19:23.160we are all feeding each other with our bodies and our lives, end quote. And in this article,
00:19:30.860you talk about the misconception that humans are the only animals that know they're going to die.
00:19:38.380And I was like, huh, wow. I don't know if I'd ever really slow down enough to think of that
00:19:45.880that specific statement or idea. And so I just love to hear a bit more about your connection
00:19:52.380to animals and the wisdom you feel we can gain from truly engaging with them. And even just
00:19:58.520that statement, like how does that even open our minds to them if we start to understand
00:20:07.040them differently? Well, I grew up with a lot of animals. My mother never met an animal she could
00:20:13.760say no to. So I think we said, you know, we had 15 cats and various dogs, hamsters, guinea pigs,
00:20:19.160rabbits, a bug and stricter and an iguana. We had so many animals in our house. It was just
00:20:26.320fecund. And I raised my children very similarly with a lot of animals in the house. We were
00:20:33.400rescuing wildlife when they were little. So we had rescued swans and ducks and geese and
00:20:39.600opossums. I once had 16 baby opossums living in my home, all kinds of wild critters. But
00:20:46.840I've always lived with animals very intimately and very closely. And I suppose
00:20:55.960I've felt very loved and protected by them. One of the things I think we've forgotten
00:21:02.220as modern human beings is we have tried to live outside of what I call the ecological equation.
00:21:09.600And that ecological equation is whatever eats is eaten.
00:21:17.300And every animal and being knows this.
00:21:20.780You know, every animal knows that we all feed each other with our bodies.
00:21:25.700And we used to know this as human beings, right?
00:21:28.620I remember reading a story, I'm trying to remember where I read it, but it was about the Kung people in South Africa, one of the last hundred other groups.
00:21:37.160And the anthropologist hears this man, he's eating an elephant, and he tells the anthropologist that when he tastes it, he knows it's his wife who died a long time ago.
00:21:47.260And she's sort of startled by this, and she has all kinds of, you know, gymnastics she does to try to explain it.
00:21:57.440I think he knows that his wife who loved him has come back as the elephant who feeds him now.
00:22:02.780The Chautaka tales in Buddhism are filled with this, of the Buddha's incarnation as animals that show up to feed hungry travelers, a rabbit who jumps into the fire to feed a man starving to death.
00:22:16.060But I think our ancient ancestors knew that when they were eating, they were eating their kin, not just an animal, but a being who'd offered its body lovingly.
00:22:28.520you know, what Jesus says, take, eat, this is my body, isn't a singularity. It was a ubiquity
00:22:35.520for ancient ancestors. Every plant and animal offering its body to us was feeding us just as
00:22:42.360the way a mother feeds her child with its body. But the other side of that equation
00:22:48.920is that we too have to offer our bodies back to the earth to be eaten. And I loved your podcast
00:22:58.100about recompose and composting our bodies, of course, which is what I would most want.
00:23:03.760You know, once a deer came into my yard and she'd been hit by a car and she was dying
00:23:08.960and she was really flailing about and really suffering. And, you know, my husband said,
00:23:17.460should we call the police? Should we shoot her and put her out of her misery? And my young1.00
00:23:21.040daughter said, you know, she's spent her whole life trying not to be shot. I think we're supposed
00:23:25.720to go be with her. She's come to us. So we went and sat at a distance near her and just got very
00:23:31.280still. And the stiller we got, the stiller she became. And ultimately she passed as we sat with
00:23:40.160her and died. And we left her there. And she offered us an incredible teaching because
00:23:47.080within 36 hours, every bone of her was gone. The vultures came, the coyotes came, the beetles came,
00:23:55.220The mice came and she was gone and she'd fed everybody.
00:36:14.260I don't know if you call it life after death, but I would say for me, what happens beyond
00:36:32.400the passing of our bodies as we know it is so far to me in my comprehension.
00:36:41.680like I can't even really I don't know I truly don't know and I don't know if I have a feeling
00:36:48.400of any type of inner knowing and so I guess I just wanted to dissect that a bit more with you
00:36:55.020of yeah like what does that even mean what is the process what do you see like how do and of course
00:37:03.140yeah there are different religions and spirituality that have entire stories that many people follow
00:37:09.420as this is what happens but I really don't have a sense of what happens and so yeah I would just
00:37:16.160love to hear you take us through that yeah step by step even you know what is the life after death
00:37:21.860another life if we're reborn if there's hell after death it's the hell we've made and are
00:37:29.200reborn into right life after life after life after life in our ancient ancestors that's what they
00:37:35.820knew this is the world we were born to we're reborn to the children we've raised or neglected
00:37:42.480we're reborn to the world we've loved or the world we've hated and what does it mean to know
00:37:50.440the only reason we've been able to be so ecocidal is because we imagine someone we can get on a
00:37:55.760rocket ship to mars and go colonize somewhere else right you know which defies even our gut biome
00:38:01.960um but how does it work well i don't know how it works i live inside the mystery
00:38:08.300but this is the way it feels to me and i'll never forget when i first sort of had a glimpse of this
00:38:17.620it was after a friend of mine had lost her baby at nine months during delivery
00:38:23.180and my one of my very dearest friends and how can you be with someone inside that loss
00:38:31.480Do you know what I mean? Just devastating, just beyond terrible.
00:38:38.880But what I could feel was even in the brevity that that soul was huge.
00:38:47.380The life barely lasted an instant, but the soul was vast.
00:38:53.980And I did a lot of embroidery as a kid, and I was sort of a nerdy kid.
00:38:59.060And I love when you do embroidery, if you follow a stitch, you know, if you look at the embroidery
00:39:06.500from one side, it's just a jumble, right? It's just frayed threads and knots and mush mush.
00:39:12.940And then you turn it over and you can see the picture and it all makes sense.
00:39:19.560But from the land of the living, we see the embroidery from the wrong side. We just see a
00:39:24.860tiny stitch and it doesn't make any sense. But you turn it over and you see the whole thread and you
00:39:30.500see that thread becoming a rose or a pair of lips or a heart. It's many things. And if we think of
00:39:39.140our soul as a thread wound together with other threads, woven, you know, we often talk about the
00:39:46.320veil, but the veil itself is nothing but the fabric of existence, what, you know, was called
00:39:51.640the diamond net of indra it's that it's that woven fabric of existence where our souls are
00:39:57.720woven with all other souls entangled with all other souls to create this experience of our
00:40:03.180reality there's just back and forth and back again i mean you know i'm no student of near
00:40:12.240death experiences or what happens after you die certainly i know people who are and have heard
00:40:16.860a lot about it. I do know that the more intimate I've become with those on the other side,
00:40:25.660and I'm very intimate. I mean, I really talk to those on the other side a lot. I have an
00:40:29.000ancestor altar in my house. Every day is the day of the dead at my house.
00:40:35.020I know two things about my own death. One is that when it's time to go, it's because there's more
00:40:42.040that I can do on the other side than I can do on this side for the moment with this body I always
00:40:48.860say to my children when I go it's because I can help you more from the other side than I can help
00:40:53.180on this side although I want to be here for a long time and hold some grandbabies but the other
00:41:01.140thing I know is that I'll be coming back and I also know that there'll be a reunion on the other
00:41:06.600side with so many mothers and so many, you know, when a baby's born, everyone's waiting to hold
00:41:12.280the baby and love it and cherish it. But on the other side, everyone's saying goodbye.
00:41:20.940And when we die, everyone is sad on this side. And there's nothing but reunion on the other side.
00:41:26.520My 91-year-old father-in-law died last summer. A few days before he died, he said to me,
00:41:32.440so I've been invited to this garden party and it looks like everybody's there. You think I should
00:41:36.540go i said does it look like a nice party he said it looks rather wonderful i said well i think you
00:41:43.360should go and i think we're all of a garden party waiting for us on the other side and then we come
00:41:50.360back again um how do we tap into that how do we tap into that experience i think through conversation
00:42:00.880and storytelling, the old ways, through our intimation and intuition and imagination.
00:42:08.880We all have predilections, fears, talents, things we know and don't know how we know.
00:42:20.580You know, my son, as a 10-year-old, read about the savage genocide at Nanking of the Japanese
00:42:28.940to the Chinese, right? And from then on, he said it was the worst atrocity that had ever happened.
00:42:36.160Worse than the Holocaust, worse than any war, anything that had ever happened. Nope.
00:42:40.880No one knew how bad the rape of Nanking was. With a vehemence and a certainty
00:42:46.620that was beyond one life. And that was information. You know, we know what we know.
00:42:54.620And the thing when we begin to embrace, you know, as Walt Whitman said, the multitudes within us that are beyond gender, that are beyond species, we begin to know how woven together we are with so many, many different beings, so many, many different possibilities.
00:43:16.860most of who we are is a mystery to ourselves and we can only feel our way in the dark by love to
00:43:26.600each other and that's really the challenge of it it's not going to be some clear-sighted explanation
00:43:32.800we're not going to go to a past life regressionist who's always going to tell us we were some
00:43:37.200medieval princess, right? Or Cleopatra. But we're going to feel our way to experiences
00:43:46.340and ways of knowing that we need going forward. We've done this before. We've done climate change
00:43:53.200before. We've done extinction before. We need to summon the wisdom from those past experiences.
00:44:00.780One of the most beautiful spiritual books I've read in decades is Otherlands by Thomas Halliday. I don't know if you know it. He's a university scientist, PhD scientist, paleobiologist looking at extinction events on Earth.
00:44:21.080and yet you read this book and you know he's psychic and he's channeling he would never
00:44:27.640admit this i'm sure he's stepping into past ways of knowing and guiding us through them
00:44:33.980and inviting us to reclaim both these great contractions and these great expansions on
00:44:42.280our planet and to remember them and to feel our way into them so that we have the resources we need
00:44:50.000for this moment. And that's why I want to touch into the long story of my soul. I want to tap
00:44:55.900into my creativity, my resilience, and my connectedness. I don't know if any of this
00:45:02.700answers your question. Well, I really feel like we're going to need a second interview because
00:45:11.000maybe I'll just, I'll dangle the climate change topic for a moment, you know, and I'll pause on
00:45:18.360that. Because I wanted to relay that I really appreciate your view of the afterlife, or
00:45:27.040I don't know if that's the way to say it, but life after death, or yeah, I'm struggling with
00:45:34.900my words. Life after life is what I call it. Life after life, that's what I, yes, exactly.
00:45:39.720Life after life. That's what I was looking for. Because it seems like you really
00:45:45.660counter the narrative of the disposability of death or of our life in general yeah and if life
00:45:57.640after life after life really does continue then everything does matter nothing or no one
00:46:03.700or no moment really is disposable and of course disposability culture is part of that addiction
00:46:11.160as part of the eco side, as part of our disconnection. And so I'm really, yeah,
00:46:16.220I'm seeing how that weaves together and really, you know, wondering if we viewed life not as
00:46:22.500disposable, but rather as eternal, how might we approach the world differently? And so I don't
00:46:30.420know, you could of course answer that question. That's just something I was thinking about. And
00:46:34.400And also what came up for me, hearing you talk about death, life after life, just how does a relationship with the dead change our ideas of what ancestry is and means, or even our own life after life after life?
00:46:49.400It does seem to expand the idea of ancestry for me, at least, or my understanding of it.
00:46:57.820Yeah, I mean, I often say that I don't see a lot of straight lines in nature.
00:47:03.340I see a lot of circles and a lot of spirals, but not a lot of straight lines.
00:47:08.460And lineages are, the idea of ancestral lineage is an idea of civilization.
00:47:14.700It's about dominance hierarchies, right?
00:47:16.320It's about lines of power, lines of authority, lines of privilege, lines of ownership.
00:47:22.480And in fact, if you begin to explore your genetic history, you know, you quickly have
00:47:30.140thousands of grandmothers all around you, right?
00:47:32.740going in every direction. And that's just your biology. And not to mention their husbands and
00:47:38.680their children and their aunts and uncles and their teachers and their friends and the wet
00:47:43.560nurses and the neighbors who were loving and kind. And I don't like to leave anyone out from the
00:47:51.200other side because I don't want to be left out. I really do try to include everyone. I do litanies
00:47:56.860of the dead, of the dead I know. And I really, I don't call on them generally. I call on them
00:48:01.440specifically by name, and that includes my biological ancestors, people who show up.
00:48:06.540I don't understand it. It seems quite silly. You could mock it, I suppose, effortlessly.0.77
00:48:12.860I sort of submit to the mystery of it and submit to the holding of it. I think when we call on the
00:48:18.480dead on the other side, we get to know them intimately. We'll also begin to get to know
00:48:23.780all of the dead, and they'll start to show up for us in ways we can't even imagine.
00:48:29.820You know, you can even call on saints.
00:48:32.280You know, the saints used to be nothing but the dead.
00:48:35.220I don't even think there used to be gods and goddesses or pantheons of gods and goddesses.
00:48:40.020I'm not very interested in God in one way or another.
00:48:42.300But I think what there used to be were ancestors.
00:50:38.320Well, I really started to understand ancestors
00:50:56.960in a different and more connected way from that response.
00:51:04.420So thank you for personally helping me in my own journey to come to some type of, I don't know if it's a sense of belonging, but like touching belonging or seeing it differently.
00:51:18.440And, uh, and yeah, there's, gosh, there's a few things that came up for me. Um, one
00:51:28.460just, I'm interested when you talk about God and religion and how you're kind of putting that
00:51:39.120in one spot, but then you bring up the dead and the ancestors guiding us. And I guess where I'm
00:51:46.300trying to organize my thoughts is that I don't think it's healthy for humanity
00:51:56.680to not have either religion, spirituality, connection to the divine, to some type of
00:52:06.500capital T truth, whether we call it morality, like a postmodern way of living has not gotten
00:52:14.740us anywhere good. I don't think. I don't either. But yet we still need to connect with something
00:52:20.800that isn't just ourselves, our life, this one life that we are experiencing at this moment.
00:52:29.000And so maybe ritual. Can I offer a suggestion? Yeah. Yeah. And if you,
00:52:32.460suggestions please. And if a ritual is part of that suggestion to bridge this gap,
00:52:37.340I really would love to hear about it. Okay. So it's a big question, right?
00:52:41.940So I want to say that I like to think about ecology, not theology.
00:52:47.060If I can see it in the natural world, I trust it.
00:54:07.420as they live inside the ecological equation and they live inside an experience of belonging
00:54:15.280to the long story of their souls into the fabric of existence that we've lost touch with
00:54:20.000i think the way back in for me is the intimacy and the intimacy of the dead and the intimacy
00:54:32.840of those on the other side and to live inside mystery. And what I always say to people is ask
00:54:40.000for help with one thing today from one person on the other side and see what happens. Put it to the
00:54:45.760test. If it works, rinse, repeat, try again. Go slowly, ask for help. You will become an oasis
00:54:53.780of faith. And in a time when people are more and more frightened and more and more dangerous because
00:54:59.660are so frightened. That faith that you begin to cultivate within you will be a place where other
00:55:06.580people can find sanctuary. So I'm interested in creating those sort of small gardens and
00:55:13.020oases of faith for people to share and be together safely. Wow. I want to hear more. And I, yeah,
00:55:23.720I want to ask a question about deep time and thinking about the past. And then maybe we
00:55:28.500can think about the future. Okay. In your Substack article, Don't Look Back, you write, quote,
00:55:34.020as someone who collaborates with the dead and thinks often about the mysteries of deep time,
00:55:39.380it might be easy to get stuck in the past, the endless traumas and objections of civilization,
00:55:45.560or conversely, some bucolic moment when all was right with the world. On the one hand,
00:55:52.900I feel like I want to know about the past, claim its teachings and wisdoms with the help of my
00:55:57.360ancestors, but I certainly do not want to fall into an abyss of time." I feel like this is so
00:56:04.840timely. And I'm wondering how can we avoid this armful loop of demonizing and idealizing the past
00:56:12.080ways that keep us trapped as we try to heal? Well, as any addict knows, the thing that keeps
00:56:20.340you addicted is resentment. And that's a backward looking emotion. But the other side of resentment
00:56:26.940is nostalgia. And what I know about nature is nature isn't nostalgic. Nature's looking forward
00:56:34.060and it's thinking creatively and wildly as it looks forward. There's a place that used to be
00:56:41.840a gas station on the corner of two roads near me and the gas station was removed and no one,
00:56:47.080of course, wanted to move there because there'd been a gas station there. So it was just, you
00:56:49.920know, asphalt was left there at this corner. And I've watched over the years, you know,
00:56:54.800as the Alanthus trees moved in and the chicory moved in and the dandelions moved in and how
00:56:59.960they're breaking apart. I love watching how they are remaking that spot of the world, you know,
00:57:05.920and I would sort of whisper encouragement and prayers to them and gratitude to them all the
00:57:09.760time. And I love watching the diversity of beings that are moving in and collaborating together to
00:57:18.200do something new with this space. And I want to be part of that collaborative experience,
00:57:24.580part of that wild collaborative fecund dance of becoming that stepping into something new
00:57:31.640you know the world is changing rapidly right now and maybe this is pulling into your question about
00:57:38.080climate change things are going wonky right things are going to get really really wonky
00:57:43.900and the idea that we're going to know what's best i don't know what's going to be best but i know i
00:57:48.580want to dance with what's happening and be part of the collaborative creativity of what's happening
00:57:53.300in the best, most interesting ways that I can, in the most helpful ways that I can.
00:58:00.100And to do that, I'm going to have to stay open to not knowing what happens next.
00:58:04.800It's not about returning to some past experience.
00:58:07.760It's going to be about stepping into something new.
00:58:11.840And that's often what happens, you know, what I find,
00:58:14.420I learn when I pray with the dead is that they often answer my prayers in very unexpected ways.
00:58:20.700and I learned to trust that though that's where the magic is the magic is because it happens in
00:58:27.160a way I don't imagine it's going to happen things can happen very unexpectedly when we
00:58:32.880begin to participate in that dance okay so I'm rubbing my hands together for this one because
00:58:42.180it's yeah I feel like so much of what you've shared has has spoken to this really deep question
00:58:50.940me that has been just gnawing at me a bit and it's about climate change I guess I don't even
00:58:57.380know if it's a question or more if I'm just observing where we're at and what it even means
00:59:05.140but I guess I'm I feel like I'm kind of in like a beginner's mind with it again
00:59:10.820of what is it even and what are we doing about it and I'm kind of in a no mind about this and
00:59:19.120I don't want to say that because of course I'm still fighting to protect land and I still
00:59:23.520am grieving the loss of our kin but I guess I'm got a lot of guesses but I'm thinking back to
00:59:33.060our conversation in ways where you shared about asking our ancestors, how do we move through this?
00:59:42.020How do we grieve something that feels so huge and complex and overwhelming to our systems? And so
00:59:50.280I don't even know what the question is for you, but I just want to sit with this
00:59:56.080thing in front of us and be like, what is going on?
00:59:59.700Well, I've had a similar experience. You know, my husband and I both started reading, I think, climate.org back in the 90s to give you some idea. Okay. And we both started to feel like Cassandra's, right? You know, like, come on, doesn't everybody see this, right? Doesn't everybody get what's coming?
01:00:20.180and the horror of Cassandra right is nobody believes her the question I asked recently
01:00:27.600is why doesn't Cassandra leave you know why doesn't she just get out of Troy
01:00:31.280she doesn't she stays and she tries even so even so to try and get people to see
01:00:38.780I mean like you how do I sit inside two things which is the enormity of what's happening I think
01:00:48.520a lot of people feel overwhelmed by the enormity, right? What can I possibly do that makes a
01:00:53.920difference that matters? What do I do? What do I personally do? You know, every time we turn around
01:01:01.160in my beautiful, liberal, earthy, hippie community, we're fighting one more development coming and
01:01:08.020trying to cut down 100 acres of trees. We fight off one group and another group comes in. You
01:01:12.900know what I mean? It's like, oh my gosh, you know, it's, it's like some, it's like some old movie
01:01:18.340where, you know, every time we turn around, there's another enemy at the gates. Right.
01:01:22.980And it feels that way. You know, you get one win here and there are 12 losses over there. And it's
01:01:29.140just exhausting. What's going to give us the resilience and the joy to do what we need to do
01:01:44.080in this moment, even if we don't know what we're supposed to do? And here's the faith. Two things
01:01:50.360come to mind. One is, and it's come up in my head three times, so I have to give it into it,
01:01:55.720that I'm a Lord of the Rings nerd, my whole family is.
01:01:58.620And, you know, at the end, when it seems like Sorin's going to win
01:02:02.600and all hope is lost, Aragorn goes into the mountain
01:02:46.340I get panic-stricken when I think about, you know,
01:02:49.280what is it they say in 12-step groups?
01:02:51.300Our best thinking goddess here, you know, addicted and forlorn.
01:02:55.260and destroyed. And I think that's, you know, our best thinking has brought us here. Our best
01:02:59.540thinking is the problem. And sometimes I think, you know, that the whole rest of the earth looks
01:03:05.680at us like we're two-year-old toddlers at the end of a long day and the kitchen is destroyed. And
01:03:10.600you just want to put them to bed, damn it, you know, and get the house cleaned up.0.99
01:03:16.520But I think the real challenge for each of us is to get out of our heads and back into our hearts.0.99
01:03:25.260And to begin listening and thinking about how the earth, how the beings of this planet, the plants and the animals and the stones and the mountains and the rivers are asking each of us personally to collaborate with them.
01:03:41.540I think it's going to be in wildly individual and diverse and fascinating ways.
01:03:46.740so you know you are presenting us the diversity of people following their intuition towards what
01:03:54.000they need to do whether it's someone figuring out how we can help bodies decompose so we can avoid
01:04:00.800the american funeral system or somebody else looking at how plastics are being microplastics
01:04:07.380being integrated into new ecosystems um everyone's going to have a different
01:04:12.780a different answer but it's going to come from inside each of our hearts in different ways
01:04:18.620and it's going to become about surrendering giving up on the economy of capitalism and money
01:04:25.040and reason and returning to an economy of faith and prayer and trust you know i think of there's
01:04:34.180a man a musician sam lee in england who sings with the nightingales i don't know if you've ever
01:04:38.820heard of him. And he knows the nightingales are going extinct. And he goes out and he brings
01:04:46.600people out to sing with them and to listen to their songs. And there's something so heartbreaking
01:04:52.240and beautiful and bearing witness to them. And of course, trying to protect their remaining
01:04:57.140environments and wait people up to them and to know how to protect them, but also knowing about
01:05:02.340the futility of it. And yet sometimes I wonder about the magic that is happening with those
01:05:08.600songs of the people who listen to them, of the nightingales who hear them. We don't know what's
01:05:15.880going to make it through and how things are going to make it through. Maybe there are nightingales
01:05:21.160even now heartened by those songs who will find a way to make it through and not go extinct. Or
01:05:27.820maybe those songs will be held and taught to another bird. I don't know. I don't know,
01:05:33.760but I know that the people I see trusting their hearts and following their intuition and imagination
01:05:39.760are the ones that give me hope because I don't know what's coming. And I know vast changes are
01:05:47.360coming, huge changes, and they're going to be inexplicable and frightening.
01:05:53.700and we're going to have to figure out how to dance with them lovingly as mothers in the world
01:06:01.560as mothers ready to help out make a difference in the world and that and i say mothers i invite
01:06:08.680everybody male or female young or old those with biological children and those without
01:06:12.620to begin to experience themselves as mothers of every soul they meet in this world
01:06:18.400and what would it mean and look like to show up that way each and every day
01:06:23.440wow thank you so much predita this has been just an incredible way to spend time
01:06:32.660watching the rain fall and i am so grateful for you and your heart and
01:06:38.900your mind and the weavings of your words oh yeah thank you thank you ayana so much for having me
01:06:48.000on. It's a, it really is a dream come true. Yeah, absolutely. It's been, it's been just
01:06:52.980a gift. Appreciate it. And I thank you for all that you do in the world. It really matters.