00:05:48.200And I think that's a beautiful way of segwaying into the context
00:05:51.140of this conversation, climate, grief, and hope. As you might know, if you're here,
00:05:59.160the IPCC report released in March, the sixth iteration, was a story of loss and a story of
00:06:11.120demise. It seems to be the most powerful modern narrative gripping the heart of civilization.
00:06:21.140The idea that if we don't get our acts together, we might reach that global threshold of a change in degrees of 1.5 degrees Celsius or Celsius degrees.
00:06:36.140And if we do that, then we would enter, we would have entered unprecedented times.
00:06:55.140And our conversation here today is to stay with it in a different way.
00:07:02.140And one symptom of that prognosis, that story, one outcome has been grief.
00:07:11.620So I thought we could start by, and again, this is not going to be centered around my questions.
00:07:17.340I thought we could just do something different and pass along with each other things that are emerging for us.
00:07:23.560But my first prompt to get things started is, if we can share stories of loss to open us to the energies of this space together, are there accounts and narratives of loss that are significant to you in this time of metaphysical loss?
00:07:43.360Any of you could respond, and then we take it together.
00:09:15.220And that would be also how resilient we can be when the weaving, the web of that network
00:09:26.220of ancestors, both from the past into the present, and also those emerging ancestors
00:09:34.680that are coming from what will be, are orienting our action today, our collective action today.
00:09:44.220We are not these separated beings. We are weaved beings connected into our lands, into our breaths, into all of our relatives, four-legged, winged, micellated, rooted, fined.
00:10:08.620all these relatives with whom we shared this planet, our Mother Earth.
00:10:16.460But we see that there's so much loss happening today.
00:10:23.180It's not only the biodiversity loss that we are experiencing, the massive extinction,
00:10:31.400but the cultural loss that correlates with that biodiversity loss.
00:10:38.620The indigenous languages is just one way we can see that this loss is happening, threatening our diverse possibilities for finding solutions together.
00:10:52.620So speaking my language is a way of bringing that diversity, that cultural array of possibilities together.
00:11:02.820And I will continue weaving into how loss also can bring meaning to death, weaving stories of hope, as based on our system only, let's see as well.
00:11:17.220I appreciate what you said about expertise, because I'm certainly not expert in these types of conversations.
00:11:24.360I'm trained as a journalist. I'm a very fact-backed person.
00:11:27.340And I've sort of reached the limits of that particular model of, well, if we can just prove it enough, you know, you mentioned the IPCC report.
00:11:35.840And, of course, all of us have had relationships with the academy.
00:11:38.920And the whole premise of the thing is, well, if we can just prove it, right, and we stack up the facts and the proof, if you have robust enough data sets, then the policy will change.
00:11:50.000So the work that I've been doing at the university has been really trying to work with young scientists who are still in graduate school and probably got into this work because they love the natural world.
00:12:01.280They're connected. A lot of folks tend to be less socially comfortable and more in their bodies when they are in the natural world.
00:12:08.240and yet they find themselves kind of acting as undertakers right of collecting the data of laws
00:12:16.720the evidence of extinction with no outlet with no acceptable way to feel it right in fact you're
00:12:23.720supposed to turn it off so we've been working on different kind of pedagogical models which is just
00:12:28.860a fancy way of saying being in our feelings and reading powerful writing and letting it change us
00:14:51.900But it's that feeling of being on a nice bench, feeling that a lot.
00:14:58.560I like to weave into that, the story that Sister Naomi just brought, how the moments that we face loss, when we really embody the grieving process, is the total moment of surrendering.
00:15:17.960Like realizing that that arrogance that keeps humans in a hierarchical organization feeling that they are somehow exceptional and different from all others,
00:15:34.600That arrogance dissolves the moment that we realize we are powerless, really, to the process of life, to the process of spirit, the process of nature.
00:15:48.140That idea of bringing not only the possibilities of the mysterious, right, the possibilities of the stories, that not everything can be measured as Western sciences, but rather as how indigenous sciences speaks about what we don't know, what we can't know, and how we can make meaning of precisely that unknowing.
00:16:16.140knowing and resting in that unknowing by finding the right insight to the action that we need
00:22:42.020That we can let go of all of those stories that keep us separated, alienated.
00:22:47.780Not even realizing that we ourselves are nature.
00:22:53.040You know, we are natural beings, part of this webbing of life.
00:22:57.400And so how can we then compose of those stories?
00:23:02.180But then with intentional participation, participation that brings all these different voices, all these different origin stories, we can recreate new collective stories of belonging, of kindness, of awe and sacredness, that we can then truly build a sense of reverence for the whole of Mother Earth.
00:23:28.340And that allows us to then die, let death do the process.
00:23:36.180But knowing that that composting is to give rise to new forms of life, forms of life that are emerging, right, that are transitioning for a story of belonging, right?
00:25:48.860But in terms of what the stuckness is, you know, I think a lot of it is these narrative structures that are encoded from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Hollywood action movies, right, that tell us not necessarily that we're doomed, but that we are going to get saved at the very, very last minute, right?
00:26:09.820Not all of us, the chosen ones, just the good ones.
00:28:56.920was saying, what's the fear that is causing these problems? And in my case, I fear ignorance,
00:29:04.940right? Because that's what keeps us perpetuating systems without knowing that we are part of those
00:29:11.980problems. So without having a deep reflection, a deep contemplation into which is our part,
00:29:19.600that we continue these old narratives that need to be composed, then things will not change.
00:29:26.920And by your brother, you asked, are there other stories?
00:29:30.440There are so many stories, 7,000 different languages spoken in the world, each of which
00:29:37.160will have an origin story about who we are and how we got connected.
00:29:43.180Many of those stories we haven't heard, and we are losing those stories every day.
00:29:50.500So how do we create now platforms of belonging, of all those different stories in which then we can find meaning, right? Meaning for new ways of identifying ourselves, stop or letting go of those, what keeps us stuck in narratives of isolation or domination or ownership or control.
00:30:13.580And rather weave into narratives of belonging to the earth, of reciprocity, of returning, and all of these many other ways that we haven't yet heard.
00:30:27.500I think we want to speak to that a little more.
00:30:31.300I would like us to shift the arrangement of our conversation.
00:30:36.140And I'm going to shift the baton, so to speak, around so we can ask each other questions.
00:30:41.600But for now, could we just, without tying a bow, just spiral out of this idea that grieving is not, and I think we need people to hear this, grieving is not in the way.
00:30:59.880grieving together, falling apart together, might very well be the most ecstatic, the most animated
00:31:08.000politics in response to these moments that we can muster. Because, yes, is there also something to
00:31:16.200be said about through your experiences and your scholarship and your own dreaming and your own
00:31:22.680experiences of loss, that let's stay with this crack, there is life here.
00:34:05.220But to be there is to let go of knowing, let go of having the solution, right?
00:34:12.520It's letting go of the identity, letting go of the narrative, the collective, the individual, and then transitioning into the place of communitas, like in ritual processes.
00:34:25.280And I'm thinking right now of specific funerary rites, for example.
00:34:30.920You start in a place of loss and grief, and you enter in the place of in-between, the place of communitas, right?
00:34:41.100in which the whole collective helps the griever, the bereaver,
00:34:47.420into finding meaning of this new identity that is rising,
00:34:52.380that is yet to be found, yet to be found meaning in,
00:34:57.380and then eventually able to return with a new sense of self,
00:35:03.180a new sense of responsibility, a new sense of place and belonging,
00:35:07.620not only to its own, but to the community when it stands,
00:35:12.480and then with a larger community of things, right?
00:35:16.440So then that grief, as you said, is not in the way.
00:35:21.740Grief is the way, you know, to transformation,
00:35:26.900is the way that we can let go and then be open to the mystery,
00:35:34.180Be open to spirit to really flow through.
00:35:38.860And no matter what, the animating principle of life, which is spirit, will flow through.
00:35:48.220I'm really struck by your description of grief as ecstasy.
00:39:56.580because it's not about humanity being in Mother Earth.
00:40:00.820That has happened for millennia with quite good balance.
00:40:05.260It's rather the colonial imposition of control, ownership, transaction that has created this abuse towards each other and on earth.
00:40:18.460So that part is what needs to be really deeply acknowledged, deeply reckoned with, and then moving to those reparations that need to happen.
00:40:33.600so the solutions then start happening.
00:40:38.900Before that, we will just continue with the same all, same all, same all.
00:40:47.800Yes, the whole global sound has not been responsible
00:40:50.980of the situation of the world, but we now know as well
00:40:54.300that the move towards mimicking Western lifestyles continues this.
00:41:00.900So we need to start shifting those stories. We need to start moving beyond that. And even also the realization, speaking now of the conservation movements, the green economies, that are taking then again the personality of the Western individualist ideologies.
00:41:25.280that is only banking systems that are being benefited by carbon offsetting
00:41:31.280and that indigenous peoples are being removed from their lands
00:41:35.680in the name of conservation, in the name of protecting areas.
00:41:39.700And now we're not having access to our lifestyle systems in our lands.
00:41:44.780So all of those issues need to be acknowledged and put really in the front
00:41:49.400so that solutions that really benefit the whole Mother Earth start happening.
00:41:53.680Otherwise, we continue with being that stuck in those narratives, rationalizing that in the name of, then we can continue the abuse.
00:42:05.680Thank you, Sister. I think the way I respond to that question, dear Sister Naomi, is I think of whiteness as this planet terraforming principle.
00:42:17.820Right. It's the flattening of the wilds is the clearing that seeks to dismiss the agency, the deep intelligence, the wild and promiscuous embodied grounding forces around us.0.95
00:42:34.360And to reduce all of that to the individual, the myth of the individual, the story in this climate weathering, we've become the weathering bodies, the resource base for this machine that is flattening everything.
00:42:48.000right so of course i think we already know that climate isn't just the weather it's how we think
00:42:54.900it's how we name ourselves it's how we perform technology it's how we travel it's how we eat
00:43:01.320it's how we make love it's how we tell stories it's all of this and i think the invitation
00:43:09.920the wisdom of chaos. I'm using those story elements, Uriah, that you've invited in.
00:43:18.680The invitation is to shapeshift, is to, in the words of Gathari, is to stand up and leave the
00:43:26.380couch, the psychotherapists or the psychoanalysts' couch behind. That is preserving our individuality
00:43:33.680and coddling our minds into thinking that we are separate from the world we're trying to fix.0.88
00:43:39.920This feels like the loss of white stability for me. It seems like we're storing this loss of stability. We just don't have a way to ritualize this loss.0.72
00:43:50.120But there are lots of, from my vantage point, African elders and indigenous cosmological stories and accounts that follow the slaves and told the stories of capture.
00:44:03.600It seems like what you're inviting us to talk about, Naomi, is capture, where the ships, the slave ships that pulled close to Africa are now pulling close to the world, to the shores of the entire world.
00:44:16.440And we've reached a point of no return.
00:44:18.460So we need to listen to people like Earl Lovelace or C.L.R. James or Hortense Spillers or Fred Moulton who say, maybe speaking truth to power is not the issue here.
00:44:33.080Maybe we're kind of, maybe even our struggle is part of the structure we're trying to upend.
00:44:38.160Maybe we need fugitive ways of addressing this crisis.
00:44:41.680And maybe grief is that ecstatic fugitivity that we're speaking about.
00:44:45.880grief as art, grief as aesthetics, grief as vocation. It's not a question of safety for
00:44:52.880ourselves as much as it is a making sanctuary for this thing, this transformative agent that
00:45:00.480has come to us, namely grief. Yeah, I think I'll stop there. But how about we do this?
00:45:09.320There are questions coming in. Now, this isn't exactly framed as a context for responding to
00:45:15.420questions. The aesthetic isn't one of, ah, I get it now. Now I understand. Because as Naomi said
00:45:23.100in the beginning, more data isn't the problem. More and more and more information doesn't seem
00:45:29.300to be working, right? So this isn't about getting it. This isn't about sensorial encounters. Even
00:45:36.360confusion can be a blessing here. But let's do this. Let's experiment with this to start things
00:45:41.640There are questions coming in. I will read it out. There are no guarantees of answers. Everyone listening, no answers here, just responses, just gestures.
00:45:52.900And if you feel called to respond to it, Naomi, Uriah, then please do.
00:45:57.600let me take one, is how do we prepare for the chaos?
00:46:03.480I resonate with Naomi's fear of cruelty.
00:46:07.420We must make community in our places to traverse and build the new.
00:47:19.840which is what's animating the right action.
00:47:23.220That's why we need that moment of reflection and contemplation to really understand.
00:47:29.760We see life, the whole of cycles of nature that are talking about that process, that process of resting, that process of emerging, the process of blooming and then calming and wilting and passing.
00:47:47.720The huge network you were saying by in the beginning, the mycelial network that connects all around, the cosmic networks that connect us.