BE
Threads

Earth

All matter matters, and nothing matters, and the mountain does not need that resolved.

Macy’s Great Turning is the name of a walk already begun: from a society that eats its own ground toward one that lets life keep living. Active hope is a practice, not a forecast. The Work That Reconnects starts in gratitude because you cannot protect what you have not loved, and then it lets the pain speak so the love has somewhere honest to stand. Grandfather’s Coyote Thunder says we are here for a purpose beyond self: we are the caretakers. Tom Brown’s coyote teaching sends you to the land until the land answers. Jon Young’s stones make a container where connection with people and connection with nature are one weather. Tesla felt the ties that cannot be seen. Grace Walk holds both hands: the body and the world are sacred, and the separate self’s dramas are empty. A food forest in a high dry valley is not a hobby at the edge of spirituality. It is spirituality remembering it has dirt under its nails.

On this shelf

Titles that sit in this room. The books remain themselves.

Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Living with the Earth

Tom Brown Jr.

The Tracker / The Vision / The Quest / Awakening Spirits

Tom Brown Jr.

What the Robin Knows

Jon Young

Coming Back to Life / World as Lover, World as Self / A Wild Love for the World

Joanna Macy

The Dream of the Earth / The Great Work

Thomas Berry

The Universe Story

Brian Swimme

Entangled Life

Merlin Sheldrake

Ways of Being

James Bridle

Gift of Power

Archie Fire Lame Deer

I Contain Multitudes

Ed Yong

In this weather

Alan Watts

The wave and the ocean

You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing. You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real, deep-down you is the whole universe.

Lectures

Alan Watts

Completely engaged

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. Not play as escape. Play as the universe doing what it does, through these hands, without the extra job of being a stranger in the scene.

Lectures

Joanna Macy

Active hope is something we do

Active Hope is not a feeling you wait to have. It is something we do. It involves being clear what we hope for and then playing our role in the process of moving that way. It is how we face the mess we are in without going crazy — and without going numb, which is another kind of crazy. You do not need optimism. You need a direction and a next step that belongs to life.

Active Hope

Joanna Macy

The spiral

The spiral returns: Coming from Gratitude. Honoring Our Pain for the World. Seeing with New Eyes. Going Forth. When we come from gratitude, we become more present to the wonder of being alive in this amazing living world. Honoring pain is not collapse. It is refusing to exile the part of you that loves enough to hurt. Seeing with new eyes is remembering you are larger than the story of isolation. Going forth is the cell doing what the body already knows.

The Work That Reconnects

Joanna Macy

Pain for the world

Your despair is a form of love. The Work That Reconnects helps people discover their innate connections with each other and with the self-healing powers of the web of life, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action. You are not broken for feeling the forest fall. You are intact. The numbness was the injury.

The Work That Reconnects

Joanna Macy

The Great Turning

The Great Turning is the name for the shift from an industrial-growth society toward a life-sustaining civilization. It is already underway, in more kitchens and watersheds than the news can count. A regenerative homestead, a food forest, a community that tells the truth about its grief — these are not accessories to a spiritual life. They are the spiritual life, remembering it has hands.

Active Hope

Grace Walk

All matter matters

I see all matter matters and nothing matters all at once. The body and the world are sacred, yet the separate self and its dramas are ultimately empty. The true test of any interpretation is not intellectual agreement but living fruit: greater presence, compassion, clarity, and the felt sense of coming home. The Kingdom is within. The Stone is the Self. The Ladder is the Spine. The Story is alive — and it is yours.

Gnostic Origin Stories

Grandfather

We are the caretakers

Nature becomes a doorway to the spirit and spirit also becomes a doorway to nature. There is only the sacred oneness that we are all part of. When we take something from nature, its spirit does not die. Instead it becomes part of our flesh and part of our spirit. There is no real death, at least not when things are taken in the right way, the sacred way. You belong to the earth, just as you are part of this old tree and it of you. Nature can exist without us, but it would struggle far more. Remember, we are here for a grand purpose, beyond self. We are the caretakers.

Grandfather

Tom Brown Jr.

I am a coyote teacher

To give instruction would satisfy the needs of most people, but that is not my goal. My goal is to give the reader a picture of the world we live in, the forgotten world. This book explains that it is not easily come by and a search for the truths must occur before knowledge is attained. Grandfather’s life was full of every emotion, every feeling, and they did not come from listening to his elders. He had to seek them out for himself as I wish the reader to do. I am a coyote teacher. The fire still burns. Someday people will seek again the old ways.

Grandfather

Tom Brown Jr.

Thirst is an ally

Thirst is an ally, not an adversary. Once accepted, heat and thirst lose their power, for they become a constant part of existence here. Without them there could be no living entity called desert. He had nearly died in the desert, but only the alien had died, only to be reborn as a child of this land. Thirst thus becomes the doorway through which we can see into the heart of the deserts, and more important see into the heart of ourselves. He did feel them. He did not fear or fight them, for they were part of the realities of life.

Grandfather

Jon Young

Connection is the birthright

Connection is our natural state, our birthright. Civilization has made disconnection the only thing we know. When we connect with each other we also connect with nature; when we work on our connection with nature we are also working on our connection with each other. People have an innate and deeply rooted need to be seen, heard, understood and valued. They need to know that they are contributing and that they belong. When everyone participates, and everyone feels seen and heard, the group becomes stronger than the sum of its parts.

10 Stones Protocols for Sharing

Iain McGilchrist

Attention makes a world

The kind of attention we pay to the world changes the world we pay attention to. A culture that attends only with the left hemisphere will find a world of parts, resources, problems, and enemies — and will be certain it is seeing clearly. A culture that lets the master lead will find a world that is alive, unfinished, and worthy of care. This is not anti-reason. It is reason remembering it serves something it did not invent.

The Matter With Things

Edgar Cayce

One force

All force is one force. The apparent many is a way the one has of meeting itself. Healing, in the readings, is a return of the parts to that agreement. You do not have to accept every transcript to sit with the sentence. Baba’s Oversoul, Grandfather’s oneness, Tesla’s unseen ties — the same weather, different porches. What you do to the least of these, you do to the circuit you are.

Readings

Nikola Tesla

Ties inseparable

Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. Each of us is only part of a whole. The man who means to be a useful member of the community must first feel this. The current does not begin at the socket. It was already moving in the field we call a self.

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy