Reading · REWEAVING EARTH & SOUL

Photo by author of the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, WV, on a recent day of unhealthy air from the wildfires burning in Canada.

Declaration of Interdependence

We the people hold this truth to be self-evident that all flourishing is mutual. As we recognize our 250^th anniversary of our collective rejection of tyranny, let’s use this moment not only to look back but toward the future in which we want our grandchildren to live. It’s what good ancestors do.

Let us declare independence from the short-sighted, extractive world view that actively harms the homeland we love so dearly. And celebrate instead a Declaration of Interdependence.

I’m glad we have the bill of individual rights. But what about a bill of mutual responsibility? Great writers of the past have given us inspiration. Let’s carry that on and cocreate a new declaration to celebrate our connections and the web of reciprocity in which we are all held. …. Let’s write a new story together.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer – 7/3/2026

A declaration of interdependence. Do we believe in interdependence? At some level we get that we humans are intertwined with the rest of the living world. As I write this the skies in West Virginia are hazy, smoke stings our nostrils, and air quality is “very unhealthy.” Like so many others in Canada and the US, we are breathing burning forests, homes, and lives trapped in unfathomably tragic wildfires thousands of miles away. My heart breaks for the trees and all beings who live among them. Forests would normally clean and purify the air; they cannot protect us for they cannot protect themselves against these unnaturally intense fires and “forest management” practices. Extended drought, heat, and fires span the American Southwest; Texas is flooding again. Looking only at North America, we witness abundant evidence that we are connected. What we do in one community, one ecosystem, has a rippling and cumulative impact on lives far from us. Despite a dominate cultural story of separation, it’s impossible to deny that we are interconnected.

Of course, it’s not just negative experiences that remind us of connections. As I walked with friends on a path through the woods this week, we remarked on the welcome relief from intense heat as we were shielded by the canopy. Among the trees, we removed our N-95 masks that filter out particulates, trusting the work of the trees.

Yet stories of interdependence, collaboration, and kinship often feel fleeting. Or, if they remain in our memories, they do not appear up to the task of replacing the dominant themes held within our Western industrial culture. Too frequently our lives are ensnared by “Business as Usual” – one of three stories of our time described by the late wise elder Joanna Macy in her writings.1 When I bring up this term in retreats or workshops, participants quickly coalesce around phrases that express this dominate story of Western modernity: growth economy, global corporate capitalism, consumption, unlimited growth, scarcity, competition, domination, colonialism, productivity, human-centrism.

It’s a short step from here to the second story that Joanna termed “The Great Unraveling.” This story makes explicit the collapse of systems and structures around which we have built our economies, institutions, and lives. Economic instability, mass extinctions, decimation of ecosystems, climate chaos, political turmoil, inequity, and injustice. The unstable systems and principles of Business as Usual were never fit for purpose if the intent is mutual thriving and wellbeing for all Earth. We are hooked on a way of seeing the world, an old story that is unraveling the sacred web of life on the only life-giving planet that we know of in the universe.

What will it take to release the stranglehold of Business as Usual, to come to terms with both how we have benefited from this story and the immense pain and suffering it has caused so that we might imagine and create a new future?

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller

This brings us to Joanna’s third story: The Great Turning – a creative cultural, ecological, spiritual renewal that leads to thriving collectively as one Earth. From this story, we recognize and live fully into kinship and interdependence.

Can we break free from the bounds of a culture that has circumscribed how we have lived all our lives? How will we respond to the unraveling of the world as we knew it? Surely to participate in The Great Turning will require individuals and communities with awakened and committed hearts, minds, souls, and senses. What is our role, our calling, if we are to meet the challenges of these edge times?

We turn again to the wisdom of Joanna Macy who offered The Three Dimensions of the Great Turning where we can focus our efforts. These include:

1. Actions to slow the damage to Earth and its beings.

Hear! Hear! Protect forests. Save our soil, air, water, ecosystems. Do whatever we can to halt the extinction of species. If you want ideas for how you might begin such an effort, there are an abundance of excellent resources. I’m a multi-decade supporter, fan, and student of Biodiversity for a Livable Climate. On their website you can find links to resources and ongoing classes that speak to how we care for the living world.

On his recent podcast “Protect the Irreversible” Nate Hagens urged that we focus on preserving what cannot be replaced. Although he doesn’t attend to the spiritual dimension to the degree I believe is critical for our future, this particular episode resonated with me as it’s about protecting life on Earth. (If you want further suggestions, message me via Substack.)

2. Analysis of structural causes and the creation of structural alternatives.

Jeremy Lent’s Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All speaks boldly and frankly of the unfolding over generations of a society that was structured to build power for the few over the needs of “others” who were considered less than white men of wealth and privilege. Chapter by chapter, the author lays out how to reimagine the underpinnings of an ecocivilization including the economy, agriculture, infrastructure, law, global governance, and more. Using the three horizons model that opens the conversation to new possibilities, he identifies what needs to happen in the immediate future (second horizons) and what he considers to be the ultimate shift or third horizon. (See my June 21, 2026 Substack Ecological Spirituality for more on this book.)

On the Bioneers podcast of July 8, Anna Malaika Tubbs, multidisciplinary expert on race, gender, and equity, invites us to look closely at the republic of men – the only people who were designated as “human” by the founding fathers. Her clear description of the intent of those who defined our nation serves as an important reminder of how “othering” came to be written into our history.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis traces our current planet- and soul-destroying culture (my words) to our colonial history based in greed and domination. (One of my favorite books.)

3. Shift in Consciousness

“These structural alternatives cannot take root and survive without deeply ingrained values to sustain them. They must mirror what we want and how we relate to Earth and each other. They require, in other words, a profound shift in our perception of reality—and that shift is happening now, both as cognitive revolution and spiritual awakening.”2

Each of these dimensions is critical if we are to make the difficult journey from business as usual through these times of unraveling and tip the balance toward the great turning. However, it’s this individual and collective shift in consciousness that I want to focus on in this series of unfolding essays. The journey toward reweaving Earth and soul, the call to deepen our ecological spirituality, resonates as an urgent, critical, and life-giving response to Earth’s cry and the fulfillment of her dream.

For guidance, let’s turn to an old story of unraveling. This legend is said to have been shared by Native American elders in times of great difficulty. In Why the World Doesn’t End, story-teller Michael Meade passed on this story as a beacon for edge times. I heard it from my friend, Lindsay McLaughlin, and I passed it on in my book Earth & Soul: Reconnecting amid Climate Chaos. Such is the journey of stories that trouble us into deeper thought.

The Old Woman Weaving the World

(This is the story) of an old woman, deep in a cave, weaving the world. Light and shadows dance around her as she weaves. She has been weaving a long lifetime, and the garment born of her dreams and dedication is of exquisite beauty. The only time she leaves her loom is to go far back into the cave to stir the contents of a pot simmering over the oldest fire in the world. It contains the roots and seeds of all the plants, herbs, and grains that feed the Earth. If she does not stir this elemental soup, it may burn, and who knows what trouble that may cause.

Living in the cave with her is a black dog who dozes while the woman works at her loom. When she rises to tend the pot, the dog rouses. While she shuffles slowly— after all she is very old—to the back of the cave, the dog grabs a loose thread in his teeth and begins to pull. As the old woman painstakingly makes her way to and from the fire, the dog tugs at various threads, pulling until finally the weaving comes apart and the threads are scattered across the cave floor. Upon her return, the old woman sees the product of her long labor in disarray, her efforts turned to naught. She gazes upon what remains, sitting silently for some time. Slowly she bends to pick up a thread. Soon the original pattern is forgotten as a new and previously unimagined design of great beauty takes shape in her mind’s eye. Guided by this vision, her old hands begin to weave a beautiful tapestry from the chaos.

I heard this story in three different venues before it tucked itself into my thoughts, and I began to ponder more deeply its message. What wisdom do such ancient stories offer us about living in these chaotic times?

Let’s return to Michael Meade who lifted up the story of the old woman weaving the world in his 7/17 post. (What is the universe up to when themes converge? )

Meade wrote:

“As chaos spreads throughout the world with widespread revelations of abuses of power and the extreme politics of division, I keep thinking that we are in that moment. Not just another moment in history, but an extended or open moment in which familiar things collapse before our eyes while other things wait to be revealed and new, more inclusive designs may actually become more possible.
I keep imagining how the time of collapse and chaos can also be a radical period of re-imagination and potential renewal. Not that there is some magical solution that everyone can agree upon. But that precisely in the midst of chaos each of us may be closer to finding a particular thread that gives our life genuine meaning and also gives us something to contribute to the re-imagining and reweaving of the world.”

With this hopeful message, might we begin journeying toward the shift in consciousness that moves us toward the great turning? Can we join together in our individual and collective explorations of finding the threads that both give our lives meaning and simultaneously serve as our gift to the world?

Earth is waiting for us to fully embrace our soul purpose – that deep essence of who we truly are, interwoven with the living world. This is the journey of Earth and soul: a single journey that both deepens our connection to the web of life and draws us into the depths of our being. I believe this is what Thomas Berry meant by inscendence. Not transcending who we are but diving into the deep well of truth that shifts our consciousness AND reweaves frayed connections so that we re-member our place in the family of things. We become fully woven into the sacred and beautiful web of life where we know oneness with all.

This is why I want to talk together about ecological spirituality, this journey to interdependence, kinship, and oneness that is also about becoming who we are meant to be, cracking out of our constraining shell into the invisible fecundity of “hidden wholenss,” rooted into the life around us. (See more in my post on How shall we live beyond the edge?)

Meade continued: “Each person is born with a thread of genius, a golden filament set within the soul, just waiting to be discovered. This natural endowment of inner gold is the true ‘treasure hard to attain’. It is the unique thread that secretly connects each of us to the living soul of the world. This older, wiser sense of a unique inner genius that might help light the way forward stands against the cynical ideas and divisive designs that dominate modern mass cultures and keep putting us on the verge of mass destruction…” Ahh.

This post has already been a lot of words, many of them an attempt to illuminate understandings that I find are beyond words. I’ll continue in future posts with conversations, stories, and practices that I hope will support your/our journey toward the great turning. For now, let’s complete this time with a very simple practice of awareness.

Intention: A shift in individual and collective consciousness will be required for the great turning. To awaken heart, mind, soul, and senses, we will need to expand our awareness beyond old patterns, beyond the bounds of our conditioned tendencies. In this practice, we’ll ask our thinking mind to rest in the background as we bring awareness to our sense of touch and engage our imagination.

Prepare: Set aside twenty to thirty minutes where you can remain in uninterrupted silence. Find a being in the more than human world with whom you sense an invitation to linger. If it’s possible, do this practice our of doors. If not, don’t worry about it; it’s fine to sit with a stone, leaf, piece of wood, apple, or other life on your porch or in a quiet space indoors.

Once this small bit of life has chosen you, find a place to sit where you will be able to hold or touch that life. Take a few deep breaths and intentionally relax into a position where you are comfortable and fully present. Close your eyes.

Practice: Without regard for what else is going on around you, begin a gentle exploration of this life though your fingertips. Notice the texture. Temperature. Shape. Imagine that you will be sketching this later; invite your fingers to remember. How is this life distinctive from others of its kind? Allow this being to seep into your sensory memory so that you would know it again should you find it in the dark. Notice what feelings arise in you as you continue this practice.

Before you end this practice, ask yourself or ask this life: How are we interdependent? In your imagination, map the ways in which you are connected.

What gratitude might you express for this life? For your sense of touch?

Continue: In what ways might you further explore your sense of touch? Your interconnections? Your gratitude?

Return to the practice as desired - or continue the practice with a different one of your senses.

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Thank you so much for reading this post. It helps to create and expand community when you share this post and/or offer comments on your experiences and thoughts.

Journeying toward The Great Turning – Part 1

Declaration of Interdependence

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