Emergence Magazine

AI & Spiritual Life – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

While AI is already profoundly changing our realities, can it really help us with the shift in consciousness we urgently need to restore our relationship with the living world, asks author and Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.

Language is a Fluid – Jake Skeets

Featuring two pieces from his new collection, Horses, this new op-ed by Diné poet Jake Skeets explores how poetry sidesteps the failures of language when it doesn’t attempt to do anything.

Entering the Bardo – Emergence Magazine

In this op-ed, eco-philosopher and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy introduces us to the bardo—the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a gap between worlds where transition is possible.

Beginning with Seeds: Restoration in the Wake of Wildfires – Lauren E. Oakes

Amid the devastation wrought by the Palisades and Eaton Fires in Southern California, environmental scientist Lauren E. Oakes considers what seeds we can plant to help restore life and Earth in the wake of profound loss.

There Is No Show More Beautiful Than This – Tove Danovich

In this op-ed, Tove Danovich witnesses hundreds of thousands of Vaux’s swifts make their annual descent upon a schoolhouse chimney in Portland, Oregon, as part of their autumn migration—their fleeting presence a moment of joy amid uncertainty.

Finnegas – Emergence Magazine

In the time of this great, strange plague, Paul Kingsnorth returns to the Celtic myth of Finnegas, the woodland hermit who devoted his life to catching and eating the salmon that contained the wisdom of the world.

MOTH: Pushing the Boundaries of Legal Imagination – César Rodríguez-Garavito

Who counts as a subject of rights? César Rodríguez-Garavito, founder of the More Than Human Rights Project (MOTH), urges us to remember that we are embedded in a wider biosphere in which every element of the web of life has agency.

11 min read

The Water of Life – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

In a landscape where nothing is certain and old patterns of control tighten their grip, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee urges us to leave behind that which no longer nourishes us and work with the Earth toward a living future.

Rights of Nature at the Border – Lorraine Eiler

As the border wall and climate change disrupt the ecological balance at Quitobaquito Springs, one of the most sacred sites for the Hia-Ced O’odham people, Lorraine Eiler speaks on behalf of the desert’s more-than-human beings.

Darkness Rising — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

In a time of growing ecological and humanitarian crises, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee bears witness to the darkness of the dying myth we are stranded in.

A Sixty-Six-Year Journey to Tamal-Liwa — Theresa Harlan

After her Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their ancestral home in Northern California, Theresa Harlan joined her voice with the national movement seeking to restore Indigenous history and presence to the American landscape.

How Indigenous Peoples Are Fighting the Apocalypse — Julian Brave NoiseCat

Julian Brave NoiseCat reflects on the convergence of two apocalypses—the genocide of colonization and the ecocide of climate change.

Firebreak

As Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder walks along the border of a recent prescribed fire, she wonders what acts of imagination are needed to restore the world her daughter will inherit.

Is This an Initiation? An Urgent Invitation to Beautiful Learning – Emergence Magazine

Mythologist Martin Shaw offers five reflections on the agency that rests within the opportunity of sheltering in place.

4 min read

Above Water – Emergence Magazine

As she navigates the second trimester of her pregnancy in the midst of a pandemic, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder looks to a Canada goose seated on a nest of eggs for ways to gracefully inhabit a shrinking world.

New Life in Spring – Emergence Magazine

Holding a spring bud in her hand and new life in her body, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder navigates the blurred lines between uncertainty, vulnerability, and joy.

5 min read

The Dissolution – Emergence Magazine

While researching the outbreak of smallpox among the Gwitchin of the North Yukon and observing the spread of COVID-19, environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth ponders the dissolving partition between world and self.

Desire Paths – Emergence Magazine

As the coronavirus sets us on an uncertain and increasingly narrow path, David Farrier finds inspiration in the meandering imprints left by the tracks of animals.

Life Beyond the Bandana – Emergence Magazine

Retiring Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus—Finally

The Way of the Goldfinch – Emergence Magazine

Watching a goldfinch sway on a blade of grass, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder writes to her soon-to-be born daughter about beauty, balance, and lessons of uncertainty.

Pathways in the Urban Wild – Lucy Jones

Lucy Jones reflects on the healing benefits of an attentive relationship with the living world and the complex barriers to that relationship within urban areas.

Skywoman Falling – Robin Wall Kimmerer

In this excerpt from the new introduction to her acclaimed book “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Robin Wall Kimmerer draws upon the creation story of Skywoman and the wisdom of plants to guide us through our present moment of deep uncertainty.

A Ghost's Life – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Responding to our fractured sense of reality, Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee looks to the wisdom of the Ch’an Buddhist masters to help us find balance and belonging through direct experience of life’s wholeness.

9 min read

Listen: Four Love Songs

Kathleen Dean Moore considers the looming loss of wild music that is heard in the songs of birds.