Greetings!
I hope this finds you safe and well. I suspect I’m not alone in my effort to gain some kind of perspective these days, to understand what’s happening and to feel inspired about (or even capable of) carrying on.
I’m also aware that it’s a privilege to seek perspective, versus handling more pressing matters like keeping my house from burning down or wondering if my children will die of a deadly virus by going to school. Since I don’t have a house or children, I find myself constantly whittling at my role in contributing to a better version of reality.
To paraphrase the great Jane Siberry’s song Calling All Angels, I’m not sure how this goes. But for me these days it amounts to listening, working and pointing to seeds.
Listening
I’ve been listening a lot. To the urban woods and the local mountains where I’ve been running on hilly trails, making eye contact with ancient geology, modern mountain bikers and a lot of squirrels. To the city and the river that runs alongside it, where the dialogue is often inaudible yet rich with history and wildlife (human and non-human, humane and inhumane). To my rescue cats Joni and Savva (aka “The Furls”) who are working through their past traumas and their current sharing issues in often very audible ways. To the many houseplants that have sprouted from my food scraps explaining with their silent gestures how increased biodiversity can appear with the simple intervention of a worm composter. To the sage and beautiful voices I can tap into with the push of a button (including regular doses of Jane Siberry). And of course to my human friends and family who help me live up to the daily mission of learning something new and/or doing something that scares me every day.
Everyone of these listening posts offers a different perspective on the same questions. I find this helpful. And there are more places I’m listening in on, that are easier to share.
For instance, I recently came upon a new podcast that I am appreciating: Penelope Mavor’s Earth Converse offers wonderful dialogue with ourselves and nature. It feels a bit funny to write those words separately – “ourselves” and “nature” – since of course we’re all nature. But that’s kind of the point of the podcast. You might enjoy it.
I’ve also been reading Robin Wall-Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass which I found after hearing her Emergence podcast episode, Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System. It’s rare that I listen to a podcast more than once, but this one I keep coming back to. You can read the text at that podcast link, but I strongly recommend hearing the words in the author’s voice. Giving things voice is the feedstock of listening.
I mentioned I’ve been listening to the woods and plants and such. This isn’t a new thing for me – early followers of my blog (bless all three of you...) might remember my post from a few years back, Me, Mycelium & Maitake. I recently read a book which I would have included in that post for sure had I known about it – The Mushroom at the End of the World, by Anna Tsing. These non-fiction stories take the reader on a journey into the human-matsutake mushroom relationship that changes the tone of everything happening around us. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.
Working
Meanwhile, I’ve also been working on a rather ambitious project. I gave myself permission over the last few months to pursue an idea trail, seeking to shift our global financial wherewithal towards regeneration, since right now we’re quite literally financing the degeneration of natural and social systems. This trail was part of a journey I’d been making noises about on the blog, specifically with ESG Data Is Like Less Wife-Beating, and A Letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. The theme was resonating loudly with a range of folks and I found myself mobilizing a team of volunteers to pitch for the prize offered by ConservationXLabs who launched a challenge to end mass extinction. Our team’s proposal, the RegenX Scenario Tool, has been short-listed among 20 finalists!
We make our final pitch later in October. Will we win the prize? Will our proposed tool change how money moves around the world? I don’t know. The funny thing is I believe what we have set out to do is conceptually impossible (shh! please don’t tell the judges I said that), but by attempting it we may push other things to be possible, such as investors realizing that we need to finance the restoration of ecosystems and social cohesion while halting all harmful industrial activities. I hope it is at least one seed in a forest of possibilities which realign the financial market’s relationship with living systems.
Pointing to seeds
Speaking of seeds, whenever I can, I have been pointing to seeds that I think hold potential. I am working on some creative writing and other blog posts behind the scenes, but the volunteer role of leading the RegenX team while keeping the lights on has meant I haven’t published a new piece since June [insert scream emoji here]. But I was sorting through some earlier posts and realized that a) I repeat myself a lot (a lot...) and b) every once in a while I say something unusual (okay, weird) and that’s me trying to point to those seeds.
I did that weird seed-pointing thing with this post, Two Dreams in Fragments. I mention this because people often ask me to share what I mean by “regenerative economy”. I get the feeling they would prefer a description of something they already recognize, drawn from the work I do with companies, but I believe what we’re striding towards is in many ways unrecognizable right now. Yet, as with seeds, I believe the needed elements of it are already around us and are ours to cultivate if we choose. And it will take some imagination and probably some weirdness.
The idea of seeds has been coming up again and again as people are recognizing the powerful role played by plants, especially trees and forests, for human and societal health, and my first ever humble blog post back in 2017, Acorn as innovation instructor, gets at this very point. The answer lies within and might not be immediately recognizable, yet it’s ready and waiting for the right conditions which are ours to create.
Call on those angels
On that note, I’ll let Jane Siberry bring us home…
We’re tryin’, we’re hopin’, we’re hurtin’, we’re lovin’
We’re cryin’, we’re callin’ ’cause we’re not sure how this goes
Yours in connectedness,
Lorraine
