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Jennifer Harvey Sallin's avatar

Thank you Adam for this beautiful writing. We've shared it on our project I Heart Earth (on facebook @iheartearthmeditations), with the following text, in the spirit of our current exploration and meditation theme "rewilding ourselves & the earth":

Wild authenticity is dynamic. It is in an open state of learning, acknowledging and embracing our inconsistencies in a creative dynamic that propels us toward the future we want to live in.

Domesticated authenticity is static. It uses consistency as a proxy, and keeps us from openly and creatively using our inconsistencies and paradoxes as a fuel for learning and growth.

In rewilding ourselves, we also rewild our concepts about life, meaning and relationships. This means we rewild our interactions with others as well, taking our conversations out of the known and static, into the unknown, creative and dynamic, so that we can imagine and generate new possibilities for our shared future.

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Michael den Haan's avatar

There are so many threads in this piece that I want to follow and pull. I need to sit with it for a while. For now, the link with religious narratives is a powerful reminder for me. I began reflecting on my own experiences within a religious community which held strongly to a narrative framework of forgiveness, redemption, a ‘darkness’ within and the ‘light’ we can all share. This framework was a foundational bond, of sorts, and held people together even through rigorous disagreement. While there were still limitations to framework and its bond (partly why I had to leave), it was a lesson I will never forget. It is also a teaching I did not, until now, connect with climate conversations. I now wonder how much more is possible. How better can I engage in climate conversations by finding that place of common ground/trust/moral foundation first? And the language of forgiveness is also one I’m familiar with, even if I have not ensured the practice is turned onto me as much as I need to turn it on to others. Again, a teaching from my long-ago community (and my current community) that I can move into this space. Reminds me that these conversations; about climate, about our future, about shared connections, are sacred, spiritual even.

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