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Learning is unnerving…It knows certainty to be an unrepentant and possibly temporary lapse in judgement//…Certainty, you could say, is the rent that knowledge pays for all the inner real estate it takes up. Learning, and the wonder that animates it, brings that rent down to something livable. The programmes of certainty are an assault...

For the Homeric Greeks, ‘kleos’, fame, was made of song. Vibrations in the air contained the measure and memory of a person’s life. To listen was therefore to learn what endures. I turned my ear to the trees, seeking ecological ‘kleos’. I found no heroes, no individual around whom history pivots. Instead, living memories...

Kintsugi serves as a powerful and dramatic metaphor of acceptance, resilience and renewal in a time of environmental, political and civil upheaval. Having kintsugi in our lives  encourages us to remember that we can get through more than we may feel we are able to, in what sometimes feels like a world of overwhelming...

Botanist, teacher, writer, and member of the Potawatomi nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer has a lot to say about ancient moss beings, who were the first plants to cover the Earth. ‘Mosses, I think, are like time made visible…The mosses remember that this is not the first time the glaciers have melted…’. Kimmerer points out...

We (humans) are a lot like other parts of nature in a lot of ways. But we’re also different in really critical ways that we have to understand, because if we don’t take an obligation associated with that difference, we will self terminate….I was talking with an Aboriginal friend Tyson Yunkaporta . He was saying that one...

Dear Mother Earth, Each morning when I wake up you offer me twenty-four brand new hours to cherish and enjoy your beauty. You gave birth to every miraculous form of life. Your children include the clear lake, the green pine, the pink cloud, the snowcapped mountain top, the fragrant forest, the white crane, the...

In the Hans Christian Anderson rendition of the tale of an imaginary challenged, we find a naked Emperor, whose greatly admired clothes have been so carefully crafted that we can see, feel and even smell, their materiality. But look again. It is merely a socially shared intellectual fabric, an imaginary. In fact the Emperor...

We need to master the art of asking questions which address the gravity of our situation, yet which also create longing, which evoke a deep and rich sense of the wonders we can still create, rather than shutting it down or putting it into a deep sleep of complacency.   Rob Hopkins: From What Is...

If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe.  But, as today’s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.  I count on Government leaders and all stakeholders to ensure COP26 is a success. (United Nations Secretary General speaking about IPCC report on climate change,  described as...

When we dare to face the cruel social and ecological realities we have been accustomed to, courage is born and powers within us are liberated to reimagine and even, perhaps one day, rebuild a world. (Joanna Macy, Entering the Bardo) Welcome to the July edition of Localising Leanganook. In this edition there’s information about:...