Introduction | Scroll down to access featured content
It may seem counterintuitive to call our present era the Century of Awakening. The outward signs seem to suggest otherwise. I won’t enumerate the challenges we face. You know in your heart that the situation is difficult and the path ahead unclear. And whether you have been in lockdown or on the front lines this past year, the worry you feel for our children, and their children, is the same.
But awakening begins precisely where we are. Not in some time or place free from discomfort or fear. Awakening begins when we stop and sense deeply our own tender heart and the pain we feel for the world’s beauty and brokenness. In these moments, it is helpful to step outside, away from screens and technology. It helps to look at the sky, feel the wind, touch a spring flower.
Here in the northeast US, the tree outside my door that looked bleak and brittle just a week ago is suddenly sprouting thousands of tiny buds. The smiling crocuses miraculously arrive. By connecting even for a moment with this profound mystery of Return, I feel lighter and more hopeful.
In this edition, we are not offering solutions to our knottiest global concerns. We are sharing signs of freshness and hope. We embrace a renewed opportunity and a choice: to honor and protect the sacred, or ignore and betray it. What must we honor? All of it. People, animals, plants, minerals, air, waters, soils, forests, oceans, pollinators, our Commons, communities and rituals. Stories, art, music…
Even technology – or especially technology – must be put to sacred use. Cyberspace, artificial intelligence, robots and drones, bio-engineering…if we do not hold these technologies sacred, as our ancestors once held fire sacred, these things will consume us.
