Council Circle is a communication tool used in many Indigenous communities throughout the world. It encourages a kind of heartfelt expression and authentic listening that fosters compassion and understanding. For this reason, Council Circle has become an integral part of conflict resolution and restorative justice processes.

“Today, we can think of animism as a set of core values. It’s not a prescribed set of practices, but more of a general philosophical stance on life. That stance could be framed as a way of moving through the world that foregrounds relationships. It’s a way of saying that human beings are just one kind of person. There are many other kinds of people. These people are trees, rivers, mountains, deities, stars, the earth as deity, our ancestors, nature spirits, viruses, etc.”

“Writing allows me to reclaim my family’s narrative as well as my personal power. Writing my memoir gave me the ability to lasso our story. My parents experienced trauma, but they were also resilient. By writing their story, I was able to tap into that wisdom and that resilience, and reclaim that strength as my own.”

”Much of my work is about teaching people how to open up to that source of resiliency, energy, and love. We can feel really helpless and alone and just thrown out into the brutality of the world. And I just don’t think that’s the whole truth of things. I believe there are beings ready to support us and to love us if we just open our minds to that.”

”I’m not saying we should bypass our sadness, but to also allow ourselves to have more. That’s what I consider to be wholeheartedness. We are in a time of grief, of immense loss of everything we thought we knew. How we move through our grief and wake up with our grief into this life at this moment, to me is everything.”

I asked Baber if her work in East Garfield Park helps her stay optimistic about the future. There are days where she feels deeply depressed about what’s happening to the environment and to people of color in American society, she says. “But then I ask myself, what impact can I have? What can I do in the space that I control?”

It is gratifying to be writing again and exploring the environmental crisis so deeply. Ironically, the quest has brought me full circle. I’m realizing once again how profoundly connected we are to all sentient beings; how much I cherish and need the rocks and rivers and grasslands and mountains; how at the end of the day the love we can manifest and put into action is everything.

This weekend I attended an incredible talk by David Loy hosted by the Zen Center of New York City. Loy is the author of EcoDharma, a book that explores the relationship between the Buddhist Path and the ecological crisis. Loy argues that the climate crisis is perhaps the greatest challenge Buddhism has ever faced.

This is fifteen-year-old Autumn Peltier. You may know her already. She is the Chief Water Commissioner of the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario. Peltier assumed her role as a clean water advocate at age eight, and by thirteen addressed the UN General Assembly.

Last November I attended a public conversation between Naomi Klein and Arundhati Roy at the Cooper Union Hall in New York City. Most people remember Roy for her ficiton. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her acclaimed novel THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS.

We have all heard the saying, "Think globally and act locally." And up until recently, this slogan has seemed sensible. But today, environmentalist Dr. Jane Goodall suggests we rethink or even reverse that phrase as we advocate for the natural world.

We simply lack imagination and vision and we’re allowing pragmatism to weigh down our natural human ingenuity.

After Toni Morrison's death last year, I read through most of these essays in a matter of days. But the collection is probably best savored over time. It was no surprise to discover that this luminary writer also has a towering intellect and the scope of this book is rather broad.

When it comes to patriarchy and religion, Buddhism hasn’t faired much better than the rest. The historical Buddha was totally inclusive when it came to gender and rather explicit about it. In addition, the Nalanda monastery in India is considered to be the first co-ed university in the world. This ancient Buddhist center for higher learning was established in the Fifth century AD and allowed women to study as freely as men.