Mary’s words are a beautiful expression of prefigurative politics, the idea that we have to be the change that we want to see in the world, with application far beyond Christianity and formal religion generally.
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The Self as the First Permaculture Zone
A timely reminder from Ethyl Ruehman that self-care is not just practical, but an integral part of an ecological worldview.
My Church is Dying, and I’m OK with That
Like a patient with a terminal disease, knowing that we will die can cause our love for the world to broaden and deepen. Knowing that our relationships won’t last forever can cause us to cherish them even more. And what do we do for the people we love and will lose? We try to deepen our connections with them in the time we have left. We try to lessen some of their suffering and increase some of their joy. And we consider what will be our lasting mark on the world.
A Smaller Vision (Paul Kingsnorth)
“What if our challenge now is to build a series of smaller visions, focused less on the future and more on the present; less on the sky and more on the ground?”
Slow Work (Paul Kingsnorth)
It’s just slow work. Those of us who can should do what we can–building refuges, protecting what we can protect, telling the stories we can tell–without any expectation that it’s going to lead to a quick world-changing solution.
“Revolutions Are No Longer Radical”
“A true revolution, not a fast one, not a quick one, not a fashionable one, but a real fucking revolution, is at its core, spiritual.”
What kind of writing is this?
My preferred medium is the long-form creative non-fiction essay.
“Sit with it.” (Paul Kingsnorth)
“My years in green activism have shown me that false hope is worse than no hope and that ineffective action leads only to despair, particularly if frantic movement is a substitute for facing up to the realities of our limited powers.”
“The nature of this earth is change.” (Paul Kingsnorth)
“The nature of this earth is change. The nature of this earth is endings. The nature of this earth is extinction.”
Roy Scranton Defends Pessimism (Last Born in the Wilderness)
I think that, given the scope of the crisis that we are in and given the stakes, the dangers of reactive action are too great to just keep going, to just keep acting, to keep fighting. I think we need to have that moment. We need to slow down and have that moment where we really ask ourselves, “How do we want to move forward? What does it mean to be human? What kind of relationship do we want to have to the non-human world?”
Another End of the World is Possible 