A Sneak Peek into Deep Times Journal

By Paula Hendrick

As one of the Network Weavers for Work That Reconnects Network, I get a sneak peek at upcoming issues of Deep Times. “Living into the Great Unraveling” is the theme of the current (August) issue. I’d like to share with you a few things that struck me, in hopes that you will also read and reflect on this evocative and practical issue. 

I loved WTR facilitator Rebekah Hart’s tribute to Joanna Macy, The Gift of Belonging. Here’s what often happens for her during a workshop:

[S]uddenly the very action of collectively going towards what we most fear – of naming our pain, anxiety, anger, or despair about the social and ecological crises we face – becomes a homecoming…there is a feeling of warmth and of friendliness that connects me to everyone in the room, even with those who are barely more than “strangers”. My sense of time expands and shifts. My fear abates, and I feel the force of life as a great intelligence flowing through us, creating and sustaining us…. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re alive and we’re courageous and we know we’re not alone.

What a profound gift for our time, revealed at the heart of the Work That Reconnects.

Carolyn Treadway experiments with new Open Sentences, based on the four wise steps for Deep Adaptation to climate collapse: Resilience, Relinquishment, Restoration, and Reconciliation. These Open Sentences can move us toward deep and grounded presence and interconnection. 

Other articles exploring “Living into the Great Unraveling” include As the Climate Collapses, We Ask: “How Then Shall We Live? (Dahr Jamail and Barbara Cecil) and Deep Adaptation: from the end of “normal” to solidarity (Silvia Di Blasio).

Holding a Council Of All Beings, Behind Bars by Jo Bauen has me mulling the depth of the brilliant Council of All Beings ritual.

Really, the best way to enter into Deep Times is at the beginning, with editor Molly Brown’s Welcome. You can scan the rich Table of Contents, and follow your heart. On the other hand, good, old-fashioned front-to-back offers a journey through the Spiral, so you can’t go wrong that way either!