Ten of us gathered on the beach on a warm sunny day and began by searching for litter we could pick up. Great news: there was NONE! We then gathered to share stories of hope about the future. It was inspiring to hear the ways in which we are focusing on what is possible, what is emerging, rather than dwelling with what is falling away.

The host, Nancy shared this from a 1967 MLK sermon: “In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

And these quotes:

• From one perspective something is breaking, from another something is being born. “We are in a space between stories, called to focus on the new stories that are emerging”…(Charles Eisenstein)
• Seeing the interconnectedness of our living systems, the universe as “communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects.” (Thomas Berry)
• Life itself is a miracle; and such a miracle can only be fully expressed through the practice of living in right relationship to ourselves, our communities, the natural world, and the cosmos itself.
• Let’s re-establishing membership with the larger living system of which we are a part. We can do this by creating rituals, connecting across the globe and celebrating our relationship to one another and to all of life.
• The book Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawkin is filled with stories of hope and possibility. We discussed one idea in particular that focuses on the ways in which the kelp forests in oceans can become a source of food, feed, fertilizer, fiber and biofuels. These can be grown through a process called “Marine Permaculture”.