Looking for the Tipping Point

"What we pay attention to grows, so I'm thinking  about how we grow what we are all imagining and creating into something large enough and solid enough that it becomes a tipping point." adrienne maree brown

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This is quoted quite early in the library book I'm reading. "All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis." edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson. Published by One World, Random House, 2020.

I'm reading a digital version from Libby, the library's on-line free edition. It's full of wonderful organization, and focuses on female voices. But I can't cut and paste, as I just tried to with the quote from Ms. brown. So I will just absorb what I can.

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 Would this be part of a tipping point?

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But I also want to learn through reading this book, what exactly would the new world order look like beyond that tipping point? When climate crisis has either dumped our culture on its ears, or there are actually armies of people working to change the wrongs humanity is doing to our planet. 

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 Just wanted to recommend this video, which was available through Prime. Another way of looking at our dear blue planet.

“What is needed to launch our societies along the humanistic path is some sort of evolutionary compass. Some way of guiding our efforts so that they are in tune with, aligned with, the general evolutionary processes of which we are a part… So rather than seek to dominate the planet, the quest becomes one of dynamic harmonization, of evolutionary consonance, in short, of syntony. The evolutionary compass, then, would be one that points our way toward syntonious pathways for future creation.”

Alexander Laszlo

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Syntony: the state of being normally responsive to and in harmony with the environment

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“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Story Telling, aka Myths

Excerpt from :

An Outlandish Generosity, On Dr. Martin Shaw's Mythteller Trilogy

 by Dougald Hine, Feb 10, 2026

"The environmental movement has long tended to frame things in terms of the vulnerability of the planet. This is, in an important sense, a misunderstanding of what is at stake. Yes, we are living in a time of extraordinary ecological destruction, a mass extinction, perhaps the sixth in our planet’s history. But there’s the thing: the planet has been here before. Even the rapid shift in climate we have set in motion may not be unprecedented from a geological perspective. A million years from now, the planet will almost certainly be here, alive, in some as yet unimaginable ecological configuration. This is not to excuse the epic of destruction we have unleashed, but to try to understand it better.

What is at stake is not the planet, as such, but a way of living within it that we have created as a species, parts of which go back tens of thousands of years, while other parts are barely a generation deep, though we already struggle to imagine living without them. Our sense of loss at all the shadowed beauty being driven out of existence, our guilt, our still-remaining desire to feel proud of our place as a species — all of this exists in tension with our attachment to what we know and our sense of powerlessness within the structures we have built. These forces play out within us and on a planetary scale.

Within the traditions on which he draws, (Dr. Martin) Shaw distinguishes two modes of story, the pastoral and the prophetic:

The pastoral offers a salve, an affirmation of old, shared values, a reiteration of the power of the herd. The prophetic almost always brings some conflict with it — it disarms, awakens, challenges, and deepens. It is far less to do with enchantment and much more to do with waking up.

It is this second kind of story we need right now, Shaw suggests: the kind that takes us out of who we think we are, that allows for the emergence of something new. Yet one of the characteristics of mythological thinking is that such pairings are not reduced to oppositions: instead, if we look carefully, we catch sight of the mutual dependence between seeming opposites.

The old stories most often end with a homecoming, a feast, a celebration of the union of opposites. By contrast, if we go any distance along the wild paths to which Shaw invites us, our own return to the everyday is likely to be lonelier. We come back to a reality in which a myth is something to be debunked. Our experience of the possibility of other ways of knowing is met with incomprehension or disinterest. One of the strengths of Dr. Martin Shaw's books is that they contain a great deal of experience of how to live between worlds — which is to say, between very different ways of understanding the world — without withdrawing, going crazy or burning out. That alone is worth the price of admission.

There remains, though, the larger question: what does it mean to appeal to the imagination, to the realm of fairytales, in a world of failing negotiations and melting icebergs?

One answer is that it provides a clue to the real nature of this crisis.

To understand the relationships between the inner and outer worlds that define the crisis, something like the subtlety of mythological thinking is required, its ability to dance with paradox and its openness to surprise. And perhaps, even now, there remains within the stories the capacity to make those relationships anew. For as Shaw says, that has always been the power of story: to ground us in such a way that a universe becomes a cosmos."

• A Branch from the Lightning Tree and Snowy Tower are available direct from Cista Mystica Press.

• Liturgies of the Wild is out now from Penguin.

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I have tried reading Dr. Shaw's books, and watched several of his videos (see YouTube) and find him most engaging and entertaining, but somewhat beyond my own daily sense of existence. I am not educated in mythology, alas. But story telling does mean a lot to a culture, having been humanity's original form of history making. So I would love for others to enjoy his writings and lectures, and tell me all about it!

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Sharing with Thankful Thursday

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You must cherish one another. You must work — we all must work — to make this world worthy of its children.

PABLO CASALS

Maybe the Angry Women - 7

 "It's traditional to make the phrase "peace on earth" part of your wishes or greetings at midwinter, but maybe these days we should be wishing for "peace with earth." Because the climate crisis is a war against nature, a one-sided war against the natural world that has already stolen places, species, lives, landscapes, patterns, glaciers, and stability itself from us, the grand us that is all life on earth."

By Rebecca Solnit in JAN 3, Five Facets of the Attack on Venezuela by the  Rogue Nation the US Has Become. Her newsletter is Meditations in an Emergency.

"san-francisco-ca-april-29-2018-rebecca-solnit-speaking-at-2018-bay-area-book-fest-at-a-panel-about-smart-and-modern-activism"

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Today's goddess: 

Tonantzin Guadalupe: Our Lady Who Searches.

The Lady of Guadalupe does not dwell within walls, but in the cracks. She does not remain upon altars; she moves instead along the edges of the world, where what is human fractures, where hope trembles like a candle on the verge of going out. She is the woman with gentle hands, deep eyes, and skin the color of the earth. She walks in search of her sons and daughters, especially those who are lost, those who have wandered into the ruins of violence, into the exile of pain.

Guadalupe is a searching mother. She does not wait seated—she walks. She crosses hidden graves, kisses ancient tears, gathers names that no one speaks anymore. Where the world abandons, she remains. Where contempt erases, she rewrites with dignity. She finds the remnants of spiritual ruin—shards of faith, fragments of identity, splinters and bones—and breathes new life into them. She restores their upright posture, their pulse, their right to exist without shame.

Our Lady, Tonantzin Guadalupe, is the secret weaving that unites lands beyond the oceans. The ancient thread that stitches together continents, memories, sorrows, languages, peoples, wounds. She touches desert sands and deep waters alike; she dwells in maize as well as in incense. She prays with the lips of a grandmother and cries out with the throat of a searching mother. She does not divide beliefs—she moves through them. She does not argue doctrines—she transcends them.

She lives in the hands that work the comal, in the clay transformed into vessels, in the healing plants, in awkward prayers, in broken songs, in the righteous anger that rises against injustice. She inhabits the humble kitchens where life is nourished, the hospitals where both life and death are kept vigil. She dwells in the grandmothers who pray the rosary as one counts the heartbeats of a lineage, so they will not be lost.

She is not confined within a temple: she is greater than any temple. No wall can contain her, no doctrine can possess her, no border can limit her. Guadalupe swims in the waters of human sorrow, flies over wounded territories, dances in the celebrations where the people resist, walks beside those who no longer have the strength to walk alone.

She is not only a promise of heaven: she is comfort made flesh on earth.

And when someone—broken, weary, lost—believes they have vanished forever, she appears—not always in dazzling form, sometimes in the form of another being, a gesture, a piece of bread, a single word—and she gathers the remnants and embraces them. And where there once seemed to be only dust, she sows again a name, a face, a destiny.

Guadalupe does not reign from above: she accompanies from below. She does not conquer—she rescues. That is why she remains alive. That is why she walks. That is why she searches. That is why she never stands still.

She is the womb that never grows weary of birthing the world anew.

Christian Ortíz.

Curanderismo Tradicional.

Artwork by Christian Faltis

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I have not forgotten those in The Ukraine nor other battlefields where innocent lives are targeted.

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On January 20, 2026, we’re walking out of work, school, and everywhere else – because a Free America begins the moment we stop cooperating with fascism.

When women and feminists pull our labor, our money, and our consent, we reveal the truth: we can shut this country down until we get the freedom and dignity we’re owed. That’s our leverage. That’s our power.

This date is one year since tRump took office for the second term and pardoned all the January 6 insurrectionists.

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May you embrace this day, not just as any old day, but as this day. Your day. Held in trust by you, in a singular place, called now.

Carrie Newcomer

Art and health

 

One of my favorite artists, Andy Goldsworthy, works in a gallery in England, to bring nature into an experience of his art. Thanks Jenny at Salt & Light for sharing on her blog where she visited the gallery! 

Questions I filled out for my second visit to the Messina Cancer Center...getting my blood checked out. All is ok for now, no cancer, they reported.

The staff was very friendly. I guess I was most impressed how it felt to be around people with cancer again...the upbeat humor as well as a bit of stress. But mainly a 'caring for each other' attitude.

I had volunteered in the Art Therapy program at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa FL 25 years ago. Being around people who are coping with cancer reminded me of how we all face our problems. 

These were real issues, not the kind created by psychopaths in politics. Of course many people have real issues as a result of the stupidity in politics. I woke up early the other day because I thought of how I'd gladly intervene if I saw ICE acting upon any of the people around me. I'm someone who could easily be interference for the safety of others, without doing much but taking videos or standing in the way. Nobody depends upon me to provide food or shelter for others, while innocent people are being taken away from their families. 

Besides, hopefully my standing up for what is right will be another brick in the resistance. However, one doesn't go back to sleep after having these thoughts.

Seen at the check-in counter at Messina Cancer Center.

My job this week is to throw away all those old journals. Who did I think I was? Someone with a life worth reading about by some descendants or another? Pshaw! Let's be realistic!

BUT, I took many photos of the pages I'd written which reflected my life history...just as a summary. Then I woke up today remembering selling my trailer to my girl friend whose husband was going to build their home on their land...and going for 3 months on a cross country trip with my older two sons. Now just when did that happen? My oldest son is a good historian, though he was just 11 at the time.

I haven't found that in my journals yet! 

It was quite a snazzy 70s trailer, with sunken living room floor covered in orange shag carpeting. Pretty sure the kitchen appliances were all avocado. And a skylight over the dining area next to the sliding glass door to nowhere. I hope Stephanie Lynn Thornton (who later divorced) enjoyed it while they built their house.

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“Often, the news of the climate crisis paralyzes us with a succession of bad news that makes us feel hopeless imagining everything we’re bound to lose. Push aside that worry for a moment by listing everything that no impending disasters could take away, like the color blue, your fondest memories, or the affectionate protectiveness between parent and child of many species, including our own.”

 

Jessica Jacobs and Nickole Brown, from their book WRITE it! 100 Poetry Prompts To Inspire

Thanks Katharine Beckett Winship on Substack for the above quote. I no longer am a paying member, but somehow she emailed me one of her posts...and thus I read a bit about her love of the rivers.

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The March for Removing Fossil Fuels

 "[This] march is piercingly clear about what needs to be done to actually solve climate," said Jean Su, energy justice director with the Center for Biological Diversity and one of the march organizers. "It's actually seeking the end of fossil fuels."

Protesters are calling on Biden to stop federal approvals of new fossil fuel projects, phase out oil and gas drilling on public lands, and declare climate change a national emergency. They want the U.S. to halt oil and gas exports, and transition to a reliance on renewable energy.

Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas remains the primary driver of global warming.

Setting the stage for "Climate Ambition Summit"

Organizers hoped Sunday's march would be the biggest climate protest in the U.S. since the 2019 strike, which brought tens of thousands of people into the streets in Manhattan while millions more marched worldwide.

The march comes after a summer marked by extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, from historic heat waves in the U.S., Europe and Asia, to the deadly wildfire in Maui and catastrophic flooding from Brazil to China to Libya.

And it comes just days before a "Climate Ambition Summit" hosted by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, aimed at pressuring world leaders to commit to more rapid emissions cuts. Guterres has said only countries that present credible new plans – including the phase-out of fossil fuels – will be invited to participate. Biden does not plan to attend.

Scientists say the world needs to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. To meet that goal, the U.N. says emissions must fall 43 percent by 2030, compared with 2019 levels, and eventually reach "net-zero" by 2050 – which means contributing no new greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

In a report this month, the U.N. found countries are falling far short of meeting their existing climate targets, and warned there is a "rapidly narrowing window" in which to act.

Activists hope the summit will shine a spotlight on the role of fossil fuels, Su said.

"This is a top down – from the U.N. – pressure point, and it's being met with grassroots pressure from the bottom up in the United States," she said.

Challenging Biden as 'climate president'

Organizers say they're especially disappointed Biden hasn't kept a campaign promise to halt new drilling on federal lands. The administration has allowed oil and gas projects to move forward, notably the Willow project, a major oil development in Alaska, and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which will carry natural gas from West Virginia.

"I think the reality now is that Biden hasn't been the climate president that he had promised," said Alice Hu, senior climate campaigner at New York Communities for Change.

In a statement, the White House defended Biden's climate record, pointing to last year's Inflation Reduction Act, which directs hundreds of billions of dollars toward incentives for renewable energy and other low-carbon technologies.

"President Biden has treated climate change as an emergency – the existential threat of our time – since day one," a White House spokesperson said.

The administration has also designated millions of acres of public lands off-limits to oil and gas development, and recently canceled contentious oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But Hu says the administration must do more. She points out the U.S. remains one of the world's largest oil and gas producers. And she argues Biden is at risk of alienating younger voters.

"Does he want to be a candidate that enjoys high youth turnout in key swing states, or does he want to be a candidate that is not enjoying that?" Hu said.

'It's about our future'

Mancini agrees. Now a junior in high school, she's been organizing school strikes with the youth climate group Fridays for Future NYC since her freshman year. But she says she never got as much interest in her work from other students as when news of the Willow project approval went viral on TikTok.

"The Willow Project is something that Biden approved, and a lot of people in my generation know Biden approved it," Mancini said.

"That betrayal was so stark in that moment," said Keanu Arpels-Josiah, 18, also of Fridays for Future NYC.

Arpels-Josiah said he volunteered for the 2020 Biden campaign while still in middle school, because he believed Biden would be a "climate president." Now, he's marching to pressure that president.

In the days before the march, Arpels-Josiah has been busy. He traveled to Washington, D.C., for a rally on the Capitol steps, and met with U.N. officials. Balancing his senior year of high school and climate organizing is a challenge. He's behind on homework and stressed about when it will all get done. But, he said, he doesn't feel like he has a choice.

SOURCE:
Excerpts from:

NPR Thousands march in New York to demand that Biden "end fossil fuels"

ALSO THIS MORNING ON NPR...

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres will host a new event, the Climate Ambition Summit, this week. He asked countries to come with credible commitments to get on track to slash greenhouse gas emissions. NPR’s Rachel Waldholz tells Up First that we've already "locked in" on a certain amount of warming, but we need to cut global emissions to zero to avoid things getting worse, and we're not currently on track to reach those targets.

AND...

Climate change is a top issue for young voters but lags behind other issues, according to polls. Here's why environmental activists think this is changing.

When the cameras focus elsewhere

"Kaniela Ing, the national director of the Green New Deal Network, seventh-generation Native Hawaiian... (speaks) ...from Maui."

We've been bemoaning the lack of information on the ongoing work following a climate crisis event. Here're portions of an interview "We're Living the Climate Emergency," by "Democracy Now!" interviewer, Amy Goodman from Aug. 11, 2023.

"We’re a tropical island here on Maui. We’re not supposed to have wildfires. This came as a shock to everyone. There’s not enough firefighters here. We can’t ship them over from the next state. We’re an island. So, everyone right now is feeling a bit overwhelmed. As it occurred, we saw community members jumping into the ocean with nowhere else to go, just floating and watching their homes being reduced into ashes. The death toll went from six to 36 all of a sudden, and there are still firefighters, Red Cross members out there searching for our loved ones. It was — it was apocalyptic. The scene was something that, you know, you would only see in a movie. But the reality is, like, this is becoming quite the norm now, and it will become more so in the future.

Lahaina Town is actually — it’s often characterized as a tourist town, but the people who live there — which should be the focus — tend to be some of the most rooted Native Hawaiians that I’ve ever met. They’re the types of — their families, from generations ago, created aquaculture, which, like, the West is only kind of learning about now. "

Early photo captioned, "Brush fires destroy 7 homes in Lahaina"

 

"AMY GOODMAN: You refer to the raging wildfires as a result of colonial greed. Explain.

 

KANIELA ING: Yeah. So there’s two facets to this. First is climate change. The National Weather Service says the cause of this fire was a downed power line, and the spread because of hurricane-force winds. And the spread was caused by dry vegetation and low humidity. Those are all functions of climate change. This isn’t disputable. This isn’t political. It, unfortunately, has become politicized, but it’s a matter of fact. Climate pollution, corporate polluters that set a blanket of pollution in the air that is overheating our planet contributed — caused the conditions that led to this fire.

In addition, there is mismanagement of land. The original “Big Five” oligarchy in Hawaii, missionary families that took over our economy and government, they continue on today as some of our largest political donors and landowners and corporations. They’ve been grabbing land and diverting water away from this area for a very long time now, for generations. And Lahaina was actually a wetland. You could take a — like, Waiola Church, you could have boats circulating the church back in the day. But, you know, because they needed water for their corporate ventures, like golf courses and hotels and monocropping, that has ended. So the natural form of Lahaina would have never caught on fire. These disasters are anything but natural.

 

So, yes, colonial greed and the fact that they caused the pollution that warmed our planet and set hurricanes like this to become the norm, and the gross mismanagement of our land and water, which the Green New Deal actually is about returning both — you know, both mitigating climate change, building resilience, but also returning the stewardship of land and water to the people.

 AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the April survey of homeless people, unhoused people? I think it was something like 704 unhoused people in Maui County, among them 244 suffering from mental health disabilities. The unhoused crisis among Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and what do you know about Native Hawaiians who were unhoused and how the wildfires have affected them?

KANIELA ING: Yeah. I think there’s a certain perception of Native Hawaiians who are unsheltered that’s not — that does not fit with reality. Some of the unsheltered Hawaiian communities that continue today were occupations of land that was getting seized. And they were like, “Look, we don’t want to cooperate with this, with this new extractive economy that y’all created, so we’re going to live by ourselves in our own community on this beach. We’re going to govern ourselves.” And they’re quite organized, and they’re living in a way that’s subsistent and in harmony with nature. Now, it’s not to be glamorized. A lot of these folks face some really dire conditions not being a part of this capitalist system. But a lot of them are doing it based on really strong and sensible beliefs.

Now, when a climate crisis hits, when a disaster hits, it’s going to impact these people first and worst, no doubt. And we need to make sure that both relief and recovery efforts, in the longer term, are prioritizing the low-income and Indigenous people that are some — some are still unaccounted for. Some don’t even have IDs. And, you know, they need to be front of mind with everything we do, from, you know, day zero, when the disaster breaks, to years out, when we’re recovering.

" ...as we’re speaking, there’s people that still haven’t found their loved ones. A lot of the friends I grew up with — like, I come from a lower-income neighborhood — they’re firefighters. I ran into one on the way here, and I’m just like, “Hey, y’all are doing a great job.” And he was just sweating and, like, started crying and, you know, barely — looked like he hasn’t slept in days.

Hotels are letting residents in, without cost, to sleep. Multiple businesses are just letting people drop off goods, and they’re shipping it three to four times a day. They’re leaving their doors open 24 hours. So, there is that sense of, you know, this is an island; we’re all in this together. And that sense of mutual aid and solidarity is really carrying us through, and it’s been quite remarkable to witness. But, you know, don’t want to leave you with some toxic positivity either. Like, these are hard times, and unless we take urgent action now, it’ll only get worse. 

"...Unfortunately, the groups that are best poised to deploy direct aid, because of their institutional connections, are also the most likely to enable disaster capitalists from exploiting the situation. So, we need to create — we need to understand that, you know, as we’re, like, trying — as people want to help, that they’re resourcing groups that have an eye towards community organizations, to the organizers that will actually be there once the cameras leave, and will be rebuilding from the ground up over the course of the long run. 

",,,the banyan tree is so iconic. There’s like 16 trunks. It’s the largest in the United States. It just turned 150 years old in April. And the images of it being completely toasted is heartbreaking. Now, I have hope, because trees have deep roots, especially of that age, that it will continue on. And, you know, that’s the vision in my mind, right? Like, as we rebuild as a community, as we realize the vision of a Green New Deal nationally and globally, the banyan tree also regrows its leaves and is a positive symbol for what’s to come. 

Before the fire

After the fire

Charred Banyon Tree