Animals in the Room – Melanie Challenger

This week is the beginning of a new biweekly rhythm to our podcast, which we’re marking with a story all about fermentation: a practice that invites us to participate in the slow, and enjoy what can emerge from it. Fermentation revivalist Sandor Ellix Katz invites us to bring ancient traditions of pickling, aging, and brewing back into our kitchens as a way to tune in to what's growing near us throughout the seasons. After listening, check out the online version of this story, which features recipes to get you started. Read the essay. Discover our sixth print edition, Seasons.

This conversation brings together four practitioners from Sufi, Christian, and Buddhist traditions to examine how the values of spiritual ecology are embedded within their different faiths. Drawing upon the themes within Remembering Earth, the new book by Emergence founding editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, they explore how restoring embodied practices of ecological reverence can help us cultivate a space where divinity becomes expansive.Read the transcriptDiscover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual EcologyImage Credit: Amy Woodward / Connected Archives

We conclude our Remembering Earth summer practice series with this episode on prayer. No matter what form it takes, prayer is our own way of speaking with the divine. It reveals the unique note of offering we each hold in our hearts, and is ultimately a space where we can be in communion. Working with words, silence, and the love within our hearts, these practices can be easily integrated into everyday life, bringing praise for the Earth into our most basic actions.Discover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology

When we recognize each form of creation as its own cycle of time, the illusion of linearity is laid bare and we can again begin to see how the Earth and everything in it is made of countless interlocking relationships. This episode of our Remembering Earth series invites you to walk with the awareness of cycles rooted in place, tread the same path over a full cycle of seasons, and regularly offer your company to a tree, deepening into time as a form of kinship. Discover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology

As much as we have engulfed the Earth in the noise of modern life, She is always singing beneath the din of our human world. If we place our attention there, we can begin to uncover the ancient ties of kinship that were woven into us through song and sound over millennia. Building on the breath and heart practices from the last two weeks, this episode from our Remembering Earth summer practice series invites you to open your ears to the sound of water, wind, and the dawn chorus of birds. Discover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology

Throughout the ages, many cultures have understood the importance of walking as a vehicle of transformation. Pilgrims journey in a state of reflection and prayer, often experiencing a profound sense of embodied devotion. This episode of our Remembering Earth practice series engages you in the awareness of breath and love as you walk. One doesn’t need to travel across vast lands to tune in to the ancient rhythm of the Earth. All that is needed is an intentionality as we place one foot in front of the other, conscious of what we step upon. Discover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology

The mystics say we have a physical heart and a spiritual heart, the latter being a center of energy that can be accessed in many ways. While mysterious, the love that flows through the spiritual heart can be felt in our physical hearts, for both are spaces where inner meets outer. Part of our Remembering Earth practice series, this episode offers three practices that immerse you in the presence of love within your own heart, awakening you to a deeper love for the Earth. Discover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology

Our series of Remembering Earth audio practices begins with an episode all about breath. We share breath with plants, trees, oceans, and animals. It is the great connector, bringing us into a cycle of reciprocity with the more-than-human world. Across spiritual traditions, breath practices are often seen as a technology that bridges spirit and matter, helping us move beyond the mind into a more porous state of being. In three practices that build upon one another—Awareness of the Moment, Breathing from Our Essence, and Shared Breath—attend to one of our most simple exchanges with the Earth. Discover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology.

When we are broken open by grief and love at the immense loss we are witnessing, the memory of a primordial bond with the Earth can awaken within our heart. Listen to this excerpt from Remembering Earth, a new book by Emergence founder and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, which explores how our moment of ecological and cultural crisis serves as a crucible for collective transformation.Read “Chapter One: A Primordial Covenant of Relationship” Discover Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology Credit © Yael Martinez / Magnum Photos

How might our decision-making systems work differently if they were adapted to receive input from the more-than-human world? In this archive story, writer and ethicist Melanie Challenger examines the staggering expressive capacities of Earth's creatures, from the subtle vocalizations of turtles to the freckling of Humboldt squid. She urges us to act less as intermediaries and more as deep listeners to the voices around us. Pushing the idea further, she asks how we can expand our democratic processes to make room for the lives and interests of our animal kin.Read the essay. Photo by Annie Marie Musselman