Episode Transcript:

0:00:12 - Dori

Welcome to Tree Speech, a podcast that strives to hear the forest through the trees. I'm Dori Robinson.

0:00:20 - Jonathan

And I'm Jonathan Zautner. Join us as we seek fresh perspectives and deeper understandings, illuminating the profound impact of trees on our lives and the planet we call home.

0:00:32 - Dori

Through our conversations on race, religion and resources, we engage with an array of voices, all sharing profound connections to the majestic trees that shape our world, and we just love trees. Thanks for joining us, and let's begin today's episode.

0:01:00 - Jonathan

Hello Dori. It's been quite a week. How are you doing today?

0:01:03 - Dori

Hey, jonathan, I am doing all right. It has indeed been a challenging week. How about you?

0:01:12 - Jonathan

The same. We're both feeling worried. There's a lot of uncertainty, there's grief. Obviously, the loss of something has happened in this country, the United States, with last week's election, and I think we're worried about each other. We're worried about the environment and nature and trying to wrap our heads around what happened and how we move forward.

0:01:37 - Dori

Exactly, we're trying to figure out what now with the given landscape, both figuratively and literally.

0:01:47 - Jonathan

And I think that's going to take some time. So we should all take the time that we need at this moment a little self-care, a little care for one another and for our environment and world and we'll be ready to move forward soon. I will say that I was so thankful that we have this interview to put out. We had recorded this interview with John Philip Newell before the election and it couldn't come at a better time.

0:02:15 - Dori

I completely agree. John Philip Newell, who we had the joy of interviewing before for his book Sacred Earth, sacred Soul and that episode is Sacred Earth with John Philip Newell is our first return guest, which is very special, and he himself is just filled with so much wisdom, has such a sweet, kind, calming presence and such a generous spirit. I'm really excited to share this with one another and with our listeners.

0:02:50 - Jonathan

I am too. I think it was healing, it was a balm for this time and it lays the groundwork for a path forward. So a little bit about today's guest. John Philip Newell is an internationally acclaimed teacher, speaker and author of several books, including his latest book, which we both read, entitled the Great Search, and this new book examines the lives of several prophetic figures whose work and lives showed that to live in relation to what is deepest in us is to live in relation to the ground from which we and all things have come.

0:03:29 - Dori

Which is so poetic and intellectual and really speaks to how John Philip Newell combines teachings, spiritual awareness as well as his political and ecological concerns. His writings, including 15 books, have been translated into seven languages. In 2016, he began the School of Earth and Soul and teaches regularly in the United States and Canada, as well as leading international pilgrimage weeks on Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland. We think his wisdom really speaks to what we need right at this moment, so let's listen to his words and we hope you get out of them as much as we did. Well, John Philip, thank you so much for joining us today. Last time I saw you, we were actually at your event an evening with John Philip Newell, and we were at my home on Cape Cod, and now you're in a completely different home. Can?

0:04:45 - John Philip

you tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so recently my wife and I have moved from Edinburgh up to the Fyndhorn Eco Village, and Fyndhorn was originally a little fishing village up on the Moray coastline. About 60 years ago an eco-spiritual community began here. So they were way ahead of the game in many ways with their earth consciousness and they had a very strong sense that consciousness is not just something related to human beings, it's related to everything in the universe. And they were slightly seen as a lunatic fringe because they didn't think anything of speaking to their cabbages and so on to encourage them in the gardens. And the proof was in the pudding because the cabbages were really healthy and really big. So that was sort of how they were known broadly.

But in fact it's been a lovely combination over the years of sort of a bit of good hippie energy and some sort of state ofof-the-art technological developments here. So we have windmills that support our community and a lot of research going into solar and wastewater treatment without chemicals and so on. But our little eco-house sits just on the edge of a pine forest, so I think it's so wonderful on the tree speech that I'm sitting gazing out at these pine trees and then just beyond them is the sea and about 60 miles of white, open, white sand, so it's a really beautiful place to be. We feel surrounded by people who, similarly, are committed to being in relationship with Earth in sustainable, true and reverent ways, surrounded by a community that is very supportive and believes in what I'm trying to do.

0:07:06 - Dori

That sounds so beautiful and so intentional and, like you said, a good place to be at this point in your journey. When we last spoke, you were on our podcast our first repeat guest, which we're really thrilled to have you and we spoke to you then because you wrote a book Sacred Earth, sacred Soul a book of Celtic wisdom for reawakening to what our soul knew. Now you have a wonderful and insightful new book titled the Great Search. Can you tell me what inspired you to write this new book and how the two are linked?

0:07:43 - John Philip

Yeah, yeah, for those with eyes to see, there's a very deep continuity between the books, even though in Sacred Earth, sacred Soul, I was drawing very specifically from a Celtic Christian lineage from the second century right through to today and looking especially at Celtic wisdom in relation to sacredness of earth and the sacredness that is at the heart of every human being. And in this book I'm drawing from teachers from many, many of the great spiritual traditions, and the commonality between all these great teachers is their belief in earth, sacredness and the divinity at the heart of every human being. So there's great continuity. And you know, the Celtic lineage is sort of my home address, as it were. It's where I draw most deeply and have drawn inspiration and vision over the years. And now to find such resonating themes in great teachers, great prophetic teachers, from a whole variety of contexts, in different nations, different centuries, has felt well. I have felt very nurtured in the writing of this book because you know I'm receiving from such great teachers. So my you know my prayer is that well, if I've been blessed in the preparation of the book, then maybe this book will be a blessing for others as well, and the actual occasion for beginning to envisage this book.

For many years now I've been aware of a type of diaspora throughout the world, of people who have left their religious homeland. In a sense They've left the four walls of religious institutions, and I've been aware that they're in a type of religious exile almost, and I have felt for many years now it's really important to ask well, why are they not within the four walls, and what are they yearning for? And not just what were they not getting from their religious tradition, but much more deeply paying attention to? Let's pay attention to the yearnings, and someone that I quote very early in the book was Simone Weil, the young Jewish philosopher who managed to escape Paris just before the Nazi occupation of her homeland but then died tragically before the end of the war. But Simone uses a phrase in one of her writings that's meant a lot to me, and she speaks of the efficacy of desire. The efficacy of desire and by that she means that getting in touch with the deepest stirrings and longings of our soul is efficacious, that is, trying to allow these deep yearnings of soul to come up into greater consciousness, and then from greater consciousness we can more readily embody these yearnings and we can more readily serve a sort of coming about of what the soul is longing for. So there was that, and I felt it's really important to try to nurture these yearnings for Earth and to come back into true relationship with our depths by accessing great teachers from a whole variety of traditions, and so that's the big story and that's really the focus of the book.

But I'd like also to point to the way in which my story, the little story within the big story, how that converges, because in 2018, during a pilgrimage week on Iona, when I was with my dear Rabbi, nachum Ward-Lowe, I realized I needed to relinquish my ordination as a minister of the church, because there was such a disconnect between what I'm trying to teach, what I'm trying to write, and the basic doctrinal, creedal formulations of Christianity, especially from the fourth century, when Christianity got into bed with empire. And I mean for many years I've been saying we need to ask questions about what was happening in the fourth century and how religion, christianity in particular, was used by empire to really sanction whatever empire wanted to do, either in relation to dominating other nations or in terms of using earth's resources in whatever way was convenient to empire, and the church basically blessed the wars of empire and bless the use of power over the powerless. Often In 2018, when I made that decision and that was a very clear decision within my own conscience I realized, my goodness, I'm really with those in exile now. I mean, I had, of course, been in very close relationship and dialogue and so on with those in the diaspora, but there was this realization that that's where I stand now. I'm sort of much more in the wilderness than I am in the temple, as it were.

I am in the temple, as it were, and I've seen, maybe more clearly than I ever have before, that within our Judeo-Christian inheritance there is this very powerful tension between the wilderness and the temple, or between the prophetic and the priestly, prophetic and the priestly, and so I'm seeing that I'm wanting very much to serve the prophetic voice which is calling for change, and the prophet is sometimes a very uncomfortable person to be around. So I realize that sometimes, when I'm calling for change within my religious household of background, that that's often a hard voice for some people to hear, but I also believe that that tension of relationship really does exist and the prophetic voice is of value of true value, I think only if it can speak from a place of deep love. So, yeah, I'm being critical of some of the limitations and so on of religion as we've known it, but I'm trying to speak with love for my family, you know, for my family of origin, which in a sense, is in the temple. So that's how the big story and the little story converge in me.

0:15:39 - Dori

Thank you for sharing that story about your rabbi had a profound effect on me and I spoke to Jonathan about it at length because it resonated with me, because sometimes language fails us when you know, the words themselves fail or don't exactly match what our heart wants to say, and we were both so moved by the fact that you were finding in this wilderness, you're finding language within the earth and what connects us all, and that's just so profound. And it's interesting how many people you chose to write about who are inspired and awed by trees, because that's really at the heart of so much of what we speak about. Particularly, the chapter on seeking wisdom includes a description of Tagore meditating within the living cathedral of the natural world, described by his poem that reads Be still my heart. These great trees are prayers. Can you tell me how a tree is like a prayer?

0:16:50 - John Philip

Yeah, well, tagore is such a beautiful expression of the themes that we're exploring and the themes in the book, and very consistent with the other great prophetic teachers that I'm drawing from. Because I think one of the things that we see in all these nine great teachers is that the human soul and earth soul are one. So many of us have been reared in a Western way of thought and religious traditions that have made this tragic separation between the human soul and earth. I mean, in so much of our culture and religious inheritance there wouldn't even be a reference to earth soul. But we find that again and again in these great teachers. And so what someone like Tagore is experiencing and I think this is a very beautiful experience when we enter a deep place of meditation and stillness, when we enter a deep place of meditation and stillness, is to be aware that we're just joining an ongoing prayer where our soul is coming into tune with the soul of the trees.

And here I am, you know, along the Maury coastline in Scotland, and as I walk every day, I'm so aware of part of my Celtic inheritance, which is that people would go to the shore to pray, and in part because the shore was a liminal place between the and, in part because the shore was a liminal place between the waters of our origin and the land of our habitation. But there was this sense that when we go to the shore to pray, we are joining our voices to the praises of the ceaseless sea. So the sort of utterance of worship is happening all around us and we're being invited to join them. And I think that's what Tagore is pointing to this sense that we're not praying in isolation from earth, we're just joining earth in the act of praise.

0:19:28 - Dori

Oh, that's lovely and extremely comforting. You write that the teaching of Thomas Berry, the American Passionist priest, invites us to listen to earth's sound, to open to the wisdom of the trees, among other natural things, and then it comes to us like the wind through the hemlock. Can you describe what this earth sound means to you?

0:19:50 - John Philip

Yeah, I think the beautiful thing about yeah, I think the beautiful thing about making the transition or realizing that our soul is part of Earth's soul, is that these experiences of being aware of the sound of the divine. You know, when I sleep at night here in Fintorn, I always keep the window at the back open and often what I'm hearing all that I'm hearing is wind and the trees, and sometimes through the trees if it's a particularly stormy night or a windy night I'll hear the sea, the sound of the sea crashing. And I think my experience, when I hear that sound of the divine within the trees, within the sea, is that I'm hearing something deep in myself as well, is that I'm hearing something deep in myself as well. And that's a theme that comes through in Nan Shepherd, the Scottish poet, in the chapter Seeking Earth, because she finds that her book the Living Mountain is very much about the Cairngorm Mountains at the heart of the Scottish Highlands.

The Living Mountain is very much about the Cairngorm Mountains at the heart of the Scottish Highlands and she so loved that mountain range and she came to see it as a metaphor for the whole of Earth, and one of the things she says is that as she comes to know the mountain, she comes to know her own soul. Mountain she comes to know her own soul. And so again, it's that essential oneness of what is deepest in me with what is deepest in any life form, and this experience of coming home. And that's why the subtitle is very much about the quest for healing and home. So not only saying our healing is to be found by coming back into true relationship with Earth, but we also find our deep inner sense of home in and through that relationship with earth.

0:22:36 - Dori

When you mentioned the sea and liminal space and you mentioned being in the wilderness, it's just so clear that when our prophetic revelations made, if not by going out and there's something very special about being among the trees, among the sound of earth, at the seashore- CB.

0:22:52 - John Philip

Yeah, and Thomas Berry, who you were referring to. I love the fact. You know he was a theologian but he preferred to call himself a geologian significance and place of earth sacredness in his whole vision of reality he reminds us that everything in the universe since the great flaring forth of light, that everything is both spiritual and physical. So he just refuses this dualism that has so often dominated our thought forms and our religious perspectives. It's not spirit or matter, you know, it's the spiritual and the physical. And one of the things that I think is so important in his prophetic vision and voice is that he's calling us to what he calls three sacred texts. One is the cosmos, one is the universe, earth, and he sees that that has been our primordial, primary place of revelation since our beginnings. Long before religion, long before written scripture, we were reading earth and we were reading the heavens to know the divine. So he sees a return to seeing earth as sacred text and listening and sort of reading every expression of the cosmos as essentially an expression of the divine. And then he speaks about the second text is the text of scripture, and I mean he's concerned, of course, about the way in which many religious traditions have got so focused on the written text of Scripture that they've forgotten the big text of Earth and the universe. He does see a place for the written text of Scripture and especially given the place of the prophetic in Scripture. You know, our Scriptures are full of a prophetic call to come back into relationship with those who are hungry, with those who are homeless, with those who are seeking refuge. But he emphasizes that we're to not read the written scripture in isolation and forget our primary text of earth.

And then, very importantly, there's the third text that he speaks about, and that's the inner text of the human soul, one of the very beautiful things that Thomas Berry says.

He says the universe is so amazing it must have been dreamt into being.

And then he goes on to say and we are in such a mess, you know, ecologically, politically, religiously, we're in such a mess that we need to dream the way forward. We need to allow ourselves to imagine ways of seeing, ways of being, ways of interrelating that we haven't known before. So that inner text is that place where we can access the gift of the imagination and the gift of our capacity to dream, our capacity to imagine what has never been before, instead of thinking that we live in some sort of static universe or some sort of static state, and the way it's always been done is the way it must continue to be done. He's enabling us to see that to be made of the divine is to be made of imagination, and that's a key for the way forward. Because, my goodness, do we need ever? I mean, we really need to reimagine ways of living and ways of being, both in terms of the relationship between nations and relationship between races and communities, and, fundamentally, essentially, also our relationship with Earth.

0:26:47 - Dori

That is quite profound, the idea that to be made of the divine is to be made of imagination, and we often think that wise thinkers came from long ago and far away. And Thomas Berry, the fact that he was in New York at St John the Divine, where Jonathan and I have both been. So it's presence, it's among us, it's within us.

0:27:14 - John Philip

Yeah, were you at the Cathedral of St John on the St Francis feast day and the great procession of the creatures.

0:27:22 - Dori

I've only witnessed it once, but what a phenomenal thing. It's astounding that that happens. You know, it's something that sounds like it came out of the Bible, but to see it in person is astounding.

0:27:37 - John Philip

Yeah, I was there one St Francis Sunday. I was staying right in the cathedral cloisters because I was preaching at the cathedral that day and I came out of the cloisters a number of hours before the service and when I stepped out on the street already there were thousands of people queuing up with their dogs and cats and parakeets. I mean, why doesn't the rest of religion learn from that? The people are so longing to get inside a cathedral if what happens inside the cathedral points to the sacredness of every life form and the creatures. And then at one point in the liturgy the great door is open and the processional creatures come in.

And the year I was there it was a camel at the beginning of the procession. I know they've had elephants sometimes in the past as well. But I mean there's a camel sort of stuck his long neck and began to look around and there was this feeling as who is on display here exactly? I mean he was sort of looking at us with great interest and the cathedral went totally still and there were hundreds of cats and dogs on people's laps and so on. But there was this sense of awe and the cathedral is big enough to handle that sort of celebration, I think the architects of the Gothic cathedral style. They knew about divine proportion and they really modeled their cathedral designs on the cathedral of earth, sea and sky. I mean, you know that's what they're doing and it was very beautiful and so many of us found ourselves weeping at that moment to see the creatures coming in and being reverenced.

0:29:58 - Dori

In the conclusion of the book you highlight how the teachings of the people in the book all share a love of earth and the human soul and a belief that this is where our healing and true sense of home will be found. In a fast-paced world, finding more and more ways to seemingly distance ourselves from the natural world on earth, how do we seek out this idea of home in this present day?

0:30:21 - John Philip

Yeah Well, one of my convictions as a writer and teacher. I maybe mentioned this story, not in this book, but in Sacred Earth, sacred Soul. This story not in this book, but in Sacred Earth, sacred Soul. But years ago I was giving a talk in Virginia in a church, and I was speaking about the Celtic belief that when we look into the face of a newborn child, we're looking into the face of God, freshly born among us. And that's in contradistinction, of course. Certainly in Western Christian thought I mean Western Christian thought has been very shaped, if not entirely dominated, by a doctrine called the doctrine of original sin, which wants to say that what is deepest in us, or what is most original in us, is opposed to the divine rather than being of the divine. So I was teaching this Celtic belief and speaking about the essential sacredness not only of the newborn child but of what is deepest in every human being, every human being.

And at the end of the talk a woman came up the central aisle with a copy of my book at the time, listening for the Heartbeat of God. And she was coming up the aisle so purposefully that the naughty boy in me thought she's going to hit me over the head with that book and I was quite wrong, thank God. When she got up with the French, she said I want to show you what I wrote in this book after reading it. And she opened the cover and inside she had written I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. And I so often wish I had asked her for that copy because she has said so simply, so succinctly what our experience is. When we hear wisdom, it may have become lost, we may never have heard it before, we may never have been taught it, but when we do hear it our deep response is ah, I knew it. And I think if I had thought to ask for that copy, it would be on my desk, it would be with me when I teach, because it would be this constant reminder that my role as a teacher, and I think our role in relationship with one another, is never to think that what we have to say of truth and wisdom is not already in the soul of the other. It's already there. So our role is just to try to give some simple articulation in a way that allows that wisdom to truly rise in the other. It's not an external truth from me to the listener, it's me, or it's any teacher or any writer or anyone in a spiritual relationship, just trying to give voice to what the soul knows deeply.

So my experience is that and I move in this direction in the conclusion I want to say that our true center of authority is earth and is the human soul. And so our religious traditions have often given a lot of significance to outward places like Jerusalem or Rome or Mecca, and that's fine that our traditions have these places that they really celebrate. But let's keep remembering that the role of Rome or the role of Jerusalem or Mecca is to serve the earth and to serve the wisdom that is in earth and to serve the wisdom that is in the human soul, not the other way around. And I make the point in the conclusion that new science is increasingly enabling us to know that the universe is omni-centric, the center is everywhere, and that's a physical truth, but I believe it's a spiritual truth as well. The center is everywhere. It's in you, it's in me and it's in everyone we meet and it's in every life form. It's in everyone we meet and it's in every life form. So let's get our perspective right in terms of knowing that the center is here, it's now it's everywhere.

I believe our traditions can change. They've changed in the past and I believe they can change again, and we're living at a critical moment in which our religious traditions so urgently need to change and come back home in a sense, come back to the sacredness and the wisdom, the creativity, the love longings of the divine that are deep in earth and within the human soul. So my sense is that we just find ways of articulating that sense of home address deep in earth and deep in the human soul, and I think we'll get a lot of. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, and it's very liberating to write and to teach from that place because it means well, you know, we're just being invited to try to give simple expression to it and we're not setting ourselves up over our listeners. We're not seeing truth as something we need to dispense from above or from a greater place of knowing. We're trying to awaken that way of seeing that I believe is deep in the soul.

0:36:24 - Dori

Something about the I knew it, I knew it, I knew it is that we often are looking for the right answer with a capital R and we are looking for a diagram, a graph of this. You know, like a eureka moment that's exact and quantifiable, something that you're sharing. In my ears. It sounds like to each person. They have their own inner graph, their own inner eureka, their own inner calculation, and when the I knew it happens, there's no equation that could be used. It's an inner thing that aligns.

0:37:06 - John Philip

That's right and so important to hear one another's articulations of those deep wisdoms. And Thomas Berry we've already been speaking about him. He says that religious diversity is as important to the human soul as biodiversity is to the planet. So it's not just one expression we need. Yeah, let's be true to the particular expression that's come through our people through centuries, ongoing prayer, reflection, community living. We can be true to these particular expressions that I think should keep unfolding and keep finding new form.

Let's remember that these traditions are given essentially to complete each other. They're not given to compete with each other. You know one of the things I do on Iona I've just come from one of our international pilgrimage weeks on Iona and one of the things I love to do at every evening meal is to ask someone to give a blessing halfway through the meal. And you know often there are priests there, rabbis there, you know others. And you know, often there are priests there, rabbis there, you know others. And you know they will often have a beautiful thing to say.

I don't know why I'm surprised anymore about this because it keeps happening so much, but the most beautiful blessings will often be offered by someone who's never prayed in public, someone who's never offered a blessing, and they find some words that are their own and they offer us such sort of fullness of blessing because they're finding their voice and they're knowing that blessing doesn't just come from ordained people or people who are particularly trained or authorized by the tradition, but these are just simple expressions coming from the human soul and sometimes I just sort of sit there wanting to weep at the beauty of what a lay person, a non-ordained, a non-theologically trained person, will offer.

0:39:23 - Dori

That is such a gift, and it actually leads me to my next question, because we've been speaking a little bit about perspective. Tolstoy writes that religion dies when it forgets the essential vision of its birth. We are seeing and you speak about this a bit in the book we're seeing a great transformation and search for a new awakening. It seems that in this search, some people look to political figures or pop stars, almost like religious figures, the illusions that these figures in our society portray, and toward a reverence to the sacredness that is found in every living thing, including nature.

0:40:13 - John Philip

Yeah Well, I think that transformation happens in our lives. I believe, and certainly important moments of transformation in my own life have happened very much in the realm of experience. I'm speaking, for instance, of this example of being so deeply blessed by someone who's never prayed before, and that experience is what undergirds a growing conviction in me that these sort of beautiful words of blessing and wisdom come not only from particularly trained or ordained or religiously authorized people. This is the property of the soul, in the sense that they're simply sort of uttering from from that place. And and similarly, you know, we began by Tagore realizing that these great trees are our prayers. And I think that when, when we hear in the trees or when we hear in the waves of the sea, one of the things I love doing here is having my morning meditation just on the porch of the sea. One of the things I love doing here is having my morning meditation just on the porch of the house, and early in the morning, the primary sound around me, in the silence, the primary sound is bird life and you know so they're busy singing their morning song and I have this strong sense of I get to join them. So I think it's those experiences and I think you know this is I point at various in various chapters in the book. And I think this is something of a common theme running through the book, and that is that there's a yearning today to know the sacred, and by that I mean experience the sacred, not just to know about the sacred.

And certainly in my own religious tradition there was so much emphasis placed on accepting propositional statements about the divine.

You know, I'm Christian because I believe certain things about God and I think quite rightly, those who are in exile have said, no, that's not what faith is about, it's not about believing certain statements about the divine. And chapter nine in the book, the final chapter, is about seeking faith. And it's Edwin Muir, the Scottish poet, that I use as this sort of prophetic figure there. And he in his life journey realizes that faith is not about a set of propositional statements about God that one accepts. Faith is about being faithful to what he calls the immortal shining that we can see in one another's eyes, that we can see it in the shining of any life form. I very specifically placed him in chapter 9 because I think that's one of the great yearnings we want to know the divine in experiential terms, and we don't just know with our head, we know with our body and we know with all our senses, and I think that's part of what someone like Edwin Mears is pointing to.

0:43:48 - Dori

And we are so grateful to speak with you. Thank you for sharing all your wisdom Because, as you said, we're looking, we are searching, we are yearning to know and experience the sacred, and it really is a gift to us all that you are offering wisdom and have inside the temple and outside in the wilderness and what you've collected as a person who cares about the world, who cares about people, who cares about spirituality and who finds all sorts of ways to connect with the divine. John Philip, thank you so, so much for taking time to speak with us today.

0:44:29 - John Philip

Thank you, doreen. Many blessings to you. It was so good to see you and be in conversation again, so I hope there will be other times.

0:44:38 - Dori

I'm sure there will be. You are quite inspirational and it's a gift, so thank you.

0:44:44 - John Philip

Many blessings.

0:44:59 - Jonathan

So that interview was wonderful for my soul, for my brain, for my heart, for my overall well-being, and there's so many things that I will take from it. I especially enjoyed when he talked about how we need to expand our imaginations and to really see and therefore create the worlds that we want to live in, that are best for all people and for all living things, the planet. Nature and seeing the sacredness in everything is something that I will strive to do in these coming days and weeks and years ahead.

0:45:27 - Dori

That's what spoke to me as well the power of dreaming our way forward, which I often think we need. A hard, concrete, logistical plan endeavor gives me a healing way to move forward and a kinder way to approach this tough time.

0:45:54 - Jonathan

And that's what we need, like I said, to be gentle to ourselves and to one another and everything around us. We will have plenty of time to roll up our sleeves to do the work, and here on this podcast, we will continue to do that regularly. I'm excited to bring in new features about what's happening to trees and to the greater environment and climate of our world, because I think, as John Philip talked about, we have these awakenings, we have these understandings and we also need to share them with one another, because they're not all the same and there's much to be learned in the diversity of our people and our environments and everything within them, and so I'll hold on to that as we move forward here with you, dory, and with our listeners out there, and, one step at a time, we'll be here.

0:46:51 - Dori

One step at a time. And, speaking of sharing, we have some really exciting episodes coming up. We also would always love to hear from you, so if there are things that inspire you about trees or nature or otherwise, please feel free to reach out.

0:47:04 - Jonathan

Email us. Check our show notes on social media. We're here for you and we need to be here for one another, moving forward and in the days to come. Thank you for listening.

0:47:20 - Dori

This week's episode was recorded and produced in Massachusetts on the native lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, hennikook, massachusetts and Pawtucket people, and in Wisconsin on the lands of the Ho-Chunk, potawatomi and Menominee people. Tree Speech is produced by Alight Theatre and produced and co-written by Jonathan Zautner. Thank you for joining Tree Speech today.