Saving the World

We dwell in language.

Increasingly, one can point to the emergence of symbolic language as a geologic event, able to harness the power of conscious self-awareness as an evolutionary force: our symbol systems undermine the conditions for life, unravel the climate, and drive species extinct.i

We dwell in language, even as our home disintegrates.

Ecological linguists suggest inherent failings in languages, which simply do not have the words to convey certain realities.ii The language we speak requires regeneration, to understand the signs that the cosmos cries to us in, letting us know each aspect—from the greatest galaxy to each spinning quantum—is sign-ificant, if we but listen to and learn from her.

“Poetically, man dwells…”

Such was the declaration by Nazi phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, following the poetics of Friedrich Hölderlin.iii That our perceptions, sensations, and embodied psychic patterns might be guided by energy condensed in poetry, unleashed as language crafts the spells needed to build new worlds to dwell in.

Dwellings emerge as poiesis.

Poetry makes us laugh and sob. There is poetry that captures the sensuality and feelings of reality; and there is poetry that fails to adequately convey experience.

Language constitutes our dwelling.

Poetry is knowledge of the soul—not just our own, but the soul of others, human and otherwise. How we relate to others, poetically, generates our experience. Soul knowledge is indispensable for social cohesion.

We dwell, together. Here.

As our language changes, our dwellings are rebuilt.

Far from paint on caves, from Venus figurines, the oral storytellers, written myths wherein wisdom dances in the living lyric, screens now separate us from words—worlds—every day. Algorithms program each minute, from alarm and email to stock and survival.

Our revolutions are tweeted. Our repression encoded. How many times each second do words move at the speed of light, through plastic tubes? Who would hear us if not for these plastic tubes?

We dwell in these tubes, the stratigraphic signal of our geologic era.

As our language fragments, broken into bytes and bits, so too does our world. This broken world stems from our linguistic failures.

We see tubes where we once saw trees. We see screens where we once saw skies. We see electricity where we once saw enchantment. We see commodities where we once saw goddesses.

What images are imaginable? What magic can we image? What spells can we speak? What language can build new foundations upon which to together dwell?

Where are the mages?

● ● ●

There are unifying principles behind how galaxies are organized, how suns make light, how lightning moves, how plants are shaped, how rivers run, how cities are arranged… behind even how language transforms.iv

They are simple enough formulas, power-mass laws detailing how energy runs through mass as efficiently as possible over time; the intricacy of a system’s structural complexity corresponding to the increase in a system’s free energy rate density.v

This cosmic tendency manifests fractally as branching patterns, self-similar across scale. From this reiterating equation, forests burst out of soil. Blood veins deliver life to drive forward history. Neural nets are cast. At these branch points, the past and future break into the present.

There are unifying principles behind how stars and civilizations collapse, how ecosystems and businesses are drained of life. They are simple enough formulas—complexity is sustained by energy flows. The deprivation of such flows provoke contraction, breakdown, failure, death.

Beyond this dance on the knife’s edge of life and death, between creativity and collapse, lies an eternal law. Energy structures complexity. Its absence and deprivation destabilizes it.

We dwell within the language of this law.

● ● ●

Within this landscape, strange attractors induce phase changes across every aeon.

What power is there to move such mass as the community of life, the Gaian goddess herself? What power is there to avert the collapse of destiny?

Can poetry move one so completely as to remake a world paved in concrete?

Can poetry inspire a flower to break through asphalt?

We dwell poetically, inhabiting language.

An evolutionary force.

What geological event can emerge to reinhabit this language?

This landscape?

This life?

A poem?

● ● ●

Somewhere, someone is inspired by a flower. Energy flows through her. She writes a program in a language she knows well. The program is a game. The game gives people points. People get points by completing tasks.

These tasks are tested techniques to transform the terrestrial world into something attractive. Into something tantalizing.

She provides resources: a database of information. A calendar of events. An institute to teach techniques. A network of translation centers where a thousand lexicosmions cross-pollinate.

Her game identifies 198 methods for bioregional reinhabitation.vi Through these pathways, energy is distributed fractally. Ideas are spread and planted and new art bundles are exchanged to bloom and blossom.

Here, seeds are planted. Here, seeds are harvested.

Her program begins to run. There is praxis. There is vision. There is hope. There is joy.

There are rules to the gamevii:

Rule #1 – Natural systems must be restored and maintained.

Rule #2 – Sustainable means for satisfying basic human needs must be developed.

Rule #3 – A broad range of activities to fit better into a life-place must be created and supported.

There are players in the game.

They join bioregional gatherings. Independence groups. Watershed councils. Free republics. Continent congresses. Decentralized coordinating bodies take root; a life-place culture grows. These players coordinate around resolutions to translate the signs and significance of the ecosystem functions of the bioregion into a working political economy for the human dimension of the bioregion.viii

So they can play. And find joy.

And get points.

There are phases to the game.

One must first play hide and seek with the sunlight, with the rain and wind, the mountains, the bodies of water, the soil, plants, and animals. The map’s boundaries extend however far one extends them. One finds the worst things people do. One finds the best things people do.

A forty-day teach-in inaugurates the game.

Creeks are restored. Food forests are planted. Bioregional parks are linked by wildlife corridors. Empty lots turn to vibrant plots. Community farms and rooftop gardens explode. Buildings are retrofitted. Life-place celebrations abound. Vegetables are grown. Shelters are built.

New players join the game.

Not everyone knows they are in a game.

But they play anyway.

The poetic infrastructure is placed appropriately, and the forty-day teach-in launches a forty-year teach-in. Free stores hold seed banks to support neighborhoods. A living culture grows its roots deeper.

People get points.

Regions are restored.

Those with the most points are thanked, celebrated, and rewarded by grateful neighbors. Folk learn job skills for life.

In the middle of the game, a tiny girl realizes a deep truth: “If we win in the cities, we win.”

She is invited to join a team. Instead, she invites the team to join her.

Active reinhabitants dwell poetically in parallel biogeographic terrains of consciousness.

Towns tell new stories, of new destinies. Online communities find each other in the land. Education is recognized for what it must become: the evolutionary adaptive inheritance of the Earth-system.

Like the eternal law of the cosmos, people refuse to allow energy to be monopolized by institutions beyond their control. Rather, they establish direct relationships to that energy, letting it wash over them. Letting it become part of them.

Enchanting them.

Their direct experience creates new structures in place of obsolete alienating ones.

Mother Earth’s brain tumors dissipate. A new geologic era is whispered about. Some call this the Ecozoic era. Some don’t call it anything. Some are happy with silence. They enjoy the wind parting the trees. The birds sing songs to them. Coyotes are finally free to chant their own poetry at night.

Some prefer these to words.

Breakaway wisdom ecologies begin to outnumber desolate wastelands. Soon, communities of life are the only memories people have any direct experience of. The rest are just stories.

The animals and plants can breathe again. Everything can breathe together again, sharing in the breath of a solar wind. An eternal law reiterates in each heart. In each body. Each mind.

In each point.

In each soul and society.

Poetically, we dwell.

Together.

In destiny.

A digitized ecozoic vernacular programs another world to dwell poetically within, an entire lexicosmos rooted in the universal tradition of evolutionary genius and cosmic intellect. Children and adults learn biospheric patterns together. They learn the science of sustainability. They learn what it takes to make peace. They practice sharing water. They design anew, to renew their bodies. To regain their souls.

Until the screens are forgotten altogether. And each student is able to attract the ecological patterns to constellate their own world.

The concepts, activities, problems, projects, and services they engage in are unfathomable to us today.

The

distance

between

their

culture

and

ours

is

measured

in points.

Dwell,

poetically.

Do you know the story of Cupid and Psyche ?

Venus required Psyche to undergo great trials in order to find her husband, the god of Love, Cupid. That’s the situation we were in in 2025. We, like Psyche, were faced with what seemed to be insurmountable trials and sought to find Love. Psyche was able to complete some of her tasks, with the help of the vegetable and animal kingdoms who wanted her to succeed. Venus then challenged Psyche to go to the underworld and ask Persephone to put some of Psyche’s great beauty into a box. That accomplished, Cupid, God of Love, found her and helped her to become immortal and live with him on Mount Olympus.

We are now halfway through the 21st century. So much is happened since we were like Psyche, challenged with such daunting tasks as dissolving thickets of confusion and war and trusting Mother Earth to right the imbalances we ourselves had caused as She knew best.

25 years later we are grateful that we are now fully recognizing each other and living in harmony. Many of us experience joy on a daily basis. We notice the beauty of our children, play with them and appreciate their playing together. We develop new dances that we perform together at the beginning of each month. In each household we can make music and practice singing together in the evening. Each person can offer a song or a poem. We garden together. Our houses are becoming more and more simple so as not to disturb our Mother Earth. Daily, we enjoy listening to silence together. We notice the interconnection in Nature. We express ourselves on our walls as we change scrolls, panels, or hanging tapestries according to the number of us that wish to produce them.

Oh yes, this is very different from how it was 25 years ago!

Back then we only rarely had glimpses of awareness that we are not separate but instead are parts of an evolving Whole. Our assumption that we were separate had led us to fear each other and to compete in almost everything we did. We thought we needed to hoard and compete because we didn’t trust that we would help each other. In our fear we tried to trick, betray or ignore each other. In our stress we became physically ill or addicted. We effectively ignored each other or saw each other as embodying the problem we faced. There was so much buried pain out there that we thought we would try something new.

In 2024 we began to dissolve the snarls in our systems and see our deeper urge to healthy unity because we discovered a way to see that Unity. How did we make that shift? Immersed in the world’s complexity, with a few exceptions we had little capacity to detect our wholeness. But at that time, we were at the edge of a new understanding that we humans were more than just activated matter. We learned to focus our attention on Consciousness and, like Psyche, we were on the way to rediscover Love. We saw and understood that in the past, when faced with more than we could handle alone, we had reacted, compounding the problems by producing and spreading more troubles. We had been affected by our long histories of trauma due to entrenched habits of relating.

Gradually we realized that if you looked at that long picture none of us was at fault. We had all been reacting. But how could we help Psyche, (our individual psyche and our collective psyche) understand that we didn’t need to hurt and fear each other? We needed a tool. Nothing mechanized or electronic would do because we had realized that those tools had contributed to our problems.

Happily, it was noticed that we could see the Psyche. 100 years ago some children had pointed the way. They played in a smaller, framed world with figurines, and in that little enclosed world they could see and battle with or discover what they didn’t yet understand and uncover resources they hadn’t known. This worked! For 50 years this children’s invention was practiced with some benefit to the children and their families who practiced it. It went almost unnoticed, though, because our culture had relied so heavily on more airy, “heady,” controlling or technological approaches to problems. Play was considered beneath adults as an activity.

Then it dawned on us that if a number of us played together in that smaller than full size world the children had been playing in for “therapy,” we too could see our greater shared Psyche.

Part of Psyche’s beauty had been placed in the box! The open box, the tray of sand made it possible for a few of us to safely see where Psyche was troubled and adjust what we saw! Lo and behold, with each episode around the tray, it was as if we were walking through another doorway to the Light. Each time, we would see another clarification of what had been in the way of our living and feeling better together. Because Psyche can be relied upon to search for the Truth of her Love, we learned not to judge what we saw, but to see it as an opportunity to help out. We saw that the very habits fear and isolation had led us to could be gradually reduced because we were now able to see them with our eyes. Our shared field of information, our consciousness, far and wide, became greater, loving and more truthful. The habits of deceit were not possible because we now had a way to safely take in the whole picture seeing we were all intrinsic to it, together.

We continue this ritual regularly to avoid our old pitfalls and misconceptions. Meanwhile we have been trusting Mother Earth to work at balancing herself, and we adjust accordingly while we become a self-organizing and creative system, like Nature.

Sophia Hughes, PhD 1/17/2024
sophiahughes7@icloud.com

The year is 2050. The future, uncertain. But as I wrap my scarf tighter and step from my tiny home into the forest, I am hopeful.

Birdsongs greet dawn’s pink glow behind silhouetted cedars. Chimes from the Big House beckon gently, softly. This is our pace now: One breath, one step, one being at a time. No longer rushing. No longer forgetting our being-ness.

At 75, I feel my years but not how I once feared and expected. There’s just more of me now, contained within one. A wide-eyed child and young woman and middle-aged woman and all of my versions. Somehow bound together. Somehow still here.

Moving slowly down our pine-needle path, I see fellow Serenity members emerging from their own tiny homes along the perimeter. Serenaded by birds and the Big House chimes, we come together and we gather. Each morning, a communion. Each morning, a remembrance.

*

Since founding Serenity Village in my sixties—well past when they said such projects were possible—I’ve watched myself grow and our community grow. I’ve watched as others followed suit: returning to the forest, remembering the land, creating similar small-scale, off-grid communities. All hover around 100 members. All are led by elders. All breathe life into what once seemed a fantastical, impossible model.

Funny thing, that.

When what once felt certain falls in on itself. When the world pulls apart at the seams. When all that they warned comes to pass and all that they built gets broken.

Here we are. Here we still are.

And here—in this new version that holds all we’ve been and all we’re becoming—we begin again. Beginning again, we find solace and wisdom in the most unassuming of places. The eyes of a child. The visions of grandmas. In each of us now. Somehow still breathing. Somehow still here.

A reclusive poet with a strong preference for solitude, I was an unlikely leader. And yet, when things fall apart, I suppose an unlikely leader is needed. So, I gathered the lost and the wounded. I took stock of resources and needs. I said, “Let’s go now. It’s okay now. Just us and the forest. Just us and our stories.”

The first years were difficult of course. There was the planning and building and tending. There was the sorting and sharing of things. There was learning to be focused and present again. And unlearning—so much unlearning.

The early days of Serenity were unfamiliar and in most ways lacking in comfort. And yet, we somehow found joy in that. We somehow began to play again and began to breathe easy. The machines had gone silent. Big tech had collapsed. It was just us. It was just a new chance at beginning.

*

Reaching the Big House, I exchange quiet greetings with others. A nod. A whisper. A smile with our eyes. It is enough. No words are needed.

Entering the warm, round room with a stove at its center, we find seats and we wait. We savor our gratitude, connection, and silence.

Then, once everyone present has settled on cushions and chairs, we hold hands and we pray. Not to a single god or goddess, but to everything known and unknown. To all of us and all that holds and loves and connects.

Here, holding hands. Here, seated in silence. There’s room for all gods and goddesses and all of it. There’s room for mystery and magic and miracles.

Later, we will do the things. We will organize and plant and harvest and cook. We will hunt and gather and build. We will play and make and create.

But first—always first—this. A ritual of seeing and surrender. A ritual of reverence and remembrance. A ritual to replace what once felt urgent but then fell away. Into knowing, into unknowing, into us.

I see you, I honor you, I am you, in this place.

One human, one being, to the next. No longer deifying opinion. No longer making idols of urgency. No longer mistaking shouting for solving.

Just needing to remember our origin story. Just needing to sit here a while—here, in this more complete version. Here, in love and Serenity.

“See simplicity in the complicated. Achieve greatness in little things.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (trans. Gia-fu Feng & Jane English)

Earth is healing; it is a collaborative place. How did this come to pass?

It all began in the year of Our Lord 2024. With the first batch of graduates from the Certified Climate Healers Training Course with Dr. Sailesh Krishna Rao, founder of climatehealers.org. It was nothing short of the Greatest Transformation in Human History. Enlightenment, Nirvana were on the horizon. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Dolphins and whales were leaping for Joy! Cats were multidimensionally spreading the news: It has begun!

Our mission was to wake up the masses and create a largely vegan world by 2026. Why so soon you ask? Because we were worse off than many knew. We had transgressed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries, any one of which could destroy life on Earth as we knew it. Twenty twenty-six was the year that the wildlife population was predicted to die out if we did not make a U-turn in our activities of daily life. If the wildlife population died, we all died.

The mission before us was great, but we had determination, conviction, hope and belief. We knew it could be done, so we set out on our mission with fervor and tenacity. Some of us started making films to reach as many people as possible all over the world via the Internet or television. Others started local groups in their various communities to spread the message via interest groups. Veganism for health benefits; veganism for animal liberation; veganism for social justice and more. Some wanted to work on climate change and the environment. Others desired to teach on spiritual and ethical aspects of stopping animal agriculture.

Some wanted to show how we could solve world hunger by feeding each other Whole -Food -Plant-Based simple meals like Unity Stew without exchanging money. To show that there is enough for all and that abundance on this planet is possible for all when we share in its rich resources with respect and love for one another was the theme of this endeavor. That we could live healthily and happily without capitalism twas an important shift in the collective psyche.

Indeed, this was the beginning to the change in our infrastructure, to moving from competition and capitalism to cooperation and abundance for all. Dr. Rao and his inner team of new-thought thinkers were already developing plans for how we could shift to this new and beautiful paradigm with no more lies or manipulations, no more speciesism or exploitation. It was this beautiful vision that God was bringing to us through those who were hearing the call and responding.

There were those who began teaching animal farmers how to convert to plant farming. Former cattle ranchers who had felt the stirrings to make a change did massive fund-raising to switch over to animal sanctuaries. Chicken farmers converted to mushroom farms. Pig farmers switched to growing produce. Miracles were happening everywhere. Some began to plant trees and rewild the barren lands, making forests for more biodiversity to grow. The trees began to draw down carbon and methane, cooling the planet and effectively working to reverse climate change. The trees filtered chemicals out of the water, storing it in their trunks, and began to restore the balance to our freshwater resources.

Then there were those who made music and used their gifts to write songs of hope and inspiration, love and healing. A few very brave ones were rescuing animals from slaughterhouses and going to jail because of if. Bit by bit and faster and faster, the movement began to grow. More and more people began to wake up and see the folly of the old ways, and they wanted to make a change. Before we knew it, we had done it! We reached a critical mass which ensured we would not self-destruct. The transformation continued as there was still much healing to be done.

Humans learned that we did not need animals to die for us to keep us healthy. We stopped the killing machine. We stopped trawling the ocean floors. We stopped hunting and fishing and farming animals. And we stopped harming Mother Earth. We grew vegetables and fruits and we planted trees everywhere. We offered our repentance, our reparations, and our restitution to the blessed animal kingdom and to our Dear Mother Earth. We sang the Ho’oponopono prayer like a chant day and night, so grateful to all of them and for our survival.

We offered our love. We gave thanks and showed reverence to our blessed Elohim and elemental life that created us and sustained us through all this challenge and critical work. And that is how we got to 2050 today. Still healing. Still growing. Living in love and cooperation, connection and Oneness. God bless our Mother Earth and ALL life evolving upon her, forevermore. Amen.