Podcasts about elderhood

On this episode, my guest is Stephen Jenkinson, culture activist and ceremonialist advocating a handmade life and eloquence. He is an author, a storyteller, a musician, sculptor and off-grid organic farmer. Stephen is the founder/ principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. Also a sought-after workshop leader, articulating matters of the heart, human suffering, confusions through ceremony.He is the author of several influential books, including Money and the Soul's Desires, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), A Generation's Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), and Reckoning (2022), co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson. His most recent book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work, was released in August 2025. He is also involved in the musical project Nights of Grief & Mystery with singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins, which has toured across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.Show Notes:* The Bone House of the Orphan Wisdom Enterprise* Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work* The Wedding Industry* Romantic Sameness and Psychic Withering* The Two Tribes* The Roots of Hospitality* The Pompous Ending of Hospitality* Debt, And the Estrangement of the Stranger* More Than Human Hospitality* The Alchemy of the Orphan Wisdom SchoolHomework:Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work | PurchaseOrphan WisdomThe Scriptorium: Echoes of an Orphan WisdomTranscription:Chris: This is an interview that I've been wondering about for a long time in part, because Stephen was the first person I ever interviewed for the End of Tourism Podcast. In Oaxaca, Mexico, where I live Stephen and Natalie were visiting and were incredibly, incredibly generous. Stephen, in offering his voice as a way to raise up my questions to a level that deserve to be contended with.We spoke for about two and a half hours, if I remember correctly. And there was a lot in what you spoke to towards the second half of the interview that I think we're the first kind of iterations of the Matrimony book.We spoke a little bit about the stranger and trade, and it was kind of startling as someone trying to offer their first interview and suddenly hearing something [00:01:00] that I'd never heard before from Stephen. Right. And so it was quite impressive. And I'm grateful to be here now with y'all and to get to wonder about this a little more deeply with you Stephen.Stephen: Mm-hmm. Hmm.Chris: This is also a special occasion for the fact that for the first time in the history of the podcast, we have a live audience among us today. Strange doings. Some scholars and some stewards and caretakers of the Orphan Wisdom enterprise. So, thank you all as well for coming tonight and being willing to listen and put your ears to this.And so to begin, Stephen, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to let those who will be listening to this recording later on know where we're gathered in tonight?Stephen: Well, we're in... what's the name of this township?Nathalie: North Algona.Stephen: North Algona township on the borders, an eastern gate [00:02:00] of Algonquin Park. Strangely named place, given the fact that they were the first casualties of the park being established. And we're in a place that never should have been cleared - my farm. It should never have been cleared of the talls, the white pines that were here, but the admiralty was in need back in the day. And that's what happened there. And we're in a place that the Irish immigrants who came here after the famine called "Tramore," which more or less means "good-frigging luck farming."It doesn't technically mean that, but it absolutely means that. It actually means "sandy shore," which about covers the joint, and it's the only thing that covers the joint - would be sand. You have to import clay. Now, that's a joke in many farming places in the world, but if we wanted any clay, we'd have to bring it in and pay for the privilege.And the farm has been in [00:03:00] my, my responsibility for about 25 years now, pretty close to that. And the sheep, or those of them left because the coyotes have been around for the first time in their casualty-making way... They're just out here, I'm facing the field where they're milling around.And it's the very, very beginnings of the long cooling into cold, into frigid, which is our lot in this northern part of the hemisphere, even though it's still August, but it's clear that things have changed. And then, we're on a top of a little hill, which was the first place that I think that we may have convened a School here.It was a tipi, which is really worked very well considering we didn't live here, so we could put it up and put it down in the same weekend. [00:04:00] And right on this very hill, we were, in the early days, and we've replaced that tipi with another kind of wooden structure. A lot more wood in this one.This has been known as "The Teaching Hall" or "The Great Hall," or "The Hall" or "The Money Pit, as it was known for a little while, but it actually worked out pretty well. And it was I mean, people who've come from Scandinavia are knocked out by the kind of old-style, old-world visitation that the place seems to be to them.And I'd never really been before I had the idea what this should look like, but I just went from a kind of ancestral memory that was knocking about, which is a little different than your preferences, you know. You have different kinds of preferences you pass through stylistically through your life, but the ones that lay claim to you are the ones that are not interested in your [00:05:00] preferences. They're interested in your kind of inheritance and your lineage.So I'm more or less from the northern climes of Northern Europe, and so the place looks that way and I was lucky enough to still have my carving tools from the old days. And I've carved most of the beams and most of the posts that keep the place upright with a sort of sequence of beasts and dragons and ne'er-do-wells and very, very few humans, I think two, maybe, in the whole joint. Something like that. And then, mostly what festoons a deeply running human life is depicted here. And there's all kinds of stories, which I've never really sat down and spoken to at great length with anybody, but they're here.And I do deeply favour the idea that one day [00:06:00] somebody will stumble into this field, and I suppose, upon the remains of where we sit right now, and wonder "What the hell got into somebody?" That they made this mountain of timber moldering away, and that for a while what must have been, and when they finally find the footprint of, you know, its original dimensions and sort of do the wild math and what must have been going on in this sandy field, a million miles in away from its home.And wherever I am at that time, I'll be wondering the same thing.Audience: Hmm.Stephen: "What went on there?" Even though I was here for almost all of it. So, this was the home of the Orphan Wisdom School for more than a decade and still is the home of the Orphan Wisdom School, even if it's in advance, or in retreat [00:07:00] or in its doldrums. We'll see.And many things besides, we've had weddings in here, which is wherein I discovered "old-order matrimony," as I've come to call it, was having its way with me in the same way that the design of the place did. And it's also a grainery for our storage of corn. Keep it up off the ground and out of the hands of the varmints, you know, for a while.Well that's the beginning.Chris: Hmm. Hmm. Thank you Stephen.Stephen: Mm-hmm.Chris: You were mentioning the tipi where the school began. I remember sleeping in there the first time I came here. Never would I have thought for a million years that I'd be sitting here with you.Stephen: It's wild, isn't it?Chris: 12 years later.?: Yeah.Chris: And so next, I'd like to do my best in part over the course of the next perhaps hour or two to congratulate you on the release of [00:08:00] your new book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work.Stephen: Thank you.Chris: Mm-hmm. I'm grateful to say like many others that I've received a copy and have lent my eyes to your good words, and what is really an incredible achievement.For those who haven't had a chance to lay their eyes on it just yet, I'm wondering if you could let us in on why you wrote a book about matrimony in our time and where it stands a week out from its publication.Stephen: Well, maybe the answer begins with the question, "why did you write a book, having done so before?" And you would imagine that the stuff that goes into writing a book, you'd think that the author has hopes for some kind of redemptive, redeeming outcome, some kind of superlative that drops out the back end of the enterprise.And you know, this is [00:09:00] the seventh I've written. And I would have to say that's not really how it goes, and you don't really know what becomes of what you've written, even with the kind people who do respond, and the odd non-monetary prize that comes your way, which Die Wise gamed that.But I suppose, I wrote, at all partly to see what was there. You know, I had done these weddings and I was a little bit loathe to let go, to let the weddings turn entirely into something historical, something that was past, even though I probably sensed pretty clearly that I was at the end of my willingness to subject myself to the slings and arrows that came along with the enterprise, but it's a sweet sorrow, or there's a [00:10:00] wonder that goes along with the tangle of it all. And so, I wrote to find out what happened, as strange as that might sound to you. You can say, "well, you were there, you kind of knew what happened." But yes, I was witness to the thing, but there's the act of writing a book gives you the opportunity to sort of wonder in three-dimensions and well, the other thing I should say is I was naive and figured that the outfit who had published the, more or less prior two books to this one, would kind of inevitably be drawn to the fact that same guy. Basically, same voice, new articulation. And I was dumbfounded to find out that they weren't. And so, it's sort of smarted, you know?And I think what I did was I just set the whole [00:11:00] enterprise aside, partly to contend with the the depths of the disappointment in that regard, and also not wanting to get into the terrible fray of having to parse or paraphrase the book in some kind of elevator pitch-style to see if anybody else wanted to look at it. You know, such as my touchy sense of nobility sometimes, you know, that I just rather not be involved in the snarl of the marketplace any longer.So, I withdrew and I just set it aside but it wasn't that content to be set, set aside. And you know, to the book's credit, it bothered me every once in a while. It wasn't a book at the point where I was actually trying to engineer it, you know, and, and give it some kind of structure. I had piles of paper on the floor representing the allegation of chapters, trying to figure out what the relationship was [00:12:00] between any of these things.What conceivably should come before what. What the names of any of these things might be. Did they have an identity? Was I just imposing it? And all of that stuff I was going through at the same time as I was contending with a kind of reversal in fortune, personally. And so in part, it was a bit of a life raft to give me something to work on that I wouldn't have to research or dig around in the backyard for it and give me some sort of self-administered occupation for a while.Finally, I think there's a parallel with the Die Wise book, in that when it came to Die Wise, I came up with what I came up with largely because, in their absolute darkest, most unpromising hours, an awful lot of dying people, all of whom are dead now, [00:13:00] let me in on some sort of breach in the, the house of their lives.And I did feel that I had some obligation to them long-term, and that part of that obligation turned into writing Die Wise and touring and talking about that stuff for years and years, and making a real fuss as if I'd met them all, as if what happened is really true. Not just factually accurate, but deeply, abidingly, mandatorily true.So, although it may be the situation doesn't sound as extreme, but the truth is, when a number of younger - than me - people came to me and asked me to do their weddings, I, over the kind of medium-term thereafter, felt a not dissimilar obligation that the events that ensued from all of that not [00:14:00] be entrusted entirely to those relatively few people who attended. You know, you can call them "an audience," although I hope I changed that. Or you could call them "witnesses," which I hope I made them that.And see to it that there could be, not the authorized or official version of what happened, but to the view from here, so to speak, which is, as I sit where I am in the hall right now, I can look at the spot where I conducted much of this when I wasn't sacheting up and down the middle aisle where the trestle tables now are.And I wanted to give a kind of concerted voice to that enterprise. And I say "concerted voice" to give you a feel for the fact that I don't think this is a really an artifact. It's not a record. It's a exhortation that employs the things that happened to suggest that even though it is the way it is [00:15:00] ritually, impoverished as it is in our time and place, it has been otherwise within recoverable time and history. It has.And if that's true, and it is, then it seems to me at least is true that it could be otherwise again. And so, I made a fuss and I made a case based on that conviction.There's probably other reasons I can't think of right now. Oh, being not 25 anymore, and not having that many more books in me, the kind of wear and tear on your psyche of imposing order on the ramble, which is your recollection, which has only so many visitations available in it. Right? You can only do that so many times, I think. And I'm not a born writing person, you know, I come to it maniacally when I [00:16:00] do, and then when it's done, I don't linger over it so much.So then, when it's time to talk about it, I actually have to have a look, because the act of writing it is not the act of reading it. The act of writing is a huge delivery and deliverance at the same time. It's a huge gestation. And you can't do that to yourself, you know, over and over again, but you can take some chances, and look the thing in the eye. So, and I think some people who are there, they're kind of well-intended amongst them, will recognize themselves in the details of the book, beyond "this is what happened and so on." You know, they'll recognize themselves in the advocacy that's there, and the exhortations that are there, and the [00:17:00] case-making that I made and, and probably the praying because there's a good degree of prayerfulness in there, too.That's why.Chris: Thank you. bless this new one in the world. And what's the sense for you?Stephen: Oh, yes.Chris: It being a one-week old newborn. How's that landing in your days?Stephen: Well, it's still damp, you know. It's still squeaky, squeaky and damp. It's walking around like a newborn primate, you know, kind of swaying in the breeze and listening to port or to starboard according to whatever's going on.I don't know that it's so very self-conscious in the best sense of that term, yet. Even though I recorded the audio version, I don't think [00:18:00] it's my voice is found every nook and cranny at this point, yet. So, it's kind of new. It's not "news," but it is new to me, you know, and it's very early in terms of anybody responding to it.I mean, nobody around me has really taken me aside and say, "look, now I want to tell you about this book you wrote." It hasn't happened, and we'll see if it does, but I've done a few events on the other side of the ocean and hear so far, very few, maybe handful of interviews. And those are wonderful opportunities to hear something of what you came up with mismanaged by others, you know, misapprehend, you could say by others.No problem. I mean, it's absolutely no problem. And if you don't want that to happen, don't talk, don't write anything down. So, I don't mind a bit, you know, and the chances are very good that it'll turn into things I didn't have in mind [00:19:00] as people take it up, and regard their own weddings and marriages and plans and schemes and fears and, you know, family mishigas and all the rest of it through this particular lens, you know. They may pick up a pen or a computer (it's an odd expression, "pick up a computer"), and be in touch with me and let me know. "Yeah, that was, we tried it" or whatever they're going to do, because, I mean, maybe Die Wise provided a bit of an inkling of how one might be able to proceed otherwise in their dying time or in their families or their loved ones dying time.This is the book that most readily lends itself to people translating into something they could actually do, without a huge kind of psychic revolution or revolt stirring in them, at least not initially. This is as close as I come, probably, to writing a sequence of things [00:20:00] that could be considered "add-ons" to what people are already thinking about, that I don't force everybody else outta the house in order to make room for the ideas that are in the book. That may happen, anyway, but it wasn't really the intent. The intent was to say, you know, we are in those days when we're insanely preoccupied with the notion of a special event. We are on the receiving end of a considerable number of shards showing up without any notion really about what these shards remember or are memories of. And that's the principle contention I think that runs down the spine of the book, is that when we undertake matrimony, however indelicately, however by rote, you know, however mindlessly we may do it, [00:21:00] inadvertently, we call upon those shards nonetheless.And they're pretty unspectacular if you don't think about them very deeply, like the rice or confetti, like the aisle, like the procession up the aisle, like the giving away of someone, like the seating arrangement, like the spectacle seating arrangement rather than the ritual seating arrangement.And I mean, there's a fistful of them. And they're around and scholars aside maybe, nobody knows why they do them. Everybody just knows, "this is what a wedding is," but nobody knows why. And because nobody knows why, nobody really seems to know what a wedding is for, although they do proceed like they would know a wedding if they saw one. So, I make this a question to be really wondered about, and the shards are a way in. They're the kind of [00:22:00] breadcrumb trail through the forest. They're the little bits of broken something, which if you begin to handle just three or four of them, and kind of fit them together, and find something of the original shape and inflection of the original vessel, kind of enunciates, begins to murmur in your hands, and from it you can begin to infer some three-dimensionality to the original shape. And from the sense of the shape, you get a set sense of contour, and from the sense of contour, you get a sense of scale or size. And from that you get a sense of purpose, or function, or design. And from that you get a sense of some kind of serious magisterial insight into some of the fundament of human being that was manifest in the "old-order matrimony," [00:23:00] as I came to call it.So, who wouldn't wanna read that book?Chris: Mm-hmm.Thank you. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Stephen. Yeah. It reminds me, just before coming up here, maybe two weeks ago, I was in attending a wedding. And there was a host or mc, and initially just given what I was hearing over the microphone, it was hard to tell if he was hired or family or friends. And it turned out he was, in fact, a friend of the groom. And throughout the night he proceeded to take up that role as a kind of comedian.Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: This was the idea, I guess. Mm-hmm. And he was buzzing and mumbling and swearing into the microphone, [00:24:00] and then finally minimizing the only remnant of traditional culture that showed up in the wedding. And his thing was, okay, so when can we get to the part where it's boom, boom, boom, right. And shot, shot, shot, whatever.Stephen: Right.Chris: There was so much that came up in my memories in part because I worked about a decade in Toronto in the wedding industry.Mm-hmm. Hospitality industry. Maybe a contradiction in terms, there. And there was one moment that really kind of summed it up. I kept coming back to this reading the book because it was everything that you wrote seemed to not only antithetical to this moment, but also an antidote.Anyways, it was in North Toronto and the [00:25:00] owner of the venue - it was a kind of movie theatre turned event venue - and there was a couple who was eventually going to get married there. They came in to do their tasting menu to see what they wanted to put on the menu for the dinner, for their wedding.And the owner was kind of this mafioso type. And he comes in and he sees them and he walks over and he says, "so, you're gonna get married at my wedding factory."Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: In all sincerity.Stephen: Mm-hmm.Chris: Right.Without skipping a beat. Could you imagine?Stephen: Yeah.I could. I sure could.Chris: Yeah. Yeah.Stephen: I mean, don't forget, if these people weren't doing what the people wanted, they'd be outta business.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: No, that's the thing. This is aiding and abetting. This is sleeping with the enemy, stylistically-speaking. [00:26:00] The fact that people "settle" (that's the term I would use for it), settle for this, the idea being that this somehow constitutes the most honest and authentic through line available to us is just jaw dropping. When you consider what allegedly this thing is supposed to be for. I mean, maybe we'll get into this, but I'll just leave this as a question for now. What is that moment allegedly doing?Not, what are the people in it allegedly doing? The moment itself, what is it? How is it different from us sitting here now talking about it? And how is it different from the gory frigging jet-fuelled aftermath of excess. And how's it different from the cursing alleged master of ceremonies? How can you [00:27:00] tell none of those things belong to this thing?And why do you have such a hard time imagining what doesAudience: Hmm mmChris: Well that leads me to my next question.Stephen: Ah, you're welcome.Chris: So, I've pulled a number of quotes from the book to read from over the course of the interview. And this one for anyone who's listening is on page 150. And you write Stephen,"Spiritually-speaking, most of the weddings in our corner of the world are endogamous affairs, inward-looking. What is, to me, most unnerving is that they can be spiritually-incestuous. The withering of psychic difference between people is the program of globalization. It is in the architecture of most things partaking of the internet, and it is in the homogeneity of our matrimony. [00:28:00] It is this very incestuous that matrimony was once crafted and entered into to avoid and subvert. Now, it grinds upon our differences until they are details.And so, this paragraph reminded me of a time in my youth when I seemed to be meeting couples who very eerily looked like each other. No blood or extended kin relation whatsoever, and yet they had very similar faces. And so as I get older, this kind of face fidelity aside, I continue to notice that people looking for companionship tend to base their search on similitude, on shared interests, customs, experiences, shared anything and everything. This, specifically, in opposition to those on the other side of the aisle or spectrum, to difference or divergence. And so, opposites don't attract anymore. I'm curious what you think this psychic [00:29:00] withering does to an achieve understanding of matrimony.Stephen: Well, I mean, let's wonder what it does to us, generally, first before we get to matrimony, let's say. It demonizes. Maybe that's too strong, but it certainly reconstitutes difference as some kind of affliction, some kind of not quite good enough, some kind of something that has to be overcome or overwhelmed on the road to, to what? On the road to sameness? So, if that's the goal, then are all of the differences between us, aberrations of some kind, if that's the goal? If that's the goal, are all the [00:30:00] differences between us, not God-given, but humanly misconstrued or worse? Humanly wrought? Do the differences between us conceivably then belong at all? Or is the principle object of the entire endeavor to marry yourself, trying to put up with the vague differences that the other person represents to you?I mean, I not very jokingly said years ago, that I coined a phrase that went something like "the compromise of infinity, which is other people." What does that mean? "The compromise of infinity, which is other people." Not to mention it's a pretty nice T-shirt. But what I meant by the [00:31:00] phrase is this: when you demonize difference in this fashion or when you go the other direction and lionize sameness, then one of the things that happens is that compromise becomes demonized, too. Compromise, by definition, is something you never should have done, right? Compromise is how much you surrender of yourself in order to get by. That's what all these things become. And before you know it, you're just beaten about the head and shoulders about "codependence" and you know, not being "true to yourself" as if being true to yourself is some kind of magic.I mean, the notion that "yourself is the best part of you" is just hilarious. I mean, when you think about it, like who's running amuck if yourself is what you're supposed to be? I ask you. Like, who's [00:32:00] doing the harm? Who's going mental if the self is such a good idea? So, of course, I'm maintaining here that I'm not persuaded that there is such a thing.I think it's a momentary lapse in judgment to have a self and to stick to it. That's the point I'm really making to kind of reify it until it turns ossified and dusty and bizarrely adamant like that estranged relative that lives in the basement of your house. Bizarrely, foreignly adamant, right? Like the house guest who just won't f**k off kind of thing.Okay, so "to thine own self be true," is it? Well, try being true to somebody else's self for ten minutes. Try that. [00:33:00] That's good at exercise for matrimony - being true to somebody else's self. You'll discover that their selves are not made in heaven, either. Either. I underscore it - either. I've completely lost track of the question you asked me.Chris: What are the consequences of the sameness on this anti-cultural sameness, and the program of it for an achieved understanding of matrimony.Stephen: Thank you. Well, I will fess up right now. I do so in the book. That's a terrible phrase. I swear I'd never say such a thing. "In my book... I say the following," but in this case, it's true. I did say this. I realized during the writing of it that I had made a tremendous tactical error in the convening of the event as I did it over the years, [00:34:00] and this is what it came to.I was very persuaded at the time of the story that appears in the chapter called "Salt and Indigo" in the book. I was very, very persuaded. I mean, listen, I made up the story (for what it's worth), okay, but I didn't make it up out of nothing. I made it up out of a kind of tribal memory that wouldn't quite let go.And in it, I was basically saying, here's these two tribes known principally for what they trade in and what they love most emphatically. They turn out to be the same thing. And I describe a circumstance in which they exchange things in a trade scenario, not a commerce scenario. And I'm using the chapter basically to make the case that matrimony's architecture derives in large measure from the sacraments of trade as manifest in that story. [00:35:00] Okay. And this is gonna sound obvious, but the fundamental requirement of the whole conceit that I came up with is that there are two tribes. Well, I thought to myself, "of course, there's always two tribes" at the time. And the two tribe-ness is reflected in when you come to the wedding site, you're typically asked (I hope you're still asked) " Are you family or friend of the groom or friend of the bride?" And you're seated "accordingly," right? That's the nominal, vestigial shard of this old tribal affiliation, that people came from over the rise, basically unknown to each other, to arrive at the kind of no man's land of matrimony, and proceeded accordingly. So, I put these things into motion in this very room and I sat people accordingly facing each other, not facing the alleged front of the room. [00:36:00] And of course, man, nobody knew where to look, because you raised your eyes and s**t. There's just humans across from you, just scads of them who you don't freaking know. And there's something about doing that to North Americas that just throws them. So, they're just looking at each other and then looking away, and looking at each other and looking away, and wondering what they're doing here and what it's for. And I'm going back and forth for three hours, orienting them as to what is is coming.Okay, so what's the miscalculation that I make? The miscalculation I made was assuming that by virtue of the seating arrangement, by virtue of me reminding them of the salt and indigo times, by virtue of the fact that they had a kind of allegiance of some sort or another to the people who are, for the moment, betrothed, that those distinctions and those affiliations together would congeal them, and constitute a [00:37:00] kind of tribal affiliation that they would intuitively be drawn towards as you would be drawn to heat on a cold winter's night.Only to discover, as I put the thing into motion that I was completely wrong about everything I just told you about. The nature of my error was this, virtually all of those people on one side of the room were fundamentally of the same tribe as the people on the other side of the room, apropos of your question, you see. They were card carrying members of the gray dominant culture of North America. Wow. The bleached, kind of amorphous, kind of rootless, ancestor-free... even regardless of whether their people came over in the last generation from the alleged old country. It doesn't really claim them.[00:38:00]There were two tribes, but I was wrong about who they were. That was one tribe. Virtually everybody sitting in the room was one tribe.So, who's the other tribe? Answer is: me and the four or five people who were in on the structural delivery of this endeavour with me. We were the other tribe.We didn't stand a chance, you see?And I didn't pick up on that, and I didn't cast it accordingly and employ that, instead. I employed the conceit that I insisted was manifest and mobilized in the thing, instead of the manifest dilemma, which is that everybody who came knew what a wedding was, and me and four or five other people were yet to know if this could be one. That was the tribal difference, if you [00:39:00] will.So, it was kind of invisible, wasn't it? Even to me at the time. Or, I say, maybe especially to me at the time. And so, things often went the way they went, which was for however much fascination and willingness to consider that there might have been in the room, there was quite a bit more either flat affect and kind of lack of real fascination, or curiosity, or sometimes downright hostility and pushback. Yeah.So, all of that comes from the fact that I didn't credit as thoroughly as I should have done, the persistence in Anglo-North America of a kind of generic sameness that turned out to be what most people came here ancestrally to become. "Starting again" is recipe for culture [00:40:00] loss of a catastrophic order. The fantasy of starting again. Right?And we've talked about that in your podcast, and you and I have talked about it privately, apropos of your own family and everybody's sitting in this room knows what I'm talking about. And when does this show up? Does it show up, oh, when you're walking down the street? Does it show up when you're on the mountaintop? Does it show up in your peak experiences? And the answer is "maybe." It probably shows up most emphatically in those times when you have a feeling that something special is supposed to be so, and all you can get from the "supposed to" is the allegation of specialness.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: And then, you look around in the context of matrimony and you see a kind of febral, kind of strained, the famous bridezilla stuff, all of that stuff. [00:41:00] You saw it in the hospitality industry, no doubt. You know, the kind of mania for perfection, as if perfection constitutes culture. Right? With every detail checked off in the checkbox, that's culture. You know, as if everything goes off without a hitch and there's no guffaws. And in fact, anybody could reasonably make the case, "Where do you think culture appears when the script finally goes f*****g sideways?" That's when. And when you find out what you're capable of, ceremonially.And generally speaking, I think most people discovered that their ceremonial illiteracy bordered on the bottomless.That's when you find out. Hmm.Chris: Wow.Stephen: Yeah. And that's why people, you know, in speech time, they reach in there and get that piece of paper, and just look at it. Mm-hmm. They don't even look up, terrified that they're gonna go off script for a minute as [00:42:00] if the Gods of Matrimony are a scripted proposition.Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us, that degree of deep reflection and humility that I'm sure comes with it.Stephen: Mea Culpa, baby. Yeah, I was, I got that one totally wrong. Mm-hmm. And I didn't know it at the time. Meanwhile, like, how much can you transgress and have the consequences of doing so like spill out across the floor like a broken thermometer's mercury and not wise up.But of course, I was as driven as anybody. I was as driven to see if I could come through with what I promised to do the year before. And keeping your promise can make you into a maniac.Audience: Hmm hmm.Chris: But I imagine that, you [00:43:00] know, you wouldn't have been able to see that even years later if you didn't say yes in the first place.Stephen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I wouldn't have been able to make the errors.Chris: Right.Stephen: Right. Yeah. I mean, as errors go, this is not a mortal sin. Right, right. And you could chalk it up to being a legitimate miscalculation. Well, so? All I'm saying is, it turns out I was there too, and it turns out, even though I was allegedly the circus master of the enterprise, I wasn't free and clear of the things we were all contending with, the kind of mortality and sort of cultural ricketiness that were all heirs to. That's how I translated it, as it turns out.So, PS there was a moment, [00:44:00] which I don't remember which setting it was now, but there was a moment when the "maybe we'll see if she becomes a bride" bride's mother slid up to me during the course of the proceedings, and in a kind of stage whisper more or less hissed me as follows."Is this a real wedding?"I mean, that's not a question. Not in that setting, obviously not. That is an accusation. Right. And a withering one at that. And there was a tremendous amount of throw-down involved.So, was it? I mean, what we do know is that she did not go to any of the weddings [00:45:00] that she was thinking of at the time, and go to the front of the room where the celebrant is austerely standing there with the book, or the script, or the well-intentioned, or the self-penned vows and never hissed at him or her, "is this a real wedding?"Never once did she do that. We know that.Right.And I think we know why. But she was fairly persuaded she knew what a real wedding was. And all she was really persuaded by was the poverty of the weddings that she'd attended before that one. Well, I was as informed in that respect as she was, wasn't I? I just probably hadn't gone to as many reprobate weddings as she had, so she had more to deal with than I did, even though I was in the position of the line of fire.And I didn't respond too well to the question, I have to say. At the moment, I was rather combative. But I mean, you try to do [00:46:00] what I tried to do and not have a degree of fierceness to go along with your discernment, you know, just to see if you can drag this carcass across the threshold. Anyway, that happened too.Chris: Wow. Yeah. Dominant culture of North America.Stephen: Heard of it.Chris: Yeah. Well, in Matrimony, there's quite a bit in which you write about hospitality and radical hospitality. And I wanted to move in that direction a little bit, because in terms of these kind of marketplace rituals or ceremonies that you were mentioning you know, it's something that we might wonder, I think, as you have, how did it come to be this [00:47:00] way?And so I'd like to, if I can once again, quote from matrimony in which you speak to the etymology of hospitality. And so for those interested on page 88,"the word hospitality comes from hospitaller, meaning 'one who cares for the afflicted, the infirm, the needy.' There's that thread of our misgivings about being on the receiving end of hospitality. Pull on it. For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"End quote.Stephen: That's so great. I mean, before you go on with the quote. It's so great to know that the word, unexamined, just kind of leaks upside, doesn't it? Hospitality, I mean, nobody goes "Hospitality, ew." [00:48:00] And then, if you just quietly do the obvious math to yourself, there's so much awkwardness around hospitality.This awkwardness must have an origin, have a home. There must be some misgiving that goes along with the giving of hospitality, mustn't there be? How else to understand where that kind of ickiness is to be found. Right? And it turns out that the etymology is giving you the beginnings of a way of figuring it out what it is that you're on the receiving end of - a kind of succor that you wish you didn't need, which is why it's the root word for "hospital."Chris: Hmm hmm. Wow.Audience: Hmm.Chris: May I repeat that sentence please? Once more."For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, [00:49:00] 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"And so this last part hits home for me as I imagine it does for many.And it feels like the orthodoxy of hospitality in our time is one based not only in transaction, but in debt. And if you offer hospitality to me, then I owe you hospitality.Stephen: Right.Chris: I'm indebted to you. And we are taught, in our time, that the worst thing to be in is in debt.Stephen: Right?Chris: And so people refuse both the desire to give as well as the learning skill of receiving. And this is continuing on page 88 now."But there's mystery afoot with this word. In its old Latin form, hospice meant both 'host' and 'guest.'"Stephen: Amazing. One. Either one, This is absolutely amazing. We're fairly sure that there's a [00:50:00] acres of difference between the giver of hospitality and the receiver that the repertoire is entirely different, that the skew between them is almost insurmountable, that they're not interchangeable in any way. But the history of the word immediately says, "really?" The history of the word, without question, says that "host" and "guest" are virtually the same, sitting in different places, being different people, more or less joined at the hip. I'll say more, but you go ahead with what you were gonna do. Sure.Chris: "In it's proto Indo-European origins, hospitality and hospice is a compound word: gosh + pot. And it meant something like [00:51:00] 'stranger/guest/host + powerful Lord.'It is amazing to me that ancestrally, the old word for guest, host, and stranger were all the same word. Potent ceremonial business, this is. In those days, the server and the serve were partners in something mysterious. This could be confusing, but only if you think of guest, host, and stranger as fixed identities.If you think of them as functions, as verbs, the confusion softens and begins to clear. The word hospice in its ancient root is telling us that each of the people gathered together in hospitality is bound to the others by formal etiquette, yes, but the bond is transacted through a subtle scheme of graces.Hospitality, it tells us, is a web of longing and belonging that binds people for a time, some hithereto unknown to each other is a clutch of mutually-binding elegances, you could say. In its ancient practice, [00:52:00] hospitality was a covenant. According to that accord, however we were with each other. That was how the Gods would be with us. We learn our hospitality by being on the receiving end of Godly administration. That's what giving thanks for members. We proceed with our kin in imitation of that example and in gratitude for it."Mm-hmm.And so today, among "secular" people, with the Gods ignored, this old-time hospitality seems endangered, if not fugitive. I'm curious how you imagine that this rupture arose, the ones that separated and commercialized the radical relationships between hosts and guests, that turned them from verbs to nouns and something like strangers to marketplace functions.[00:53:00]Stephen: Well, of course this is a huge question you've asked, and I'll see if I can unhuge it a bit.Chris: Uhhuh.Stephen: Let's go right to the heart of what happened. Just no preliminaries, just right to it.So, to underscore again, the beauty of the etymology. I've told you over and over again, the words will not fail you. And this is just a shining example, isn't it? That the fraternization is a matter of ceremonial alacrity that the affiliation between host and guest, which makes them partners in something, that something is the [00:54:00] evocation of a third thing that's neither one of them. It's the thing they've lent themselves to by virtue of submitting to being either a host or a guest. One.Two. You could say that in circumstances of high culture or highly-functioning culture, one of the principle attributes of that culture is that the fundament of its understanding, is that only with the advent of the stranger in their midst that the best of them comes forward.Okay, follow that. Yeah.So, this is a little counterintuitive for those of us who don't come from such places. We imagine that the advent of strangers in the midst of the people I'm describing would be an occasion where people hide their [00:55:00] best stuff away until the stranger disappears, and upon the disappearance of the stranger, the good stuff comes out again.You know?So, I'm just remembering just now, there's a moment in the New Testament where Jesus says something about the best wine and he's coming from exactly this page that we're talking about - not the page in the book, but this understanding. He said, you know, "serve your best wine first," unlike the standard, that prevails, right?So again, what a stranger does in real culture is call upon the cultural treasure of the host's culture, and provides the opportunity for that to come forward, right? By which you can understand... Let's say for simplicity's sake, there's two kinds of hospitality. There's probably all kinds of gradations, [00:56:00] but for the purposes of responding to what you've asked, there's two.One of them is based on kinship. Okay? So, family meal. So, everybody knows whose place is whose around the table, or it doesn't matter - you sit wherever you want. Or, when we're together, we speak shorthand. That's the shorthand of familiarity and affinity, right?Everybody knows what everybody's talking about. A lot of things get half-said or less, isn't it? And there's a certain fineness, isn't it? That comes with that kind of affinity. Of course, there is, and I'm not diminishing it at all. I'm just characterizing it as being of a certain frequency or calibre or charge. And the charge is that it trades on familiarity. It requires that. There's that kind of hospitality."Oh, sit wherever you want."Remember this one?[00:57:00]"We don't stand on ceremony here.""Oh, you're one of the family now." I just got here. What, what?But, of course, you can hear in the protestations the understanding, in that circumstance, that formality is an enemy to feeling good in this moment, isn't it? It feels stiff and starched and uncalled for or worse.It feels imported from elsewhere. It doesn't feel friendly. So, I'm giving you now beginnings of a differentiation between how cultures who really function as cultures understand what it means to be hospitable and what often prevails today, trading is a kind of low-grade warfare conducted against the strangeness of the stranger.The whole purpose of treating somebody like their family is to mitigate, and finally neutralize their [00:58:00] strangeness, so that for the purposes of the few hours in front of us all, there are no strangers here. Right? Okay.Then there's another kind, and intuitively you can feel what I'm saying. You've been there, you know exactly what I mean.There's another kind of circumstance where the etiquette that prevails is almost more emphatic, more tangible to you than the familiar one. That's the one where your mother or your weird aunt or whoever she might be, brings out certain kind of stuff that doesn't come out every day. And maybe you sit in a room that you don't often sit in. And maybe what gets cooked is stuff you haven't seen in a long time. And some part of you might be thinking, "What the hell is all this about?" And the answer is: it's about that guy in the [00:59:00] corner that you don't know.And your own ancestral culture told acres of stories whose central purpose was to convey to outsiders their understanding of what hospitality was. That is fundamentally what The Iliad and The Odyssey are often returning to and returning to and returning to.They even had a word for the ending of the formal hospitality that accrued, that arose around the care and treatment of strangers. It was called pomp or pompe, from which we get the word "pompous." And you think about what the word "pompous" means today.It means "nose in the air," doesn't it? Mm-hmm. It means "thinks really highly of oneself," isn't it? And it means "useless, encumbering, kind of [01:00:00] artificial kind of going through the motions stuff with a kind of aggrandizement for fun." That's what "pompous" means. Well, the people who gave us the word didn't mean that at all. This word was the word they used to describe the particular moment of hospitality when it was time for the stranger to leave.And when it was mutually acknowledged that the time for hospitality has come to an end, and the final act of hospitality is to accompany the stranger out of the house, out of the compound, out into the street, and provision them accordingly, and wish them well, and as is oftentimes practiced around here, standing in the street and waving them long after they disappear from view.This is pompous. This is what it actually means. Pretty frigging cool when you get corrected once in a while, isn't it? [01:01:00] Yeah.So, as I said, to be simplistic about it, there's at least a couple of kinds, and one of them treasures the advent of the stranger, understanding it to be the detonation point for the most elegant part of us to come forward.Now, those of us who don't come from such a place, we're just bamboozled and Shanghai'ed by the notion of formality, which we kind of eschew. You don't like formality when it comes to celebration, as if these two things are hostile, one to the other. But I'd like you to consider the real possibility that formality is grace under pressure, and that formality is there to give you a repertoire of response that rescues you from the gross limitations of your autobiography.[01:02:00]Next question. I mean, that's the beginning.Chris: Absolutely. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Thank you once again, Stephen. So alongside the term or concept of "pompe," in which the the guest or stranger was led out of the house or to the entrance of the village, there was also the consideration around the enforcement of hospitality, which you write about in the book. And you write that"the enforcement of hospitality runs the palpable risk of violating or undoing the cultural value it is there to advocate for. Forcing people to share their good fortune with the less fortunate stretches, to the point of undoing the generosity of spirit that the culture holds dear. Enforcement of hospitality is a sign of the eclipse of hospitality, typically spawned by insecurity, contracted self-definition, and the darkening of the [01:03:00] stranger at the door.Instead, such places and times are more likely to encourage the practice of hospitality in subtle generous ways, often by generously treating the ungenerous."And so there seems to be a need for limits placed on hospitality, in terms of the "pompe," the maximum three days in which a stranger can be given hospitality, and concurrently a need to resist enforcing hospitality. This seems like a kind of high-wire act that hospitable cultures have to balance in order to recognize and realize an honorable way of being with a stranger. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to the possibility of how these limits might be practiced without being enforced. What might that look like in a culture that engages with, with such limits, but without prohibitions?Stephen: Mm-hmm. That's a very good question. [01:04:00] Well, I think your previous question was what happened? I think, in a nutshell, and I didn't really answer that, so maybe see how I can use this question to answer the one that you asked before: what happened? So, there's no doubt in my mind that something happened that it's kind of demonstrable, if only with the benefit of hindsight.Audience: Right.Stephen: Or we can feel our way around the edges of the absence of the goneness of that thing that gives us some feel for the original shape of that thing.So you could say I'm trafficking in "ideals," here, and after a fashion, maybe, yeah. But the notion of "ideals," when it's used in this slanderous way suggests that "it was never like that."Chris: Mm-hmm.Stephen: And I suggest to you it's been like that in a lot of places, and there's a lot of places where it's still like that, although globalization [01:05:00] may be the coup de grâce performed upon this capacity. Okay. But anyway.Okay. So what happened? Well, you see in the circumstance that I described, apropos of the stranger, the stranger is in on it. The stranger's principle responsibility is to be the vector for this sort of grandiose generosity coming forward, and to experience that in a burdensome and unreciprocated fashion, until you realize that their willingness to do that is their reciprocity. Everybody doesn't get to do everything at once. You can't give and receive at the same time. You know what that's called? "Secret Santa at school," isn't it?That's where nobody owes nobody nothing at the end. That's what we're all after. I mean, one of your questions, you know, pointed to that, that there's a kind of, [01:06:00] what do you call that, teeter-totter balance between what people did for each other and what they received for each other. Right. And nobody feels slighted in any way, perfect balance, et cetera.Well, the circumstance here has nothing of the kind going with it. The circumstance we're describing now is one in which the hospitality is clearly unequal in terms of who's eating whose food, for example, in terms of the absolutely frustrated notion of reciprocity, that in fact you undo your end of the hospitality by trying to pay back, or give back, or pay at all, or break even, or not feel the burden of "God, you've been on the take for fricking hours here now." And if you really look in the face of the host, I mean, they're just getting started and you can't, you can't take it anymore.[01:07:00]So, one of the ways that we contend with this is through habits of speech. So, if somebody comes around with seconds. They say, "would you like a little more?"And you say, "I'm good. I'm good. I'm good." You see, "I'm good" is code for what? "F**k off." That's what it's code for. It's a little strong. It's a little strong. What I mean is, when "I'm good" comes to town, it means I don't need you and what you have. Good God, you're not there because you need it you knucklehead. You're there because they need it, because their culture needs an opportunity to remember itself. Right?Okay. So what happened? Because you're making it sound like a pretty good thing, really. Like who would say, "I think we've had enough of this hospitality thing, don't you? Let's try, oh, [01:08:00] keeping our s**t to ourselves. That sounds like a good alternative. Let's give it a week or two, see how it rolls." Never happened. Nobody decided to do this - this change, I don't think. I think the change happened, and sometime long after people realized that the change had had taken place. And it's very simple. The change, I think, went something like this.As long as the guest is in on it, there's a shared and mutually-held understanding that doesn't make them the same. It makes them to use the quote from the book "partners," okay, with different tasks to bring this thing to light, to make it so. What does that require? A mutually-held understanding in vivo as it's happening, what it is.Okay. [01:09:00] So, that the stranger who's not part of the host culture... sorry, let me say this differently.The culture of the stranger has made the culture of the host available to the stranger no matter how personally adept he or she may be at receiving. Did you follow that?Audience: A little.Stephen: Okay. Say it again?Audience: Yes, please.Stephen: Okay. The acculturation, the cultured sophistication of the stranger is at work in his or her strangerhood. Okay. He or she's not at home, but their cultural training helps them understand what their obligations are in terms of this arrangement we've been describing here.Okay, so I think the rupture takes place [01:10:00] when the culturation of one side or the other fails to make the other discernible to the one.One more time?When something happens whereby the acculturation of one of the partners makes the identity, the presence, and the valence of the other one untranslatable. Untranslatable.I could give you an example from what I call " the etiquette of trade," or the... what was the word? Not etiquette. What's the other word?Chris: The covenant?Stephen: Okay, " covenant of trade" we'll call it. So, imagine that people are sitting across from each other, two partners in a trade. Okay? [01:11:00] Imagine that they have one thing to sell or move or exchange and somebody has something else.How does this work? Not "what are the mechanics?" That can be another discussion, but, if this works, how does it work? Not "how does it happen?" How does it actually achieve what they're after? Maybe it's something like this.I have this pottery, and even though you're not a potter, but somebody in your extended family back home was, and you watched what they went through to make a fricking pot, okay?You watched how their hands seized up, because the clay leached all the moisture out of the hands. You distinctly remember that - how the old lady's hands looked cracked and worn, and so from the work of making vessels of hospitality, okay? [01:12:00] It doesn't matter that you didn't make it yourself. The point is you recognize in the item something we could call "cultural patrimony."You recognize the deep-runningness of the culture opposite you as manifest and embodied in this item for trade. Okay? So, the person doesn't have to "sell you" because your cultural sophistication makes this pot on the other side available to you for the deeply venerable thing that it is. Follow what I'm saying?Okay. So, you know what I'm gonna say next? When something happens, the items across from you cease to speak, cease to have their stories come along with them, cease to be available. There's something about your cultural atrophy that you project onto the [01:13:00] item that you don't recognize.You don't recognize it's valence, it's proprieties, it's value, it's deep-running worth and so on. Something happened, okay? And because you're not making your own stuff back home or any part of it. And so now, when you're in a circumstance like this and you're just trying to get this pot, but you know nothing about it, then the enterprise becomes, "Okay, so what do you have to part with to obtain the pot?"And the next thing is, you pretend you're not interested in obtaining the pot to obtain the pot. That becomes part of the deal. And then, the person on the making end feels the deep running slight of your disinterest, or your vague involvement in the proceedings, or maybe the worst: when it's not things you're going back and forth with, but there's a third thing called money, which nobody makes, [01:14:00] which you're not reminded of your grandma or anyone else's with the money. And then, money becomes the ghost of the original understanding of the cultural patrimony that sat between you. That's what happened, I'm fairly sure: the advent, the estrangement that comes with the stranger, instead of the opportunity to be your cultural best when the stranger comes.And then of course, it bleeds through all kinds of transactions beyond the "obvious material ones." So, it's a rupture in translatability, isn't it?Chris: You understand this to happen or have happened historically, culturally, et cetera, with matrimony as well?Stephen: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.Yeah. This is why, for example, things like the fetishization of virginity.Audience: Mm-hmm. [01:15:00]Stephen: I think it's traceable directly to what we're talking about. How so? Oh, this is a whole other long thing, but the very short version would be this.Do you really believe that through all of human history until the recent liberation, that people have forever fetishized the virginity of a young woman and jealously defended it, the "men" in particular, and that it became a commodity to trade back and forth in, and that it had to be prodded and poked at to determine its intactness? And this was deemed to be, you know, honourable behavior?Do you really think that's the people you come from, that they would've do that to the most cherished of their [01:16:00] own, barely pubescent girls? Come on now. I'm not saying it didn't happen and doesn't still happen. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, God almighty, something happened for that to be so.And I'm trying to allude to you now what I think took place. Then all of a sudden, the hymen takes the place of the pottery, doesn't it? And it becomes universally translatable. Doesn't it? It becomes a kind of a ghosted artifact of a culturally-intact time. It's as close as you can get.Hence, this allegation of its purity, or the association with purity, and so on. [01:17:00] I mean, there's lots to say, but that gives you a feel for what might have happened there.Chris: Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for being so generous with your considerations here.Stephen: You see why I had to write a book, eh?Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: There was too much bouncing around. Like I had to just keep track of my own thoughts on the matter.But can you imagine all of this at play in the year, oh, I don't know, 2022, trying to put into motion a redemptive passion play called "matrimony," with all of this at play? Not with all of this in my mind, but with all of this actually disfiguring the anticipation of the proceedings for the people who came.Can you imagine? Can you imagine trying to pull it off, and [01:18:00] contending overtly with all these things and trying to make room for them in a moment that's supposed to be allegedly - get ready for it - happy.I should have raised my rates on the first day, trying to pull that off.But anyway.Okay, you go now,Chris: Maybe now you'll have the opportunity.Stephen: No, man. No. I'm out of the running for that. "Pompe" has come and come and gone. Mm.Chris: So, in matrimony, Stephen, you write that"the brevity, the brevity of modern ceremonies is really there to make sure that nothing happens, nothing of substance, nothing of consequence, no alchemy, no mystery, no crazy other world stuff. That overreach there in its scripted heart tells me that deep in the rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day, the modern wedding is scared [01:19:00] silly of something happening. That's because it has an ages-old abandoned memory of a time when a wedding was a place where the Gods came around, where human testing and trying and making was at hand, when the dead lingered in the wings awaiting their turn to testify and inveigh."Gorgeous. Gorgeous.Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: And so I'm curious ifStephen: "Rayon-wrapped bosom." That's not, that's not shabby.Chris: "Rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day." Yeah.So, I'm curious do you think the more-than-human world practices matrimony, and if so, what, if anything, might you have learned about matrimony from the more-than-human world?Stephen: I would say the reverse. I would say, we practice the more-than-human world in matrimony, not that the more-than-human world practices matrimony. We practice them, [01:20:00] matrimonially.Next. Okay. Or no? I just gonna say that, that's pretty good.Well, where do we get our best stuff from? Let's just wonder that. Do we get our best stuff from being our best? Well, where does that come from? And this is a bit of a barbershop mirrors situation here, isn't it? To, to back, back, back, back.If you're thinking of time, you can kind of get lost in that generation before, or before, before, before. And it starts to sound like one of them biblical genealogies. But if you think of it as sort of the flash point of multiple presences, if you think of it that way, then you come to [01:21:00] credit the real possibility that your best stuff comes from you being remembered by those who came before you.Audience: Hmm.Stephen: Now just let that sit for a second, because what I just said is logically-incompatible.Okay? You're being remembered by people who came before you. That's not supposed to work. It doesn't work that way. Right?"Anticipated," maybe, but "remembered?" How? Well, if you credit the possibility of multiple beginnings, that's how. Okay. I'm saying that your best stuff, your best thoughts, not the most noble necessarily. I would mean the most timely, [01:22:00] the ones that seem most needed, suddenly.You could take credit and sure. Why, why not? Because ostensibly, it arrives here through you, but if you're frank with yourself, you know that you didn't do that on command, right? I mean, you could say, I just thought of it, but you know in your heart that it was thought of and came to you.I don't think there's any difference between saying that and saying you were thought of.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: So, that's what I think the rudiments of old-order matrimony are. They are old people and their benefactors in the food chain and spiritually speaking. Old people and their benefactors, the best part of them [01:23:00] willed to us, entrusted and willed to us. So, when you are willing to enter into the notion that old-order matrimony is older than you, older than your feelings for the other person, older than your love, and your commitment, and your willingness to make the vows and all that stuff, then you're crediting the possibility that your love is not the beginning of anything.You see. Your love is the advent of something, and I use that word deliberately in its Christian notion, right? It's the oncomingness, the eruption into the present day of something, which turns out to be hugely needed and deeply unsuspected at the same time.I used to ask in the school, "can you [01:24:00] have a memory of something you have no lived experience of?" I think that's what the best part of you is. I'm not saying the rest of you is shite. I'm not saying that. You could say that, but I am saying that when I say "the best part of you," that needs a lot of translating, doesn't it?But the gist of it is that the best part of you is entrusted to you. It's not your creation, it's your burden, your obligation, your best chance to get it right. And that's who we are to those who came before us. We are their chance to get it right, and matrimony is one of the places where you practice the gentle art of getting it right.[01:25:00] Another decent reason to write a book.Chris: So, gorgeous. Wow. Thank you Stephen. I might have one more question.Stephen: Okay. I might have one more answer. Let's see.Chris: Alright. Would I be able to ask if dear Nathalie Roy could join us up here alongside your good man.So, returning to Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work. On page 94, [01:26:00] Stephen, you write that"hospitality of the radical kind is

In this episode, we welcome Stephen Jenkinson—writer, teacher, storyteller, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. Stephen is known for breaking open the marrow of language and returning it in all its poetic weight. His work on elderhood, grief, dying wise, and the making (and unmaking) of culture has touched people all over the world.His newest book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work, takes on what he calls the “mother of a culture”—the wedding. In a time when so many weddings risk becoming performances, spectacles, or non-events, Stephen asks: what would it mean to make a wedding real?In this conversation we explore:Why vows are not the same as promisesHow families, friends, and communities become witnesses rather than spectatorsWhy weddings matter in a culture of high divorce rates and discredited ritualsWhat it means for the union of two people to implicate everyone presentThe difference between a ceremony that entertains and a ceremony that truly happensThis is not just a conversation about marriage. It's about consequence, culture, and what it might take to make our ceremonies—and our lives—real.Links You'll LoveOrphan WisdomMatrimony the BookArc + Craft: An Exploration of Creativity and Culture Making EventLoved this ep? Try this one:160 Manda Scott - Pondering how we became accidental gods of this land & seeking connection to it with humility not controlPod Partners Rock: Australian Medicinal Herbs    Code: Future5Support the ShowCasual Support - Buy Me A CoffeeRegular Support - PatreonBuy the Book - Futuresteading - live like tomorrow matters, Huddle - creating a tomorrow of togethernessSupport the show

Stephen Jenkinson is a culture activist and ceremonialist advocating a handmade life and eloquence. He is an author, a storyteller, a musician, sculptor and off-grid organic farmer. He is the founder/ principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. Also a sought-after workshop leader, articulating matters of the heart, human suffering, confusions through ceremony. He is the author of Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work (2025), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), and the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015).  On this Episode: Stephen Jenkinson | @stephenjenkinsonofficial |  Adam Jackson | @adam___jackson Connect with Sacred Sons:  Start Here–Check In With Sacred Sons: Check-In Survey    Join The Circle Online Community: Join The Circle Join a Sacred Sons Event Near You: Event Calendar Sacred Sons Upcoming Events:   CONVERGENCE X: Across Nations   REMEMBRANCE II: Seeds of Change Shop: Sacred Sons Apparel & Cacao  Instagram: @sacredsons  Website: sacredsons.com   YouTube: Sacred Sons    Music: Ancient Future Want to become a Sponsor of Sacred Sons Podcast? Sponsorship Request Form 

Ron Pevny, founder and director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, shares wisdom on living a fulfilling, purpose-driven second half of life.As today's seniors redefine what it means to age, Conscious Living, Conscious Aging offers wisdom and practical tools for navigating this new chapter with vitality, engagement, and spiritual depth. Pevny introduces Conscious Eldering as a pathway to personal growth, service, and lifelong exploration, helping readers cultivate meaning, navigate life transitions, and embrace their elder years with intention. This conversation will explore how aging can be a time of transformation, contribution, and deep fulfillment.Ron Pevny, M.A., CSL has for forty years been dedicated to assisting people in negotiating life transitions as they create lives of purpose and passion. He is Founding Director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, based in Colorado, which for 20 years has presented workshops and retreats across North America to support people in bringing purpose, growth and commitment to service to their elder years. He is author of Conscious Living, Conscious Aging: Claiming the Gifts of Elderhood, published by Beyond Words/Atria Books in 2014, with a new, 10th Anniversary expanded and updated edition published this past July. Ron is also a Certified Sage-ing® Leader, and has served as the host/interviewer for three Transforming Aging Summits presented by The Shift Network and co-host for the Turning Points interview series presented by Sage-ing International.

In this deep dive into menopause and elderhood, Kimberly and Kate Codrington discuss how they see their inter-generational work with women around self-care and cultural work. Kate's book The Second Spring: The Self-Care Guide to Menopause and her more recent The Perimenopause Journal have made an indelible impact as Kimberly transitioned to the other side of the menopause hill. Two women, in their second spring, consider their responsibilities to women in various cycles of womanhood. They explore the impact of teachers, trauma, and the digital age on women, highlighting the need for resilience, play, and the ability to hold paradoxes. The discussion also touches on the importance of role models, the ever-changing dynamics of female elders, and the significance of embodied compassion in doing work in the women's wellness and healthcare fields.   Bio Kate's mission is to change the way we regard menopause and show how we can relax into our own, inner authority through our cyclical nature, deep body intelligence and menopause process. Life around and within is always communicating with us and her passion is for the ‘soft animal body', the magic of the liminal, and the potential of emergent processes. Kate refuses to take herself too seriously and tries to never take on anything that is not pleasurable and delicious. She is a menstrual and menopause mentor, speaker, workshop facilitator, writer, podcaster and have been a therapist for more than 30 years.  She is also an artist currently weaving textiles, words, story and stitch. She's in her second spring, which means post-menopause, and has deep gratitude for the education that the menopause process has gifted her. The Perimenopause Journal is now available at your favourite booksellers and my first book Second Spring: the self-care guide to menopause was published by HarperCollins 2022. What You'll Hear The responsibility of female elders Accountability, compassion and intention Setting around the journey to menopause How does post-perimenopause impact mother/daughter relationships What is the purpose of elders? The power of some worldly detachment Michael Mead's “Growing Downwards” Embracing different styles and adornments as we age, reflecting on the changes in the body and preferences. The importance of being playful and expressive in one's choices, regardless of age or societal expectations. The intersection of joy and pleasure with healing Competition between women in the wellness and healthcare field   Links Website: https://www.katecodrington.co.uk/ IG: @kate_codrington The Perimenopause Journal Activate Your Inner Jaguar: Sex Edition - Get on the Waitlist here

In this episode, we delve into how elderhood offers a unique spiritual opportunity to reflect on one's spiritual bucket list and identity beyond profession and family roles. Our discussion also covers the spiritual practice of preparing for the end of life, including planned giving and legacy planning within the church. We explore the importance of advanced directives, funeral planning, and the creation of a comprehensive guide to aid individuals and families in navigating these pivotal decisions. Additionally, the video touches on a new program at St. Mary's during Lent titled 'Leave A Legacy,' which educates congregants on medical and spiritual concerns, legal and financial considerations, probate processes, and estate planning. Viewers are encouraged to think deeply about their spiritual and financial legacies and the importance of their contributions to the future of the church community. 00:00 Introduction to Elderhood and Spiritual Bucket Lists 00:48 Spiritual Practice and End-of-Life Preparation 01:24 Legacy Planning and Financial Gifts 04:06 Funeral Planning and Personal Preferences 10:45 Lenten Program: Leave A Legacy 17:34 Diocesan Support and Future Planning 21:36 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Join us for a heartfelt conversation with Jan Hosea at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as we delve into the essence of spiritual identity and Elderhood. Discover the history and current character of St. Mary's congregation, renowned for their welcoming and pastoral care. Learn about the transition from a life centered on 'doing' to one focused on 'being,' and how this shift can lead to deeper spiritual fulfillment. Jan also shares insights about a new six-week program dedicated to exploring spirituality in later life, encouraging the community to reflect on their spiritual 'bucket list.' Don't miss this enriching discussion about wisdom, contemplation, and embracing a new phase of life. 00:00 Introduction to Spiritual Identity 00:33 Welcome to St. Mary's Episcopal Church 01:00 History and Formation of St. Mary's 02:48 Current Congregation and Activities 03:55 Pastoral Care Team and Community Support 05:07 Pet Memorial Garden and Church Grounds 06:08 Elderhood and Spiritual Growth Program 10:23 Contemplative Practices and Wisdom 15:19 Spiritual Bucket List and Personal Fulfillment 17:39 Conclusion and Upcoming Events

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! It's been a while since we've caught up with our two most recurring and popular guests, pizza legends John Arena (Metro Pizza in Las Vegas) and Brian Spangler (Apizza Scholl's, Portland, OR). Not only have they both been there and done it all, but they are also trusted mentors to many pizza operator newbies and, over these past years on Pizza Quest, have served as prophets-in-residence,alerting us to what to watch for next. We've broken stories with them on emerging trends like the pizzeria/bagel connection, sourdough is here to stay, and the return of the tavern/parlor/bar pizza style. In this episode, these esteemed pizza "elders" tell us about what they see coming next, as well as sharing some intimate, personal reflections regarding their next steps as they each approach their own "Act Three," and confront the challenges of transitioning into elderhood. Bottom line: even if you never plan to stop, you still need to have an exit strategy....

It's not often I feel nervous. I worked for many years as a photographer and met people from every stratum of society, from the wealthy and famous to the outcast and downtrodden. One thing I learnt early on is that nerves resulted in bad imagery. So when it came time for this podcast with Stephen Jenkinson, a man whose work I've followed for nearly a decade, I was nervous. It's not that Stephen is difficult to talk to or combative; it's because Stephen is a master of the English language, and each word he uses is carefully chosen based on its etymology. He also doesn't let you get away with anything if he believes you've incorrectly identified something. My nerves quickly abaited once I felt Stephen's generosity of spirit.   This is one of the most meaningful conversations I've had. Stephen traverses: - What we have lost in our modern societies, if there is a way back, and if there were, to what we think we are to return to. - Death and our lack of education around the ultimate which every life faces. - What it truly means to cultivate a mindset that sees us creating genuine connections to one another to create communities that will benefit future generations. Most of all, Stephen reminded me that our lives are shaped by the questions we ask rather than the answers we seek—in his own words, "I'm far more in favour of the wonder of the question than the certainty of the answer." As the great poet E.E. Cummings phrased it, "Always the most beautiful answer to he who asks the most beautiful question." It was an honor to speak with Stephen, and I know you'll get something significant from his life-long pursuit of asking the most beautiful questions.  It was an honor to speak with Stephen, and I know you'll get something significant from his life-long pursuit of asking the most beautiful questions.    About Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW ~ Culture activist/ farmer/author ~ Stephen teaches internationally and has authored seven books of cultural critique. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. The School's new project, The Scriptorium (2025), is creating an archive and library of his life's work. Apprenticed to a master storyteller as a young man, he worked extensively with dying people and their families. He is former programme director in a major Canadian hospital and former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. Stephen has Masters' degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work). In 2023 Stephen received a Distinguished Alumni Honours Award from Harvard University for “helping people navigate grief, exploring the liminal space between life and death, and connecting humanity through ceremony and storytelling.” In August 2025, Sounds True will release Stephen's newest book: Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work.  He is also the author of Reckoning (co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson in 2022), A Generation's Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul's Desires: A Meditation (2002). He was a contributing author to Palliative Care – Core Skills and Clinical Competencies (2007). Since co-founding the Nights of Grief and Mystery project with singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins in 2015, he has toured this musical/ tent show revival/ storytelling/ ceremony of a show across North America, U.K., Ireland, Israel, Australia and New Zealand. They released their first Nights of Grief & Mystery album in 2017, and at the end of 2020 released two new records: Dark Roads and Rough Gods. A new album release is planned for 2025. Stephen Jenkinson is also the subject of the feature length documentary film Griefwalker (National Film Board of Canada, 2008, dir. Tim Wilson), a portrait of his work with dying people, and Lost Nation Road, a shorter documentary on the crafting of the Nights of Grief and Mystery tours (2019, dir. Ian Mackenzie). He was a stone sculptor turned wood-carver, and learned the arts of traditional birch bark canoe building. His first house won a Governor General's Award for architecture. He now lives on a small scale organic farm in an off-grid straw bale house. The 120 year old abandoned granary from across the river which appeared in Griefwalker was dismantled last year and re-erected at the Orphan Wisdom farm, where it is again a working barn.   Site https://orphanwisdom.com/   Events https://orphanwisdom.com/events-list/   Feelings with Strangers   Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers  

This month we're sharing a conversation on the implications of climate change in an aging society. HR (Rick) Moody, a scholar of philosophy and career-long leader in positive aging, pulled together a group of people on Zoom, asking neurologist, educator and creative Peter Whitehouse to join Full Ecology's Mary M Clare in leading a discussion focused on Elders and Climate Change.Dr. Moody is deeply committed to climate repair and has recently released a new book entitled, CLIMATE CHANGE IN AN AGING SOCIETY, published by Routledge Press. He also edits the weekly newsletter by the same name.Peter Whitehouse is a leader in Alzheimer's research, having established that the diagnosis cannot represent a stand-alone disease, but rather a complex combination of challenges that vary from person to person. He is also deeply involved in education. He and his wife have, for 25 years, been champions of three charter elementary schools in Cleveland, Ohio focused on bringing young learners and seniors together to enhance the learning of both. Central to the curricula of these schools is attention to the environment and climate challenges. Rick then invited Mary M Clare, the host of HOW IT LOOKS FROM HERE, to join as a second primary speaker. Rick was interested in Mary's work with Gary Ferguson on Full Ecology, together with her current work with what she calls “Inner Elderhood.” .Rick, Peter and Mary join with others who attended the Zoom session to discuss the salience and nuance of Elderhood in times of climate change. You'll hear new links between Elder years and the environment, as well as an enlivened exchange on the intersection of Climate degradation and ageism.You can learn more about Elderhood and Climate Change by checking out Rick Moody's newly released book, CLIMATE CHANGE IN AN AGING SOCIETY. If you're interested in receiving the weekly newsletter by the same name by going to this newsletter link. Learn more about Peter Whitehouse by tapping into a few interviews with him recorded on you tube videos. These, of course, are also in the show notes.And, keep listening to HILFH for more from Mary - you can also stay current by subscribing to the Full Ecology newsletter through the link on the Full Ecology website - www.fullecology.com.The bottom line here - there's always more to learn toward doing our parts as good stewards of the planet, no matter our age.RESOURCESDavid mentioned the veteran's organization that advocates for environmental justice and policies that protect communities, Common Defense.Tara mentioned the book about indigenous people of the Amazon entitled:

Join your Butch Daily crew in a post-election conversation about self-care, community care, being pissed off, and staying connected. We also talk about an infamous backpacking trip in the year 2000, the Moose Lodge, crushing text messages from an 11 year-old, plans for the future, and embracing our butch elderhood. let's do this!  Email us at thebutchdaily@gmail.com

Ron Pevny shares insights on the 10th Anniversary Edition of Conscious Living, Conscious Aging: Claiming the Gifts of Elderhood, how to harness the healing power of nature, the importance of leaving a legacy, and why embracing a new life chapter is hard when desperately hanging on to who we used to be. About Ron Ron Pevny, M.A., CSL has for forty years been dedicated to assisting people in negotiating life transitions as they create lives of purpose and passion. He is Founding Director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, based in Colorado, which for 20 years has presented workshops and retreats across North America to support people in bringing purpose, growth and commitment to service to their elder years. He is author of Conscious Living, Conscious Aging: Claiming the Gifts of Elderhood, published by Beyond Words/Atria Books. Ron is also a Certified Sage-ing® Leader and has served as the host/interviewer for three Transforming Aging Summits presented by The Shift Network and co-host for the Turning Points series presented by Sage-ing International. Key Takeaways Wilderness vision quests and rites of passage are key elements of conscious aging. Tapping into the power of nature helps people move through life transitions world and open hearts and minds. Conscious eldering goes a step beyond “positive aging,” “active aging” and “successful aging” by focusing on later life as the pinnacle of emotional and spiritual growth. It is about doing “inner work” and creating a full of pleasure and a sense of purpose. Elders provide the wisdom the word urgently needs now, but many think they lose their purpose and ability to contribute meaningfully after retirement. There's a need deep in all human beings to leave a legacy. Legacy is the mark we have made on the world and how we have touched people's lives.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Louise Aronson returns to the Commonwealth Club World Affairs stage to discuss the enduring themes of her New York Times bestselling book, Elderhood, and what to expect in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election. What are the practical and existential implications of aging in a political era defined by polarization and increasing instability? How can individuals look out for their health and families regardless of the election outcome? Aronson is joined by fellow writer Jenara Nerenberg, in a follow-up conversation from their first lively event together five years ago. Nerenberg is the celebrated author of Divergent Mind and a forthcoming book on the psychology of groupthink. About the Speakers Louise Aronson, MD MFA, is a leading geriatrician, writer, educator, professor of medicine at UCSF and the author Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, and Reimagining Life. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Aronson currently runs the integrative aging practice and age self-care integrative medical group visit program at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health. She has received the Gold Professorship in Humanism in Medicine, the California Homecare Physician of the Year award, and the American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year award. Her writing credits include The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, JAMA, Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine, and her work in aging has been featured on NPR, NBC, CBS, and The New Yorker. Jenara Nerenberg is the bestselling author of Divergent Mind, hailed as "extraordinary, jaw-dropping" by Library Journal; she is an Aspen Ideas Brave New Idea speaker and the author of a second forthcoming book on the psychology of groupthink. A celebrated writer covering the intersection of psychology and society, Jenara's work has been featured in the UC Berkeley Science Center's Greater Good magazine, Fast Company magazine, CNN, NPR, BBC and elsewhere. Nerenberg speaks widely on social science topics, including at universities, libraries, companies and organizations around the world. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Harvard School of Public Health; she grew up in San Francisco and, as a millennial, can now be found on Instagram. Organizer: Denise Michaud   A Grownups Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. This program contains EXPLICIT language.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conscious Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny provocative model of “conscious eldering” opens the door to the rich possibilities of intentionally growing into elderhood, as contrasted with merely growing old. It's time to engage with family, community, your spiritual source, and the world, which needs your talents.  Claiming the Gifts of Elderhood "Conscious Living, Conscious Aging" by Ron Pevny - Book PReview Book of the Week - BOTW - Season 7 Book 44 Buy the book on Amazon https://amzn.to/3YV7dG8 GET IT. READ :) #elderwisdom #consciousliving #awareness  FIND OUT which HUMAN NEED is driving all of your behavior http://6-human-needs.sfwalker.com/ Human Needs Psychology + Emotional Intelligence + Universal Laws of Nature = MASTER OF LIFE AWARENESS https://www.sfwalker.com/master-life-awareness --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sfwalker/support

In this episode of MUM, host Ellen Wong interviews Abbie Rosner (writer) about new models for elderhood, confronting mortality, and how the Boomer generation is discovering and re-discovering psychedelics as a treatment. You'll hear about:* what falls away as elders age and the connection to nature and love* ancestral connection and sacred medicines* creating a new kind of elderhoodAbout GuestAbbie Rosner is a writer focused on how older adults are discovering and re-discovering the drugs of their youth. She is currently working on a book about how older adults are re-inventing elderhood through their work with psychedelics.More on Abbie Rosner:* AbbieRosner.com SourcesBaby boomers, contemplating their mortality, are taking psychedelics again (ARTICLE)ABOUT MUMWe are on Youtube! Subscribe to our channel.MUM is produced by ⁠Ellen Wong⁠ and edited by ⁠Stepfanie Aguilar.⁠ Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠⁠@mumthepod⁠⁠.If you are interested in working with Ellen, visit ⁠tripwithellen.com⁠ to learn more about her private mentorship and spirit medicine programs. Join the free community grief circle Water + Fire every third Wednesday of the month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

My guest today is Ned Abenroth, a creative entrepreneur and wilderness guide who has spent much of his adult life tending to transformational spaces.For the last 10 years, he's worked with Illuman, a global spiritual community that was birthed out of Richard Rohr's work with male spirituality and rites of passage. In this episode, we explore the distinction between merely growing older and becoming an elder, as well as the cultural gap that has left many adrift without guidance in traversing this threshold. Ned reflect on his personal experiences with grief and illness, having survived an encounter with cancer that reoriented death as a teacher.And finally, he shares insights from creating the Illuman Elder Rites of Passage program, and the role of myth in orienting elderhood not a solitary journey, but one rooted in community, relationality, and service to future generations.The Mythic Masculine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.LINKS * Ned's Official Website* Illuman Elder Rites of PassageSHOW NOTES* Defining Elderhood: Exploration of the distinction between merely aging and truly becoming an elder, with elderhood seen as a relational and community-rooted journey, not simply a function of age.* Rites of Passage for Elders: Discussion on the Elder Rites of Passage program, emphasizing the process of transition from adulthood to elderhood through rituals, ceremony, and community support.* Cultural Gaps in Elderhood: Reflection on the modern cultural gap that has left many adrift without guidance in the transition to elderhood, especially in Western societies that often lack healthy rites of passage.* Elder as a Verb, Not a Noun: Insight into the idea that eldering is not just an identity, but a function—an ongoing role of service, wisdom, and presence that must be actively embodied.* Grief and Illness as Teachers: Ned shares personal experiences with grief and surviving cancer, which reoriented his relationship to death and positioned it as a profound teacher.* Death and Diminishment: The role of death work in elderhood, helping elders embrace physical diminishment as a sacred process, and learning to hallow one's aging body.* Myth and Elderhood: The importance of myth, particularly the story of Elijah, as a guiding narrative for elders, symbolizing the journey into the unknown, surrender, and transformation.* Impact of Elders on Community: How the presence of true elders strengthens communities, bringing a sense of wisdom, calm, and relational leadership to younger generations.* Ritual Spaces and Eldering: How the role of elders in ritual spaces creates a sense of safety and presence, often serving as the ballast during moments of collective vulnerability.* Elders as Truth Tellers: Elders not only offer comfort and grace but are also responsible for being prophetic voices, unafraid to speak hard truths to their communities.* The Future Vision for Elders: Ned discusses the broader vision of creating rites of passage and eldering programs across diverse communities to reclaim the essential role of elders in modern society. Get full access to The Mythic Masculine at themythicmasculine.substack.com/subscribe

Today's seniors are reshaping what retirement is all about. It is a whole new opportunity to engage with family, community, your spiritual source, and the world with vigor. Don't just grow old. Aim high and claim the gifts of elderhood. Author Ron Pevny, M.A., has for forty-five years been dedicated to assisting people in negotiating life transitions as they create lives of purpose and passion.

Today's seniors are reshaping what retirement is all about. It is a whole new opportunity to engage with family, community, your spiritual source, and the world with vigor. Don't just grow old. Aim high and claim the gifts of elderhood. Author Ron Pevny, M.A., has for forty-five years been dedicated to assisting people in negotiating life transitions as they create lives of purpose and passion.

With this episode, we begin our 5th season of How it Looks from Here - Life in the time of Climate Change. As we've done in the past, we're launching into year 5 with an episode involving the two of us - co-creators of the Full Ecology programs. Ten years ago, we began creating the programs and ideas we hold under the canopy of Full Ecology. Among those initiatives is this podcast. In this episode, we look back together over the past four years and share our sense of where we've come, where we are now, and where we're going. We also interview each other to learn how the world is looking to each of us these days.Listen in to hear about our extension of Full Ecology into each of our current projects, our continuation of programs from the past, and what we're seeing going forward. Gary shares updates from his writing on the Ponderosa pine forests of the American Southwest. And Mary speaks about her new work on Elderhood and wilderness. Finally, with the opening of this HILFH season, we take a step toward keeping our programming real and growing by introducing a way you can help support our work (see below). You can learn more about our work by visiting our website, www.fullecology.com. We also invite you to drop us a note. As I said in the podcast - Do Not Be Shy! We truly want to hear from you and welcome you as part of the Full Ecology community. Write us about Elderhood or aging. Write us about Ponderosa pine. Share your stories. Ask for a recent newsletter and join us on the second Tuesday of each month for a Deep Dive into topics linking all ecologies. The thing we can guarantee is lively conversation about trees and wilderness, about devoted hearts, and about wild Elderhood.Finally, do check out the two friends Mary mentioned. Listen to Paris Mullen speak of his experience in two early HILFH episodes [Episode #3, and Episode #4], and dive into the profound work of Dr. Carma Corcoran, Chippewa Cree scholar and Elder. Dr Corcoran's book, published by University of Nebraska Press is entitled: The Incarceration of Native American Women: Creating Pathways to Wellness and Recovery through Gentle Action Theory You can also learn about Carma in this recent Underscore Native News article.HOW YOU CAN HELP~If you like what you're hearing on HILFH, make sure to subscribe. Let's get these perspectives out there. Tell your friends and family. Share a link right now with someone you know would enjoy learning how it looks from another viewpoint. As you know, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts.And remember, there's a new way to support us by going to VENMO and sharing a donation of $5, $10, heck $25 with How It Looks from Here and Full Ecology. Go to @FullEcology. And thanks for helping us keep it all real and growing.MUSIC~This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.Good Morning Café Jazz - Music by Sleep...

In this episode of REJUVENAGING with Dr. Ron Kaiser," we are joined by Ron Pevny, a pioneer in the field of active aging and the founding director of the Center for Conscious Eldering. With over 45 years of experience, Ron has dedicated his life to assisting individuals in navigating life transitions and fostering lives filled with purpose and passion. He discusses his newest book, "Conscious Living, Conscious Aging," a 10th-anniversary update of his previous work, which delves into the essence of conscious elderhood and how it can be achieved. Ron's insights provide a roadmap for finding purpose and meaning in their older adult years.Throughout the conversation with Dr. Ron, he shares his journey into the aging field, starting from his early work with wilderness rites of passage to his current focus on conscious elderhood. He emphasizes the importance of intentionality in transitioning into elderhood, highlighting how it is a gradual process that involves inner work and a commitment to growth and service. Ron explains the significance of rites of passage in various cultures and how they can be adapted to help individuals embrace elderhood. He also addresses the challenges posed by the modern world's focus on decline and illness during older adulthood. Instead, he offers a refreshing perspective on the potential for emotional and spiritual growth even when there are physical diminishments.Listeners will learn about the retreats and workshops offered by the Center for Conscious Eldering, which provide a structured environment for individuals to explore and claim their elderhood. Ron's definition of an elder as someone who prioritizes growth and service, which sets the stage for a fulfilling and impactful later life. He encourages midlife individuals to begin preparing for elderhood early, ensuring that they cultivate habits and attitudes that will support them in their journey. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in redefining aging and finding purpose in their later years.For info on Ron:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558493474817https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-pevny-977aa310/https://www.centerforconsciouseldering.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 103: Conscious Eldering with Ron Pevny These days, getting older seems to be more like a war rather than a rite of passage. "Take this pill or this potion to reverse aging and stay young," they say. But is that really how we should view aging? We question this and more in this episode, where I welcome Ron Pevny, the director of the Center for Conscious Eldering and author of Conscious Living, Conscious Aging: Capturing The Gifts of Elderhood. In our conversation, we discuss the following: What is 'conscious eldering,' an approach to aging with purpose, passion, and well-being, and how it contrasts with societal norms that often lack an empowering vision for aging. Ron shares his journey, starting in 1979 with a calling to help people during life transitions, evolving into leading rites of passage and founding the Center for Conscious Eldering in 2010. The concept emphasizes intentionality, personal growth, and community, offering retreats and workshops to prepare people for a fulfilled elderhood. Ron highlights the loss of meaningful roles for elders in industrialized societies and the importance of life review to let go of past baggage. Ron underscores the significance of having purpose in maintaining physical and mental health as one ages. This was a heartwarming conversation and made me think deeply about my own desires for later life and those for my loved ones. About Ron Pevny

Emergency podcast! We've been asked by many people, mostly junior/mid career faculty, to quickly record a podcast on ageism and the elections.  People are feeling conflicted.  On the one hand, they have concerns about cognitive fitness of candidates for office.  On the other hand, they worry about ageism.  There's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear. We need clear eyed thinking about this issue. In today's podcast, Louise Aronson, author of Elderhood, validates that this conflict between being concerned about both fitness for the job and alarmed about ageism is exactly the right place to be.  We both cannot ignore that with advancing age the prevalence of cognitive impairment, frailty, and disability increase.  At the same time, we can and should be alarmed at the rise in ageist language that equates aging with infirmity, and images of politicians racing walkers or a walker with the presidential seal.  Ken Covinsky reminds us that we should not be making a diagnosis based on what we see on TV, and that if a patient's daughter expressed a concern that their parent “wasn't right,” we would conduct an in depth evaluation that might last an hour.  Eric Widera reminds us of the history of the Goldwater Act created by the American Psychological Association in the 1960s which states that psychiatrists should refrain from diagnosing public figures, and the American Medical Association code of ethics which likewise discourages armchair diagnosis (rule established in 2017). We frame today's discussion around questions our listeners proposed in response to our Tweets, and are grateful for questions from Anand Iyer, Sandra Shi, Mike Wasserman, Ariela Orkaby, Karen Knops, Jeanette Leardi, Sarah McKiddy, Cecilia Poon, Colleen Christmas, and Kai Smith. We talk about positive aspects of aging, cognitive screening, the line between legitimate concerns and ageism, ableism, advice for a geriatrician asked to comment on TV, frailty and physical disability, images in the press, historical situations including , and an upper age limit for the Presidency, among other issues. Of note, we talk about candidates from all parties today.  We acknowledge concerns and speculation that others have raised about candidates across the political spectrum, current and former.  We do not endorse or disclose our personal attitudes toward any particular candidate.  Fitness for public office is a non-partisan issue that applies to all candidates for office, regardless of political party. There's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear. Strong recommendation to also listen to this terrific podcast with another geriatrician all star, Jim Pacala, on MPR! -@AlexSmithMD  

First, know that this episode is for people of all ages, because we are all elders to someone (there are always people younger than us!) and we are constantly having opportunities for growth in our spiritual maturity throughout our entire life. The concepts I introduce in this episode help shape how we age and the choices we make at all stages of life. Too often we believe that as we age, we should try to look, feel, and act as young as possible. But the truth is, that's not the freaking point. We discuss a world where elders are seen as wisdom keepers, guides, and mentors for the community. Where they possess a deep knowledge and understanding that is invaluable to younger generations.This won't just happen. We need to see this as our role to our people, and make our life decisions from that place. Instead of just sitting around and saving money to retire and travel, we can make our spiritual growth and maturity more intentional.We'll jam on how we can continue to challenge the idea that aging is a period of decline, and talk about a few of the elders that I personally look up to and respect.You will learn:// Why thinking of true elderhood and spiritual maturity matters at ALL ages// How we often view elderhood vs what's possible// Why taking responsibility for our spiritual maturity is crucial for playing an essential role in our communities// Why modern industrialized society doesn't hold reverence or wisdom the possibilities in aging// Some examples of elders I deeply respect and look up to and the lessons they taught me// How we can continue to challenge the idea that aging is a period of decline// How spiritual maturity allows us to make our spiritual growth intentional AND still leaves plenty of room for fun and relaxationResources:// Joanna Macy & her work// Dipa Ma & her work// Nature and the Human Soul, by Bill Plotkin// Episode 154: Off the Cushion - Activism + Spirituality// Episode 191: Soulcentric Adulthood// I'd love to hear from you! You can leave a review on the Rebel Buddhist Podcast on iTunes by clicking here// If you want to dive deeper into this Soul-level work and create a life of more freedom, adventure and purpose, head over to JoinFreedomSchool.com. It's got everything you need in one place to build a foundation for a lifetime of self-exploration and freedom.// If you're new to the squad, grab the Rebel Buddhist Toolkit I created at RebelBuddhist.com. It has all you need to start creating a life of more freedom, adventure, and purpose. You'll also get access to the Rebel Buddhist private group, and tune in every Wednesday as I go live with new inspiration and topics.

My friends!  I'm really excited to share this interview with the amazing Asha Frost.  We had such a beautiful conversation, and Asha has so much wisdom to share, and does so eloquently.   Here's some of what Asha and I talk about in this episode: > How Asha's Lupus diagnosis was a threshold moment in her life that made it impossible to keep up with the demands of our modern, capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist culture – and how she continues to practice slowing down. > The relationship between worthiness and productivity, and the paradox that creativity and "success" often flourish after periods of meaningful rest.  As Asha so beautifully phrases, "miracles are born from rest." > Asha shares some of her experiences of her matrescence – her rite of passage into motherhood. > The potential that transformative times in our lives offer to invite us to divest from and disrupt dominant culture. > Elderhood and the elder medicine that lives in all of us, including our non-human kin.  Asha and I share our love of herons as elders, and gush over the beauty of her new Animal Elder deck. > Cultural appropriation in the rites of passage space – and how, while it's unacceptable, it comes from our collective desire for meaningful ritual and ceremony to mark these transformative times in our lives.

A GENTLE NOTE OF GUIDANCE: Early on in this episode (around 7 mins in), Katy shares a difficult story from her childhood that some listeners may find challenging to listen to.Katy Theakston and I first spoke on this topic sharing a stage at Wellbeing by the Lakes in 2023.We'd never met before, but we trusted we were safe in each other's hands. And, of course, so we were. At the end of the talk, our audience spontaneously asked for a group hug. For me it shows the power and deep personal connection we ALL have to this topic.I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed speaking with Katy. A beautiful woman with a wonderful mission - find out more about her and the work she does to create powerful women's circles and retreats: https://owlapothecary.com/Henny x'Mostly what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it.'MAYA ANGELOU Sign-up for everyday ♡ compassion - (almost) daily messages of love https://hennyflynn.ck.page/everyday-compassion Explore Henny's coaching, books, retreats, courses & events https://www.hennyflynn.co.uk/

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”– Terence McKennaThis week I meet our guest Tom Morgan (LinkedIn, Twitter) in mid-leap as we both make giant bids to meet our destiny and better serve the world. Tom Morgan, who calls himself a “curiosity sherpa” and writes the superb blog What's Important, worked for years in finance while he grew increasingly compelled by transcendental mysteries. His blog reflects a rare appreciation for the edges of our knowledge and his reputation is for getting high-performing businesspeople to ask deeper questions. In this conversation we discuss complexity and higher intelligences, the heroic metamyth, the alchemy of money, love as an organizing principle in transrational cognition, and holding other people through their personal encounters with the so-called “meaning crisis.”If this discussion does it for you, look below to find scores more potentially life-changing (certainly mind-altering) talks and essays we discussed therein…✨ Support The Good Work• Learn about my new project on wisdom and technology, Humans On The Loop!• Subscribe on Substack or Patreon.• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Server, the Future Fossils Server, and Future Fossils FB Group!• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.• Buy the music on Bandcamp! This episode features “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts & “Tin Heart” off Double-Edged Sword.• Buy the books we discuss at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page and I get a small cut from your support of indie booksellers.• Browse and buy original paintings and prints or email me to commission new work.• Read my pitch for Jurassic Worlding, my next book on the future of evolution!✨ Mentioned MediaLooking Over The Edge – Tom MorganFor The Person Who Has Everything – Tom MorganAdventure Capital: An Interview with Jim O'Shaughnessy – Tom MorganHeresies of The Heart – Tom MorganThe Great Betrayal – Tom MorganTom's recent five-minute talk at the Sohn Investment ConferenceToward A New Evolutionary Paradigm 1.0 – Michael at SFI in 2019Intimations Of A New Worldview – Brett AndersenThe Master and His Emissary – Iain McGilchristCognition All The Way Down – Michael Levin and Daniel Dennett at Aeon MagazineAnimism Is Normative Consciousness – Josh Schrei on The Emerald PodcastThe Passion of The Western Mind – Richard TarnasTech Ethics As Psychedelic Parenting – Michael at CBA Innovation LabExodus as Revolution – William Irwin Thompson at the Lindisfarne AssociationPicbreederWhy Greatness Cannot Be Planned – Kenneth Stanley and Joel LehmanProof of Spiritual Phenomena – Mona SobhaniThe Phenomenon: Control System, or Developmental Driver? – Stuart DavisMeditations on Moloch – Slate Star CodexStudies on Slack – Slate Star CodexAlison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I. – Michael for Complexity Podcast✨ Related Episodes:212 - Manfred Laubichler & Geoffrey West on Life In The Anthropocene & Living Inside The Technosphere202 - Caveat Magister on Psychomagic, Amusement Parks, & Turning Your Life Into Art196 - Robert Poynton on Improvisation As A Way of Life191 - Roland Harwood on Learning To Be Liminal186 - A Manifesto for Weird Science161 - On Play & Innovation with Michael Phillip: Hermes, EvoBio, Bitcoin, and Good Noise150 - A Unifying Meta-Theory of UFOs & The Weird with Sean Esbjörn-Hargens125 - Stuart Kauffman on Physics, Life, and The Adjacent Possible60 - Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Goes Meta on Everything: Integral Ecology & Impact45 - Kerri Welch (Fractal Synchronicity & The Future of Time)3 - Tony Vigorito (Synchronicity)✨ Other Mentions:William Irwin ThompsonCarl JungJoseph CampbellBill PlotkinDave Snowden & The Cynefin FrameworkStafford BeerFrozen 2 (film)The Matrix (films) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode Emmett Scanlon speaks to Aisling Rusk (Studio Idir, Belfast) and Anthony Engi Meacock (Assemble, London) on their recent collaboration as part of the Reimagining Elderhood project, produced by Self Organised Architecture, (SOA, Dublin).

In this conversation, Brian Knittel shares stories and design principles learned from his ten years at the Bay Area Tracking Club. Brian shares what it was like to experience the 8 Shields principles at work from the student perspective in the beginning, and then his observations as he grew to be a station guide and then leader of the club. We hear from Brian and Jon about the finer points of using the Art of Questioning to facilitate the tracking journey, including how it relates to how the San people still train trackers to this day. If you are interested in tracking, or interested in starting any sort of group based around learning nature together, you won't want to miss this episode."That was really the biggest draw for me; turning that curiosity on and getting people excited to learn more.”About Brian KnittelBrian Knittel's professional career was as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. He has been on a lifelong journey of spiritual exploration and nature connection.His journey deepened when he started searching for ways to explain spirituality to his young kids and found Tom Brown Jr.'s books, which sparked a series of "Aha!" moments. He resonated deeply with Tom's teachings and has been training at the Tracker School since 2000. Once he found Jon Young's work he trained intensively in the Kamana Naturalist journey and the 8 Shields model. He is a long time wildlife tracker and helped lead a vibrant Tracking Club on the California coast for close to a decade.He is deeply involved in these lineages, taking classes, mentoring others, and has been on a path towards Elderhood. Helping people learn about the essential nature of core routines, community building, and living in harmony with nature brings him immense joy. He has been a leader of groups within the Mankind Project, mentoring heart-centered men on a personal growth path, which has further shaped his beliefs about the importance of cultivating a state of personal peace.Today, he uses many healing methods – Shamanic, elements of power, nature connection, and more – to help others find their own paths to peace and well-being. His vision is to create a world filled with love, healing, deep connection, and a deep respect for Mother Earth.He lives in Mendocino, California with his amazing partner Amanda, who shares his passions for healing and nature. They have a blended family of four wonderful children, and when he's not exploring the natural world or helping others, you might find him practicing martial arts – something he's been passionate about for over 30 years.He's excited to share his experiences with others, exploring the world of spirituality, nature connection, and living a life of purpose and joy together.About Bay Area Tracking ClubBay Area Tracking Club meets on the second Sunday of each month from 8am-11am. Locations change based on where the great tracks can be found, although our home base and most consistent venue is at Gazos Creek State Beach on the San Mateo County coast.Connect with Bay Area Tracking Club on Facebook to learn more

Join us as we explore the transformative power of Elderhood with renowned author and educator Dr. Sally Z. Hare. Discover the vital role of Elders in today's society and learn how to embrace wisdom, integrity, and service in the later stages of life. This insightful conversation will inspire you to embark on your own journey of becoming an Elder, using your life experiences to positively impact the world around you.

In this episode of The Reboot Podcast, Jerry Colonna sits down with the insightful Chip Conley, author of Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age. Together, they explore the transformational journey of embracing midlife as a time of growth and wisdom. Chip shares his personal tale of crisis and renewal, emphasizing the fear and cultural pressures surrounding aging. They ponder the role of an elder and the importance of embracing uncertainty, impermanence, and transition in life. The conversation touches on the significance of emotional intelligence, the three stages of transition, and leaving a positive legacy for future generations. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Follow our step by step guides: - How To: Leave a Review on Your Computer: - How To: Leave a Review on Your iPhone: Never miss an episode! Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on all our episode releases.

We know, we know, no one wants to talk about the end of life, death, or dying. But we are all going to die at some point, so let's put it all out in the open. How do the aged population think about death? Do they get lonely when those around them cross to the other side? Drs. Heard & Heard-Garris explore their mothers' experiences and feelings of grief, loss, and the trope of being a “strong Black woman.” In this episode of Flesh 'N Bold, our hosts explore who helps the helper b.k.a the strong Black woman, when she needs help, what about what to do when the future you expected is taken from you, and how do you avoid isolation? Listen up, grab your friends, your family, and your significant others and let Drs. Heard & Heard-Garris walk you through this interesting penultimate act with their mothers. And always, please like, share, and discuss!Producers: Nevin J. Heard and Nia J. Heard-Garris Music: “Clay”; “LA”; “Sneak Chase” by Podington BearReferencesMourning me: An interpretive description of grief and identity loss in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (uvic.ca)Disenfranchised Grief and Nonfinite Loss as Experienced by the Families of Death Row Inmates - Sandra J. Jones, Elizabeth Beck, 2007 (sagepub.com)https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C24&as_vis=1&q=help-seeking+behaviors+of+Black+women&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1714084107992&u=%23p%3DS8Z9q15Wt9oJ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C24&as_vis=1&q=grief%2C+strong+Black+women&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1714084424140&u=%23p%3DQSZPuW9cEegJ https://www.caregiver.org/news/tips-supporting-senior-widowed-parent/ https://www.google.com/search?q=Nonfinite+grief+AND+aging&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS893US893&oq=Nonfinite+grief+AND+aging&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigAdIBCDMwMjVqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Individuals who embrace positivity are more likely to approach challenges with resilience and adaptability, thus enhancing their ability to overcome adversity and thrive. Research shows that a positive attitude serves as a powerful catalyst for not only extending lifespan but also enhancing quality of life, and in certain cases is a better predictor of longevity than genetics, or life choices. To explore the timeless wisdom behind longevity, Harvesting Happiness Podcast Host Lisa Cypers Kamen speaks with history buff and the Founder of LongeviQuest, Ben Meyers. A demand for longevity and healthspan data led Ben to create a business to certify and learn from the world's oldest people. Ben shares his findings about the most common attributes of supercentenarians, what supercentenarians say is the key to a long life, and the future role of AI in caring for us as we age. This episode is proudly sponsored by:Nutrafol — Offers a drug-free whole-body health approach to hair wellness and growth. Get $10 off your 1st month's subscription + free shipping. Visit www.nutrafol.com and use promo code HARVESTING.Like what you're hearing?WANT MORE SOUND IDEAS FOR DEEPER THINKING? Check out More Mental Fitness by Harvesting Happiness bonus content available exclusively on Substack and Medium.

00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:00 Deep forgetting 00:06:00 Moving at geologic speed and Men of Spirit project 00:12:38 Symptoms and the soul's deepest desires 00:15:33 Elderhood through grief 00:21:24 Kalahari desert grief maintenance rituals 00:25:00 Belonging as the premise and remembering the medicine you carry 00:29:00 Fiction and emptiness of progress 00:32:00 Preparing a community for a grief ritual 00:37:00 Grief ritual training and therapeutic communities for Palestine 00:38:00 Grief and beauty 00:45:00 Cultivating village mind 00:54:00 Finding your masculine and feminine soul expression 00:59:00 Being spiritually employed 01:01:00 The long dark and facing the world with soul 01:02:00 A metaphor for our species: Qarrtsiluni   Links: Francis Weller https://www.francisweller.net/   Podcast https://oliviaclementine.com/podcasts   Enjoy these episodes? Please leave a review here. Scroll down to Review & Ratings. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-liberation/id1393858607

"A lot of people get old because they think they're supposed to."Former award-winning television journalist and Emmy-Award-winning producer/writer/director Paul Long shares his midlife career transitions and his "new way forward" — one that is ideal for him, that takes advantage of the new realities of longevity and the new phase of life he calls "olderhood." In this episode, Paul and I have a wide-ranging conversation about what it means to get older today, what "olderhood" means (and why he considers this a better moniker for this phase in life), retirement, and the stories we tell ourselves as we get older.   GUEST LINKS:Paul Long's Newsletter: Launch YourselfPaul Long on YouTubeFollow Paul Long on LinkedIn------------Connect with Lou Blaser on LinkedInSubscribe to We're All Getting Older, a weekly newsletter about growth in the second half of our lives.Work with Lou BlaserSupport the Show. Thank you.

In this episode of This is Aging, Dana and Mellisa fly out to Hollywood to be on set with the cast and crew of Retirement House, a popular show on Instagram and TikTok showcasing the day to day lives of 6 friends in their later years. Capturing not just hilarious stories and the amazing chemistry of the cast, but profound life wisdom for listeners of any age, this episode is a celebration of aging vibrantly and visibly. Challenging all of the stereotypes about aging and reminding us that “retirement” is just an idea, this episode is a lovely reminder that life doesn't wind down after a certain age. The cast shares stories of personal ambition and success, hard-learned lessons, the background and evolution of the Retirement House show, and how culture has changed over the lifetime of the cast, making for an inspirational and provocative conversation.

In the latest episode of "This is Aging," Dana and Mellisa welcome Sil Reynolds, an extraordinary guide with a background as a Jungian Psychologist, Womens' Coach and Nurse Practitioner. With over forty years of experience, Sil joins us to dive into the deep, evolving journey of womanhood. This episode is a beautiful tapestry, woven with the sacred threads of life's stages - from the fresh beginnings of the Maiden to the nurturing depths of the Mother to the profound wisdom of the Crone. Sil's insights, enriched by her decades long mentorship with Marion Woodman, a renowned Jungian psychologist, offer a unique perspective on the feminine and masculine energies within us all and how that plays out in our society.Sil challenges us to rethink our societal norms and to embrace the unfolding beauty and depth of our later years. As Sil shares her profound and fascinating insights about the Crone archetype, she encourages women to embrace the full spectrum of our experiences, to listen to our inner voices, and to boldly step into the wisdom that is innately ours.

In this episode, we share the profound work of Stephen Jenkinson, an internationally renowned teacher and author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul and Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble. Stephen shares his experiences working with dying people and their families as a former program director in a Canadian hospital, shedding light on the brokenness of our modern Western approach to death and end of life care. He challenges the prevailing death phobia in our society and explores the importance of embracing the reality of dying in order to live more fully. Through his thought-provoking insights, Stephen invites us to reconsider our understanding of aging, what it means to be an elder and the fears we face about our changing modern world.Stephen also shares his insights on spirituality and the blurred lines between a spiritual life and a regular life, the challenges faced by both the oldest and youngest generations in a rapidly changing world and the importance of understanding our past and the potential consequences of our actions on future generations. Tune in for a deep and introspective conversation that will leave you questioning your role in shaping the world around you and your impulse for “answers” in light of the realities of our times…

Today on This Is Aging, we sit down with Dr. Gladys McGarey, a 102-year-old holistic MD and co-founder of the American Holistic Medical Association. Just this year, Dr. Gladys wrote and released the book: “The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor's Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age”. We discuss her groundbreaking work in transforming the way we think about healthcare and self-care, challenge the negative narrative around aging and learn from Dr. Gladys' insights about how love is the greatest healer of all, with many stories from her incredible life.

In this episode of This is Aging, we are joined by Jeff Hamaoui, co-founder of the Modern Elder Academy. Jeff shares his insights on the changing landscape of aging and the need for a new mental model to navigate the second adulthood that comes with increased life expectancy. He discusses the importance of purpose, transitions, and owning one's wisdom in the midlife season. Jeff also highlights the power of community and the transformative experiences that participants have at the Modern Elder Academy.

In this conversation with bestselling author and hospitality maverick Chip Conley we explore the research that reveals surprising conclusions about when we are at our happiest in life and why, the “midlife crisis”, four types of transition, paths to purpose and the collective chrysalis of these times. Chip Conley is the New York Times bestselling author and hospitality maverick who helped Airbnb's founders turn their fast-growing tech start-up into a global hospitality brand. In Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder, he shares his unexpected journey at midlife — from CEO to intern — learning about technology as Airbnb's Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, while also mentoring CEO Brian Chesky. Chip is the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, where a new roadmap for midlife is offered. He serves on the board of Encore.org and the advisory board for the Stanford Center for Longevity. Visit coachesrising.com to see our acclaimed online coach trainings and other offerings.

Sharon Blackie calls us to the ancient archetype of the Hag as a figure of unapologetic emergence from cultural pressures that lock us into outworn roles and limiting beliefs.  Drawing upon her transformative experiences in menopause Blackie grounds the mythic figure of the old woman who fashioned the world in her fierce determination to dissolve and reconfigure her professional and personal life. Identifying and rejecting cultural pressures to look and act a certain way as she ages, she claims the second half of her life for a post-heroic journey of intense creativity and unapologetic self-expression. Ancient Celtic fairytales, myths, and folk stories carry the spirit of the Cailleach, the divine old woman who shapes the landscape and scourges it clean through winter storms. This Queen of Winter is sharp and wild. Those who discover the Cailleach within carry her ruthless truths as unavoidable facts that demand acknowledgment. Her stark reality strips away one's inner illusions and avoidance of death, leaving her sharp eye facing outward. Tending the web of life becomes the great task, and acting to restore balance to the community, the central role. The path to the Hag is hidden in stories. Blackie reminds us that reviving ancient themes and images expands our imagination and helps us recover the dark woods we once knew well. Wise old ones revive awe and connection. Trees and plants, rivers and crows have secrets to teach us that require a depth of listening undisturbed by collective gibbering. Elderhood can be a time to shed the roles assigned to us. Menopause can be welcomed as a rite of passage with the Hag silently waiting for us to see her. If we have learned how to recognize her, renewal and reclaiming is possible. The stories of those who have gone before us carry a strange beauty that can stir a memory in our soul and set us on the path. REFERENCES:   Sharon Blackie Order her book: Hagitude. Reimagining the second half of life RESOURCES: Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, ADVANCED CLINICAL PRACTICE PROGRAM: A case seminar for experienced clinicians to read, explore and apply Jung's concepts to clinical practice: CLICK HERE ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A SERIOUS STUDY OF JUNG? Enroll in the Philadelphia Jungian Seminar 2023 Fall Semester and start your journey: CLICK HERE  BECOME A DREAM INTERPRETER:  We've created DREAM SCHOOL to teach others how to work with their dreams. A vibrant community has constellated around this mission, and we think you'll love it. Check it out. PLEASE GIVE US A HAND: Hey folks -- We need your help. So please BECOME OUR PATRON and keep This Jungian Life podcast up and running. SHARE YOUR DREAM WITH US: SUBMIT YOUR DREAM HERE FOR A POSSIBLE PODCAST INTERPRETATION. SUGGEST A FUTURE PODCAST TOPIC:  Share your suggestions HERE. FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, LINKEDIN, TWITTER, YOUTUBE YES, WE HAVE MERCH! Shop HERE

Noam Dworman and Dan Naturman are joined by Dr. Louise Aronson, returning guest, psychiatrist Dr. Larry Durlofsky and comic, Maddie Wiener.  Dr. Aronson is a leading geriatrician, writer, educator, professor of medicine at UCSF and the author of the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, and Reimagining Life. Maddie Wiener was selected as a New Face at the 2021 Just for Laughs Festival, and recently taped a stand up set for Comedy Central. She has also appeared on You Up w/ Nikki Glaser on Comedy Central's Sirius XM channel, and PAUSE with Sam Jay on HBO.

I'm thrilled to present to you an incredible episode delving deep into the often uncharted topic of death, our fears surrounding it, and the realm of palliative care with the wise and insightful Stephen Jenkinson. As the author of profound books such as "Die Wise" and "Come of Age," Stephen has transformed our understanding of mortality and the societal roles of elders. We discuss the chances he took in institutional hospital settings and how our western culture has diverted from age-old practices surrounding death. Through our conversation, you'll realize the importance of reconnecting with our roots and gaining a more profound respect for the natural cycle of life. We also delve into some unsettling trends seen in today's society, such as our tendency to remove ourselves from ancestral traditions to form an identity while disconnecting from our heritage. We discuss the concept of elderhood, its vital cultural function, and the loss it has suffered in our modern culture. Stephen also sheds light on the fears of aging and dying and how understanding life's limitations can lead us to better self-improvement. Swimming to the deep end, this episode ventures into the controversial topic of euthanasia's legalization in Canada, examines the impacts of a death-phobic culture, and contemplates suffering and pain as essential parts of our life and death narratives.  DISCLAIMER: This podcast is presented for educational and exploratory purposes only. Published content is not intended to be used for diagnosing or treating any illness. Those responsible for this show disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information presented by Luke or his guests. Please consult with your healthcare provider before using any products referenced. This podcast may contain paid endorsements for products or services. 00:01:58 — (Re)introducing: Death, Phobias & Palliative Care • Ancestral Amnesia & the Village Mind - Stephen Jenkinson #151 • Read: Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson • How Stephen's path led him to palliative care • Overcoming institutional limitations around death and birth • Taking chances in institutional hospital settings • How the West diverted from historical practices around death 00:11:25 — Inheriting a Ghost Culture and Reconnecting With Our Elders • Pillaging other ancestral traditions to find a sense of identity • Disconnecting from one's own heritage  • Elderhood as a cultural function • The loss of respect for elders in modern society • Read: Come of Age by Stephen Jenkinson • A conversation in Oaxaca City about elderhood • Brief observation around the phobia of aging and dying • Who goes into self improvement to obey the limits of life? • Understanding the limits that have been entrusted in you 00:33:09 — Legalization of Euthanasia in Canada & Dying in the Manner of One's Living • How a death phobic culture masks euthanasia as “Maid Medical Assistance in Dying” • English language has no passive voice for our relationship with God • Anticipatory grief, understanding the verb "to die"  • Finding a way to say goodbye while you still can • Medication as an end-of-life value vs. end-of-life presence • Remembering Aldous Huxley's death involving an LSD journey • Why suffering and pain belong in matters of life and death  • Three teachers that have impacted Stephen's work More about this episode. Watch on YouTube. THIS SHOW IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: QUANTUM UPGRADE. Block harmful EMF with Quantum Upgrade's products. Their products stabilize the energy fields around you and work in the home, at the office, and even in your car. Get a 15 day free trial with code 'LUKE15' atquantumupgrade.io. AND… BIOPTIMIZERS - the makers of Masszymes - are offering a challenge. This month only, get a FREE bottle of this best selling 100% plant-based, naturally-derived digestive enzymes - try and see all of the positive changes of enhanced digestion and nutrient absorption. All you have to do is pay a nominal shipping fee. That's it! Do not miss the opportunity, it is a limited time offer this month only. Get your free bottle at masszymes.com/lukefree with code LUKE10. AND… SILVER BIOTICS. Experience the healing power of Silver Biotics! Their advanced & patented technology can help support your immune system and promote overall wellness. Try it today and see the difference for yourself! Get 30% off when you go to silverbiotics.com and use code LUKE at checkout. AND… ALITURA NATURALS. Your skin is the largest organ and it needs to be treated like another mouth. If you're as careful about what you put on your skin as you are about feeding your body, then you've got to check out my good friend and previous podcast guest's skincare line, Alitura Naturals. Alitura was created out of desperation after it's founder, model, and actor, Andy Hnilo, found his face unrecognizable after getting hit and run over by two cars. Alitura, latin for ‘feeding and nourishing,' was created out if a small studio apartment, purely out of necessity to heal Andy's scarring and abrasions. Carefully sourced with research proven ingredients containing natural, organic, nutrient-rich ingredients that feed and nourish your skin, so you can look as vibrant as you feel. And as a special gift for my listeners, use code “LIFESTYLIST” for 20% off and FREE SHIPPING in the US on your order at alituranaturals.com. Resources: • Website: orphanwisdom.com • Read: Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson • Read: Come of Age by Stephen Jenkinson • Read: Reckoning by Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson • Instagram: @griefandmystery • Facebook: Orphan Wisdom • The Nights of Grief & Mystery 2023: orphanwisdom.com/nights-of-grief-and-mystery  • Are you ready to block harmful blue light, and look great at the same time? Check out Gilded By Luke Storey. Where fashion meets function: gildedbylukestorey.com • Join me on Telegram for the uncensored content big tech won't allow me to post. It's free speech and free content: www.lukestorey.com/telegram Related: • The Holistic OBGYN on Conscious Birth & Death Practices & Traditions w/ Dr. Nathan Riley #421 • Somatic Experiencing, Birth, Sex, & Trauma W/ Kimberly Ann Johnson #362 The Life Stylist is produced by Crate Media.

Episode Title and Show Notes:106 - Michael Garfield & David Krakauer on Evolution, Information, and Jurassic ParkWelcome to Complexity, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm Michael Garfield, producer of this show and host for the last 105 episodes. Since October, 2019, we have brought you with us for far ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe. Today I step down and depart from SFI with one final appearance as the guest of this episode. Our guest host is SFI President David Krakauer, he and I will braid together with nine other conversations from the archives in a retrospective masterclass on how this podcast traced the contours of complexity. We'll look back on episodes with David, Brian Arthur, Geoffrey West, Doyne Farmer, Deborah Gordon, Tyler Marghetis, Simon DeDeo, Caleb Scharf, and Alison Gopnik to thread some of the show's key themes through into windmills and white whales, SFI pursues, and my own life's persistent greatest questions.We'll ask about the implications of a world transformed by science and technology by deeper understanding and prediction and the ever-present knock-on consequences. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify and consider making a donation or finding other ways to engage with SFI at Santa fe.edu/engage. Thank you each and all for listening. It's been a pleasure and an honor to take you offroad with us over these last years.Follow SFI on social media: Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn

Summary: When we began apprenticing with ayahuasqueros three years ago, we stepped into a period of intensive training. That training has deepened and broadened over the past year to include other supportive and complementary modalities including men's and women's work, vision quests and for Alasdair, recently beginning a year-long training in Hakomi, a somatic psychotherapy. Mentioned on this episode:IllumanRichard RohrFAR OUT 197 ~ How Do We Raise Healthy Men?Upcoming Free Wild Within Online EventsAnimas Valley InstituteFAR OUT #207 ~ A March Recap: Desert Vision Quest, Women's Tantra Retreat & Medicine Work in the RainforestFAR OUT #97 ~ Your Body is not the Obstacle, It's the Way: Will Johnson on the Posture of MeditationRachelle Garcia Seliga Hakomi Support this podcast:Discount link to purchase organic, raw ceremonial-grade cacao ethically sourced in Guatemala (a portion of proceeds support this podcast)Become a patron at: https://www.patreon.com/thefaroutcoupleMake one-time donation with PayPal (our account is aplambeck22@gmail.com)Leave a review on iTunes!Share this episode with a friend! :DConnect with us:Website: www.thefarout.lifeEmail us at info@thefarout.lifeWild Within @ www.thewildwithin.orgCredits:Intro music: "Complicate ya" by Otis McDonaldOutro music: "Running with wise fools" written & performed by Krackatoa (www.krackatoa.com)

In this episode, Kimberly and Sophie explore the nuances of being public entrepreneurs and authors. They wonder aloud together about the various roles of knowledge, expertise, and experience and discuss issues such as psychedelics for women, the complexities of social media, the need for eldership, disability and sickness as an altered state, as well as healing practices outside of a hyper-fixated and individualistic framework. The common threads connecting their questions center around identities as facilitators and writers, the need for connection to community and lineages, and managing the challenges of social media and identity politics in a hyper-individualistic culture. Ultimately, they land on the beauty that comes from maturation, wisdom, and growth over time that cannot be done by a quick-fix nor in isolation.   Bio Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays “The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine” was published last year in 2022 from Inner Traditions. Her books of poetry include “Love Song to a Blue God,” “Those Other Flowers to Come” and “The Approach.” Her poems and essays have been published by Art PAPERS, The Dark Mountain Project, Poetry.org, Unearthed, Braided Way, Creatrix, Your Impossible Voice, The Doris, Persephone's Daughters, and Entropy. She has recently finished a work of historical fiction, “The Madonna Secret,” that offers an eco-feminist revision of the gospels, and will be released this summer.  She is currently researching her next epic, a mythopoetic exploration of ecology and queerness in the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde. What She Shares: –Cultural band-aids for deeper wounds –Public and private identities –Demonizing and idolizing figures –Impact of social media and identity politics –Elderhood, wisdom, and changing perspectives   What You'll Hear: –Problematizing psychedelics  –Gendered experiences with psychedelics –Harder for women to recover after psychedelics –Cultural band-aids on wounds –Sophie addresses disabled writer label –Publishing editorial choices and confinement –Public identities and social media –Collective energy demonizing or idolizing figures –Navigating social media pressures and intuition as entrepreneurs –Is the medicine of these times insignificance? –Story of Joan of Arc –No saviors, no heroes –Creating money and wanting to be insignificant –Tensions between community, authority, and parasocial diffusion –Bodily impact of social media –Problematizing gatekeeping of knowledge and lived experiences –Risk-averseness and obsession with safety  –Safety as limited capacity to survive –Hyperfixation and hyper-individualism of healing –Impact of identity politics on youth –Maturity, wisdom, and changing perspectives –Discerning between privacy, secrecy, and transparency –Using discretion when writing memoir –Difference between rot and fermentation   Resources Website: https://sophiestrand.com/ IG: @cosmogyny  

Jim has an extremely wide-ranging discussion with Michael Garfield. They discuss the upcoming book Michael is drafting in public, the exponential scaling of information production, Jurassic Park, mass distributed computation, a new topology for social connectivity, info agents, stereotyping & police violence, a dehumanizing pace of human interaction, Charles Stross's prophetic visions, heuristic induction, strong vs weak social links, restoration of the mesoscale, from the geographic polity to the noetic, the importance of the ground layer, semi-permeable membranes with commons inside them, Pokemon Go & behavioral control, generative AI & intellectual property, creating a commons to benefit culture, circular economies, dividend money & usury, high-temperature search, a future of childlike play, and much more. Michael will be hosting an interactive course with Jeremy Johnson, titled "Jurassic Worlding," beginning on July 18. Those interested should keep an eye on NuraLearning.com. Join the Jurassic Park book club and help Michael research and workshop his next book, Jurassic Worlding: A Palaeontology of The Present, at Michael's Substack. Episode Transcript Michael Garfield on Substack Subconscious (Substack) "The Singularity In Our Past Light-Cone," by Cosma Shalizi Accelerando, by Charles Stross (free online version) "Declaration for The Independence of Cyberspace," by John Perry Barlow John Danaher Interviews Erin Neely on Augmented Reality, Ethics, and Property Rights (Algocracy and Transhumanism Podcast) "The Evolution of Surveillance," by Michael Garfield "Terra Nullius," by Cory Doctorow Future Fossils Reading List Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I. (Complexity Podcast) JRS EP130 - Ken Stanley on Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned

In this episode, guest host and podcast producer Jackson Kroopf interviews Kimberly and Stephen Jenkinson about their ongoing event series Reckoning: Birth and Death Among Us. They discuss the role of witness in their work as birth and death workers, the politics of feelings in a culture where pop psychology has become a religion, and dive deeply into their relationship to matrimony. In anticipation of their final event this summer, “Reckon and Wonder: Grief, Elderhood and Spirit Work,” taking place this June 29th-July 2nd, 2023 at the Orphan Wisdom school in Ontario, they reflect on the difference between recording and live events and the unique impact that their convergence has revealed in their respective relationships to the oral tradition.   What You'll Here Reflections on witness from retired birth and death workers The value of disillusionment The power of loneliness The proliferation of self pathologizing The complex politics of feelings The religion of western psychology Adolescents grabbing for pop psychology labels The respect in not offering solutions The eagerness to escape from pain while grieving Is love dead? Blessing not as approval but the emergence of something new Marriage as both celebration and loss Matrimony between cultures An only child and single parent inviting in a new husband Building an escape route as you enter a union The no-go zone of contemporary western marriage 15 minute weddings, 15 minute funerals, 15 minute births The cultural casualties of uniformity Being healthy enough to tend to home and neighbor   Bio Stephen Jenkinson is a cultural worker, teacher, author, musician and ceremonialist. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, founded in 2010 with his wife Nathalie Roy. He has Master's degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work). Since co-founding the Nights of Grief and Mystery project with singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins in 2015, he has toured this musical / tent show revival / storytelling ceremony across North America, U.K. and Europe and Australia and New Zealand. They released their Nights of Grief & Mystery album in 2017 and at the end of 2020, they released two new records; Dark Roads and Rough Gods. Stephen is the author of Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul's Desires: A Meditation (2002). Most recently, Stephen published Reckoning (2022) with Kimberly Ann Johnson.   Links Reckon & Wonder: Grief, Elderhood, Spirit Work ~ A weekend at Orphan Wisdom, Ontario  

In this episode, Kimberly and Katie discuss the roles of student, teacher, mentor, elder, and friend. They discuss their experiences in each of those roles but how many conflate them. In an age of constant information, many want to consume, but few commit themselves to the devoted path of long-term learning. They also discuss different teaching styles, finding elders versus mentors, and their experiences of being teachers and students. Katie highlights the value of being in circle with others as a commitment to learning and growth.    Bio Katie Dove is a somatic therapist, intuitive guide, healer, and mystic with over two decades of experience working with individuals and groups. She is a keeper of ancient wisdom, exploring new paths for the preservation of human nature through connection to mother nature. Her methods weave a mixture of experiences she has collected over time, modalities she has personally cultivated, and extensive studies in transpersonal psychology and craniosacral therapy. With exploration in voice, touch, sound and movement, she guides her clients and students to investigate habits, freedom of choice, expressiveness, and the wealth of sensory information within and around them. Her upcoming course “Inhabit the Heart” is a four week journey into deep relationship with self and soul. What She Shares: –Roles of student, teacher, mentor, and elder –Path of deep inquiry and devotion –Reciprocity between teacher and student –Learning and embodying versus consuming –Important of circle and communal spaces   What You'll Hear: –What it means to be a student –Katie's relationships with teachers and students –Teachers versus mentors –Worth in long-term relationships with teachers and mentors –Being curious and humble to receive teachings –Path of deep inquiry –Understanding real devotion and repetition –Experiencing similar teachings with different transmissions –Maturing beyond teacher pedestals and accepting human limitations –Valuing different ways of wisdom teachings –Story-tellers as original teachers –Awareness of different teaching styles –Valuing shared wisdom and intuitive knowledge of teachers –Embodying as internalizing information –Greatest teachers embody their teachings –Consuming information versus embodied knowing and wisdom –Repeating classes and exploring foundational aspects of the heart and embodiment –Fundamental difference between therapist role and teacher role –Safe spaces blocking real learning and growth –Remaining in long-term practices and observation spaces –Public role of apprenticeship and as a learner –Reaching mastery through devotion of a certain path –Reciprocity of learning between student and mentor –Learning through relationship of mentorship and eldering –Differences between friendship and mentorship –Being a good student before being a good elder –Defining what you're about and what you're not as a student and teacher –Elderhood finds you –Work itself as a teacher, mentors and elder just reflecting lessons –Circles and communities that are teaching and holding us –Hours spent in devotion in circle –Learning versus consuming –Valuing elders who have longer life experience –Calling in right students and right teachers –Knowing what seat you're taking in which circle –INHABIT THE HEART: A 4 week journey into Deep Relationship with Self and Soul   Resources Website: https://www.katiedove.love/