Podcast appearances and mentions of stephen jenkinson

Stephen Jenkinson is a treasure, he's also a three time Uncivilized Podcast guest, now speaking to us from a difficult place. Usually the man sitting with the dying, he's now sitting with death himself.In this conversation I wanted to ask Stephen all of the no bullshit questions I could, giving him no softballs and going straight into the heart of the matter. As he always does, he took my questions and made both poetry and wisdom out of them.Truth be told, I had to breathe my way through this interview so as not to break down in tears myself. It's raw and it's real.This episode is about life, sickness, and facing death in an UNcivilized mannerCheers,Traver

In Western culture, topics surrounding death and dying are often considered taboo and are generally avoided in everyday conversations. But this reluctance to fully acknowledge and integrate death as a natural part of the human experience has rendered us less able to cope with the end of life and less prepared to show up for ourselves and the people around us as we inevitably navigate loss. But what if a more skillful engagement with death and grief could actually offer us a more mindful approach to living? In this conversation, Nate is joined by Stephen Jenkinson, a cultural activist and author on the topic of grief, loss, and dying, to discuss his extensive work on grief literacy and the shortcomings of the dominant cultural attitudes towards death. Stephen reflects on his experiences as a palliative care counselor, offering insights on how to navigate the complexities of life and death, advocating for a more profound participation with grief. What if we viewed grief as a skill rather than an affliction? What opportunities and insights become available to us as we more deeply understand and accept death as a part of life? In what ways does modern culture's reliance on hope act as a distraction from facing reality – and how does this harm us towards the end of life?  (Conversation recorded on June 12th, 2025)   About Stephen Jenkinson: Stephen Jenkinson is a cultural activist and author on the topic of grief, loss, and dying. Along with his wife Nathalie Roy, Stephen co-founded the Orphan Wisdom School, where he writes and teaches about the skills of deep living, making human culture, and how to die and grieve well – skills he believes we have forgotten in our culture today. Stephen holds a master's degree in theological studies from Harvard and an additional master's degree in social work from the University of Toronto. Additionally, he served for years as the program director of a palliative-care center in a major Toronto teaching hospital, where he provided counseling at hundreds of deathbeds. He is the author of many books, including the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, as well as his upcoming book titled Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work.   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners

Author and wisdom-carrier Stephen Jenkinson returns for a deeply textured, no-BS unpacking of Matrimony — his newest cultural autopsy. We track the broken shards of our seemingly antiquated wedding traditions back to their source, dissect the difference between promises and vows, and talk about what happens when ritual life flatlines into spectacle. Stephen calls out the privatization of love, the poverty of “authentic,” and the radical hospitality required to make a vow matter.This is not a “how to plan your special day” conversation. It's a clear-eyed, occasionally confronting exploration of what matrimony could be if we had the chops, the courage, and the cultural literacy to make it real.Watch on Odysee + Progressive Radio NetworkPart 2:danikatz.locals.comwww.patreon.com/danikatzAll things Dani, including books, courses, coaching + consulting:www.danikatz.comPlus, schwag:danikatz.threadless.comAll things Stephen Jenkinson:www.orphanwisdom.comWildcraft Herbs:www.wildcraftherbs.comUse promo code DANI11 for discounts and free gifts!Show notes:On writing Matrimony & being an officiantEtymology & meaning of a ‘crisis'Examining the ritual of modern weddingsSearching for ‘real' inside matrimony'It takes a village' of strangersWedding invitations & non-sacred wording“Do you vow….?”The ir/relevance of marriage ‘Blessing', origin and meaning What cultured people doRole of the ArtistPrivatization of loveA profound story about a morning afterPushback to S's matrimonial methodsGracefully breathing life into ritual Roles of elders in matrimonyWorking with words as spells

On the 135th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I'm delighted to welcome our guest, Stephen Jenkinson. Stephen is a cultural worker, teacher, author, and ceremonialist. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, founded in 2010. He has master's degrees from Harvard University (theology) and the University of Toronto (social work). He's the author of Come of Age, the award-winning Die Wise, Money and the Soul's Desires, and Reckoning (with Kimberly Ann Johnson). His latest book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work, invites readers to contemplate the significance of matrimony, ceremony, and cultural articulation—and how to redeem them for future generations.In this rich conversation, Stephen explores profound questions about life, love, and the nature of existence. The discussion delves into the essence of ceremonies, particularly in matrimony, emphasising the need for meaningful endings and the responsibilities we hold towards future generations. The discussion weaves fate, ancestry, humility, and the call to “proceed as if you're needed” into a meditation on how we might live fully inhabited lives.For Stephen's latest book, Matrimony:To buy your copy: https://orphanwisdom.com/store/matrimony/About the book: https://orphanwisdom.com/books/matrimony/For more of Stephen's work: Website: https://orphanwisdom.com/Contact me at mark@whatisagood.life if you'd like to explore your own lines of self-inquiry through 1-on-1 coaching, my 5-week group courses, or to discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your leadership teams.- For the What is a Good Life? podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/- My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/00:01 – Introduction01:37 – The Condition of Pondering06:28 – Roots of Pondering10:16 – The Dream Another World Has of You19:36 – Needed vs Important21:46 – Matrimony and the Presence of the Absence26:00 – Longing and Belonging 31:00 – Modern wedding and the privatisation of love35:47 – The Art of the Ending41:40 – Pompe and the Necessity of Closure43:47 – Ritual as a Gift to the Village45:45 – The White Heat of Possibility51:25 – The Active Witness53:43 – What Is a Good Life for Stephen?

I sat down for the second time with my favourite philosopher, wordsmith, truth-teller - and now matrimony's fiercest ally - Stephen Jenkinson, to dive deep into love, relationships, and the rituals that hold them together... or should. What started as a conversation about weddings quickly turned into something much bigger. Stephen shared how officiating ceremonies led him to defend matrimony itself - not the performance, but the sacred, messy, meaningful practice of two people choosing each other, again and again. He calls himself matrimony's ally and a 'spirit lawyer' of sorts for marriage... and after hearing him, you’ll get why. He brings the same fire and the depth as he did it his first phenomenal appearance on the show (ep695) - telling stories that are as unorthodox as they are unforgettable, breaking down the meaning behind words like 'catastrophe' and 'matrimony', and exposing how far we’ve drifted from the roots of our language, our rituals, and our relationships. This conversation doesn’t float at the surface. It goes all the way down into ancestry, witnesshood, grief, and the quiet work of keeping love alive when the honeymoon’s long gone. True to form, there’s nothing surface-level here, and Stephen leaves my mind whirring... Enjoy! SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au STEPHEN JENKINSON Website: orphanwisdom.com TIFFANEE COOK Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches/ Website: tiffcook.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tiffaneecook/ Facebook: facebook.com/rollwiththepunchespodcast/ Instagram: instagram.com/rollwiththepunches_podcast/ Instagram: instagram.com/tiffaneeandco See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 

Stephen Jenkinson doesn't offer comfort. He offers presence, precision and poetry. In this wide-ranging and unsparing conversation, we explore what it means to live in a time of endings, and why grief isn't something to get over, but something to serve. We speak about the crisis of meaning in modern life, the cost of a death-phobic culture, and how elderhood is a task, not a stage. Stephen challenges the spiritual bypasses of modern healing work, questions the ease with which people chase transcendence, and asks what it might take to stay loyal to a world that breaks your heart. Read more about Stephen's work here: https://orphanwisdom.com/about/ ----------------------------------------------- Stephen Jenkinson is a teacher, author, storyteller and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. With a background in theology and social work, he has spent decades working with dying people and their families, exploring grief, elderhood and cultural redemption. A former programme director in palliative care and master storyteller, Stephen is also known for his work in ritual, ancestral wisdom and land-based living. He tours internationally with the Nights of Grief and Mystery, a blend of music, ceremony and teachings on the human condition. ----------------------------------------------- As a special gift for you, our loyal listeners, we are offering $200 off our flagship course, the Certificate of Embodiment Coaching when you use code: CECPOD  More info here: https://embodimentunlimited.com/cec ----------------------------------------------- Check out our YouTube channel for more coaching tips and our Podcast channel for full episode videos Uplevel your coaching with a free copy of Mark's latest eBook, The Top 12 Embodiment Coaching Techniques  Join Mark for those juicy in-person workshops and events Fancy some free coaching demo sessions with Mark?  Connect with Mark Walsh on Instagram 

In this festive wedding season, what if matrimony wasn't here to affirm the intensity of love between two people but a courageous submission to the unknown?  Jennifer speaks with Stephen Jenkinson—cultural activist, author, ceremonialist—about the necessary burdens of love through the ritual of matrimony. With characteristic poetic edge, Stephen challenges the Western obsession with autonomy, authenticity and safety and gestures toward a redemptive cultural project: one of radical hospitality, memory, and the mystery of matrimony as a village-making act.Together they dive into:How matrimony is distinct from weddings and is rooted in mothering culture, not just romantic loveThe lost valence of patrimony, and what it asks of usThe role of the stranger in belonging and village makingWhy being “yourself” might not be the gift you think it isThis conversation reveals how ritual and ceremony thins the membrane with other worlds, makes congress with the divine and helps us honor what's come before —so we might find our place, and responsibility, in what's yet to come.Links & Resources:Order Stephen Jenkinson's newest book Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work Learn more about Orphan Wisdom SchoolGet Jennifer's biweekly newsletter for radical encouragement on the hard mess of being humanConnect with Jennifer on Instagram or LinkedIn Gratitude for this show's theme song Inside the House, composed by the talented Yukon musician, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Jordy Walker. Artwork by the imaginative writer, filmmaker and artist Jon Marro.

Hey For The Wild community, it's Ayana. It's been a minute. Life has been moving—fast, deep, and full. I've grown, and with that growth, a clearer sense of what I want to share with you has come into focus.After nearly a decade of digital episodes, I felt a longing—an ache to be in person, on the land, and heart to heart with our guests. That's why you may have noticed we've slowed down on weekly releases. Instead, we've been on the road, spending sacred, unhurried time with people we love—tending to conversations that are raw, intimate, funny, beautiful, edgy, and alive.We were hoping to keep it under wraps a little longer, but we're just too excited: the first season of our new walking series will be released soon, and it features the luminous Sophie Strand. This series is an in-person, land-based conversation that is intimate, weird, raw, beautiful exploration of land, grief, myth, pleasure, and more. These aren't studio-perfect interviews, they're alive.But there's more. We're also creating an anthology—a wild and tender book featuring Sophie and 20 other contributors like Tyson Yunkaporta, Sylvia Linsteadt, adrienne maree brown, Dori Midnight, and Stephen Jenkinson. It's an archive, an altar, a trail companion—a distillation of 10 years of For The Wild with essays, art, poetry, rituals, and deep questions. It asks us what it means to live in fragmentary times and still root deeply. We hope to print it later this year.To bring these projects to life, we need your support.We're looking for funding partners, sponsors, and publishers—and we're dreaming of a book tour from the West Coast to the East, and across the pond to Europe.If you're an individual, foundation, or aligned company that wants to support the Sophie Strand series, reach out.If you're a publisher or lit world comrade, I'd love to connect.If you'd like to host a live gathering for the book tour, let's talk—we'd love to share good food, real talk, and tender moments with your community.Email us at connect@forthewild.worldThank you for walking with us—whether you've been here since the beginning or just arrived. My heart is racing as I share this with you. It feels risky, but right. Vulnerable, but true. And I'm so grateful.In the meantime, you can spend some deep time with us through our Earthly Reads Series and Book Study or Bayo Akomolafe's We Will Dance with Mountains: Vunja! course—both on our website.And of course, we've got over 350 episodes waiting for you on your favorite platform.Here's to what comes next. With love,Ayana♫ The music featured in this update is “Das Nuvens (Live)” by Fabiano do Nascimento, courtesy of Leaving Records.Support the show

This is a special re-release of an episode featuring guest host Jackson Kroopf speaking with the incomparable Kimberly Ann Johnson and Stephen Jenkinson. We're bringing this conversation back to let you know about something special happening this weekend from Stephen Jenkinson and the Orphan Wisdom School: Sanity and Soul: Die Wise 10 Years. Taking place on March 15th and 16th at 10am Pacific, this 6-part online event is a deep dive into the wisdom of death, grief, and the soul, 10 years after the publication of Stephen's transformative book Die Wise. You'll get to experience the depth of Stephen's work in a pretty unique way: through 4 recorded grief counsel sessions with dying people, hearing Stephen practice, in 2025, the kind of work described in Die Wise. Plus, he'll be joined by two brilliant colleagues—a neuroscientist studying human consciousness and a filmmaker exploring the afterlife—to discuss the lasting impact of Die Wise on grief counseling, death doulas, and the way these ideas continue to shape our world. If you want to learn more and register, visit orphanwisdom.com/events. But now, enjoy this conversation from March 2023, following Reckoning at Mt. Madonna. Please do consider gifting yourself or a loved one this upcoming offering, Sanity & Soul that promises to provide some ceremony in these  troubled times in ways only Stephen and the Orphan Wisdom School can. Link: https://orphanwisdom.com/event/die-wise-sanity-and-soul-ten-years-on/   What You'll Here in this Episode: 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   Links ig @reckoning live Sanity & Soul Sign-Up https://orphanwisdom.com/event/die-wise-sanity-and-soul-ten-years-on/

I've been (earnestly) taking courses, workshops and seminars these last few years, while producing over 300 podcasts about art and ecology, as my way of helping future generations prepare for what we are leaving them. My most recent learning and unlearning exercise is Surviving the Future: The Deeper Dive 2025, a 10 week course inspired by the work of British ecologist David Fleming. I wrote about the first three weeks of the course in prepare, bend, sustain posting (also available in audio). So this is part 2 of 2. Surviving the Future has been very influential in my life. I took it while I was on break from my conscient podcast and it has helped figure out what to do next, which I outline in a conscient rethink (also available in audio).My key research questions are :What needs to be said ? (what is content that is not being heard)Who needs to say it ? (who are the right person(s) to tell the story or explain the issue)Who wants to hear it ? (who is the audience and needs to hear it)How does it help? (eg people who are already overwhelmed: how can a podcast help move things forward)So what was Surviving the Future like? It was dense and wonderfully curated by Shaun Chamberlin and others. Here's an example. On Monday February 24, 2025, our special guests were the dynamic mother/daughter duo Vanessa and Gina Andreotti, both members of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) collective.  I often refer to the GTDF's work in my learnings.The session centered around Burnout From Humans : A Little Book About AI That Is Not Really About AI:a playful reflection on complexity, connection, and the future of human-AI relationships. Co-authored by an emergent intelligence and a human researcher, this work explores the tangled dynamics of humanity's relationship with artificial intelligence, Earth, and itself.It was an engaging and challenging session about AI from indigenous and decolonial perspectives. After our exchange, Vanessa and the GTDF collective published an Open letter to the participants of the Surviving the Future program, which I was a part of. They offered feedback and learnings from our conversation, such as the distinction between critique and jurisdiction and how the architecture of power often remains invisible to those who have historically and systemically benefited from it.Benefactors like myself. The session was difficult but empowering. Looking into the mirror like that is when I realized that Surviving the Future was also about knowing and surviving myself, understanding myself and overcoming, as Vanessa Andretotti notes, the ‘limits that modernity continuously tries to impose'.We certainly faced some of those limitations. This excerpt from the February 24th letter resonates and haunts me :The world as we have known it is unraveling. Both the dominant frameworks and those once seen as transgressive are failing to hold. This collapse is not just structural; it is psychological. The infrastructures that stabilized people within modernity—its myths, its promises, its assurances, its rhythms of control—are breaking apart. The result will not be gentle. We must prepare for a long, messy, species-wide existential meltdown.How does one prepare for a long, messy, species-wide existential meltdown?Here a short story.I was a deputy returning officer at the February 27, 2025, Ontario provincial election. My job was to confirm the eligibility of voters and hand them a ballot.It was my civic duty and an opportunity to get to know some of my neighbours and co-citizens. Some voters had just turned 18 and were visibly excited about participating in democracy for the first time.As I handed each young adult a ballot, I looked them in the eye, wished them well, but in the back of my mind I could not help thinking about the ‘long, messy, species-wide existential meltdown' that awaits them.Now most young adults are well aware of this incoming meltdown. They talk about it openly.For example, my son, historian Riel Schryer, in conscient e154:I don't think there's going to be any serious response to the climate crisis until real catastrophes start happening. That tends to be how it works. And once you start seeing that, then you'll start seeing very serious action being put in place. Although, we'll see at that point, if it's too late or not.Also, my daughter, scientist Clara Schryer, in conscient e208:… changes happen : there are always ways to adapt. That's not to say that the initial change might not be kind of catastrophic, but there's always going to be something left and you have to work with that.Is it too late?How do we work with what is left? At a Surviving the Future reflection session on March 6th course leader Shaun Chamberlin read to us this quote by Canadian writer, teacher and grief literacy advocate Stephen Jenkinson :The question is not ‘are we going to fail?'  The question is ‘how?' The question is what shall be the manner of our inability to care for what was entrusted to us?So what does a baby boomer like myself do to regain a sacred trust to future generations that my generation has betrayed? These are the kinds of questions and dilemmas that we pondered during the course and took a deeper dive into those issues.Thankfully we had access to a wide range of resources and conversations that helped us navigate these complex waters. For example, I found comfort in this excerpt from Paul Kingsnorth's Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist :In an age in which ‘fighting for the planet' most often means tweeting, signing petitions, writing blogs and sometimes going on a march, the rhetoric seems not only overblown but likely to obscure the value of more focused, small-scale personal commitments to changing things for the better. … In 1978, [Wendell] Berry wrote to [Gary] Snyder … ‘Maybe the answer is to fight always for what you particularly love, not for abstractions and not against anything: don't fight against even the devil, and don't fight to “save the world”.' … Once you start thinking you are responsible, or can influence, everything, you are lost. When you take responsibility for a specific something, on the other hand, it's possible you might get somewhere.Local action kept coming up as a path forward during the course. The argument is that an individual can have the most impact locally such as with permaculture or community arts or really any form of action that engages with and preserves life where we live. The issue of grief also kept coming back. For example, this teaching from Stephen Jenkinson's So What Now?:Grief requires of us that we know what time we're in. And the great enemy of grief is hope. … Our time requires of us to be hope free. To burn through the false choice between hopeful and hopeless. … We don't require hope to proceed. We require grief to proceed.Conversations about grief led me to think about grief and grieving in the context of hope and hopelessness. The timing was good because during the course I was editing the first episode of season 6 of my conscient podcast and my conversation with farmer and educator Peter Janes and his father, archeologist and former museum director Robert R. Janes, of TreeEater Farm, touched upon hope and hopelessness :Here's Peter :I have a mixed relationship with that concept of hope. Because I actually genuinely have very little hope for the continuation of humanity. But then at the same time, every day I'm out here making bigger ponds and planting trees that I think will do better. And trying to bring on board people with the same ideas and visions. So it's a bit of a contradiction.Here's Bob's take: It's really easy to be hopeless. And I suppose it's rather contradictory to say hopeless but still want to do things constructively to overcome that hopelessness. And so, I guess that's what I mean. There are so many things we can do. I mean, we know what we need to do to weather this storm, but I guess the sacrifice and the suffering it's going to cause is just too much for people's imagination. So, there's middle ground with all that. And again, this farm is a source of being helpful, and I guess underneath that, being hopeful and a source of being. What was the mantra? Hopeless, but not helpless. Yeah. And the farm for me is that, is that tool, it's that environment. It's the context to do helpful things and to pave the way for the future.That's why I took the Surviving the Future course, hoping that a deeper dive, led by experts, would help me understand and face the complexities around us. I was not disappointed. Each week's readings, assignments, conversations, and meditations brought me deeper and deeper into, the compost of modernity, so to speak. I experienced intense moments of joy and sorrow. Of discouragement and hopefulness. Mostly, however, I was bewildered and slightly more able to acceptance to what is going on and explore new possibilities. Surviving the Future also helped me let go of my ego, by engaging in deeper listening to others and myself while release the compulsion to be the smartest kid in the room.No need to be anything other than an ordinary learner. Overall the course was both an exercise in humility and an opportunity to develop and maintain capacity. And that powerful February 24th open letter stayed with me, notably its conclusion: As a collective, we move with the discernment this moment demands—not with arrogance, but with honesty. Not in defiance, but in commitment. Not against anyone but reaching beyond the limits that modernity continuously tries to impose.So I'll work on discernment, honesty, commitment and reaching beyond.To be honest, this kind of introspection is hard work and we all need resources and support.Here are some of the resources from Surviving the Future that have been the most impactful and relevant for me: AIDEN CINNAMON TEA & DOROTHY LADYBUGBOSS' Burnout From Humans : A Little Book About AI That Is Not Really About AIDavid Fleming's: LEAN LOGIC - A DICTIONARY for the FUTURE and HOW to SURVIVE ITIsabelle Fremeaux & Jay Jordan's : We Are 'Nature' Defending ItselfJoanna Macy on The Great Turning and CollapseNate Hagens' Animated Series | The Great SimplificationThere are many more. I'll mention other resources in future postings. So what did I learn and unlearn during these 10 weeks? Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better (Maya Angelou)Staying with the trouble (Donna Haraway) : no more rushing around to quick fixes, conclusions, simplistic solutions or passing judgements on situations that are still unfoldingMeditate daily: I am not what I thinkThe Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house (Audre Lorde)When the children born today look back 30 years from now, what actions would they be grateful that we took right now? (GTDF collective)I'll conclude with this excerpt from Shaun Chamberlin's The Secret Truth Behind Environmentalists' Favourite Argument :For me personally, the harsh truth is that I cannot save Nature and/or humanity from the ongoing devastation, though I could burn myself out trying. It seems to me that there is not one thing that I can do to divert history. And facing that reality hurts.  But, beyond agony, joy. I sit with that pain, and its attendant tears and rage, I refuse to run from it or to distract myself with entertainment or with frantic work, and I find that it does not end me. Eventually, I come out the other side, somehow empowered. The psychic energy I have been using to suppress that fear and despair is released, and I look at the world with fresh eyes. ‘Ok', I breathe, ‘here I am, in a dying world'. It's the same dying world I lived in yesterday, but today I see it for what it is. ‘What now?' And this time the question feels less desperate, less anxious. What story do I want to tell with this day, with this life? The question is suddenly filled with possibilities.My take on this, is that we need to explore the possibilities that emerge as we work our way through that ‘long, messy, species-wide existential meltdown' while calmly preparing for what comes after, with or without humans.BTW you might have noticed I did not mention art at all, in this posting.I'm rethinking my relationship with art. My definition of art, also, is evolving. I'll publish a separate piece called ‘l'art est mort : vive l'art' soon. Warm thanks Shaun, Nakasi, Nicole and all the Surviving the Future 2025 team and participants for their generosity and collaboration during the course and beyond.Note: The cover photo is of Henry Moore's Large Two Forms in Grange Park, Tkaronto. *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHey conscient listeners, I've been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020 on un-ceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory (Ottawa). It's my way to give back and be present.In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads or BlueSky.I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on March 13, 2025

In this episode, return guest Joelle Hann and Kimberly discuss the complexities of publishing, including traditional, self, and hybrid publishing. Joelle walks us through the importance of a book proposal, which serves as a roadmap for authors and a calling card for agents and publishers. Kimberly weighs in on her own experience in navigating the book publishing world and the incredible value she has found in working with Joelle. Joelle highlights the need for authors to understand their audience and market, and the potential pitfalls of self-publishing without an existing audience. Joelle's Book Proposal Academy is enrolling now and starts March 14th. This is the only cohort for 2025. Apply now! To be eligible to save up to $500 and get other early-bird bonuses, mention Sex, Birth, Trauma podcast in your application.  Bio Joelle Hann is an award-winning writer with a history of developing high-level book projects for major American publishers. Subject areas have included wellness and transformation, women's health, leadership and spirituality, as well as conscious business, personal finance and memoir. She has worked with top CEOs and humanitarian activists,visionary coaches and thought-leaders, spiritual teachers, scholars, moms, midwives, entrepreneurs, and many others. She founded Brooklyn Book Doctor to help people write transformational books to help change the world. Links IG @brooklynbookdoctor Learn More & Apply to Book Proposal Academy 2025: https://brooklynbookdoctor.com/bpa Learn More about Sanity & Soul: Die Wise Ten Years On with Stephen Jenkinson here: https://orphanwisdom.com/event/die-wise-sanity-and-soul-ten-years-on/

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  

1999 was a golden year for movies.That year saw the release of The Matrix, American Beauty, and Fight Club - which remain some of my all time favourites.The latter two are particular compelling as I look through my present-day lens and what they had to say about men & masculinity at the end of the millennium.Both American Beauty & Fight Club depict similar themes of (white) men grappling with middle-class consumerism and a lack of potency, trapped in a meaningless existence.In American Beauty, Lester Burnham opens the film by detailing his boring life - from the teenager who hates him, to his wife who doesn't respect him, and his cubicle dwelling job sucking his soul. The high point of his day is “jerking off in the shower.”Tyler Durden, the rebellious bad boy in Fight Club, tells the Narrator (who lives a similar flat-line as Lester):"Men have become mortgages, marriages, car payments, and fucking cable bills. We are the middle children of history, no purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives.”We could label Lester & the Narrator as living the archetype of The Domestic Man.What's fascinating for me is to observe how each of these men respond to their intolerable condition, and how that relates to the theme of “finding the Wild Man” that Robert Bly speaks about in the fairy tale of Iron John.In one of the teaching sessions I attended with Stephen Jenkinson, he asked us once: what is the most dangerous kind of animal?Some ventured to say “a wild animal.”He made the case that was untrue. For while a wild animal may be hazardous to humans, it is living connected to its nature and the pulse of life. A more dangerous creature that is often unpredictable and malevolent in its behaviour?The name for that is “feral” he told us.This is a creature that has failed to be domesticated.I think of this in the arc of Tyler Durden and The Narrator in Flight Club. What begins as an underground men's group, committed to living raw and alive again, morphs into a revolutionary cell (Project Mayhem) that attacks the data centres of credit card companies, aimed at liberating a new society.It remains somewhat ambiguous whether this actually happens or if it's a fantasy of the Narrator's psychosis.Now, while you may agree that predatory debt needs to be unshackled from humanity (as I do) you may have issues with the tactics. And it's clear the tone of the revolutionary effort becomes poisoned with toxic ideology.You could call this response 'feral'.For Lester Burnham in American Beauty, his inner fire is reawakened by an encounter with his daughter's teenage friend, a nymph-like cheerleader that becomes an inspiration for his salvation. (You might say she has taken on his anima projection - the erotic feminine in him he has suppressed).Suddenly, he finds the courage to quit is job, start lifting weights, smoke pot, and tell off his wife. He's a middle-aged man regressing back to his teen years to remember what it was like to actually enjoy life.Lester is aided by the young Buddha-like neighbour Ricky Fitts, who operates within society from a place of conscious non-attachment, preferring to film every moment of beauty that he comes across - including the infamous plastic bag dancing in the wind.In the scene where Ricky is watching the footage with his girlfriend, he says:"There's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once. And it's beautiful. […] It's like God wants me to notice it. To recognize all this beauty. Maybe it's the secret that the whole universe is trying to tell us. Something, we all know deep down but we all kind of forgot. And I don't know if my heart is gonna explode or what. But I'm grateful. I am so grateful.”The moment itself is a portal into wonder, for the characters and for the millions of viewers who saw the film.It certainly was for me, watching the film at 18 years old.Near the end of the film, Lester Burham awakens from the spell he had cast upon his daughter's girlfriend. She was not the Goddess incarnate, just an insecure young girl who was terrified of rejection. His character softens to her and he becomes more like a supportive Father.Lester realizes he has no one else to blame for his life. He had abandoned himself, convinced that it was someone else's job to “save him.”Robert A. Johnson would call this finally slaying his inner Mother Complex.Robert Bly might say, he has freed the Wild Man from the cage.It is now his task to cultivate his own connection to the primal erotic foundation of life.Today, many men find themselves in a similar predicament.Buried under mortgages, parenting, the daily grind of a job, lacking a deeper sense of direction & purpose.These days, it's “easier” then ever to get lost in addictions, distractions, and despair.And yet, there are a growing number of men willing to “seek the golden ball” that they lost long ago, and step up to the Wild Man's cage.With this in mind, my collaborator Deus and I have crafted a 3 month online journey: The Deep Masculine.This immersion brings together over a decade of exploration into mythopoetic maps, somatic skills, ritual rhythm, and the power of brotherhood - for men to awaken their primal birthright.The doors re-open March 14th.Today more than ever, we need men ablaze with courage, fiercely in love with life, and willing to bow in service to beauty.Onwards,Ianp.s. For men able to join us on Vancouver Island, you are invited to our next Awakening the Wild Erotic (April 4-6, 2025). Get full access to The Mythic Masculine at themythicmasculine.substack.com/subscribe

My guest today is my good friend Tad Hargrave.Tad is the founder of Marketing for Hippies with a mission to restore the beauty of the marketplace. He teaches folks who have a desire to do good, but hate marketing, how to articulate their work with elegance and effectiveness.Tad has spent years learning his ancestral language of Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia and on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. As well, for over a decade we have both attended the Orphan Wisdom School with Stephen Jenkinson in Ontario, where we have many fond memories in the teaching hall. In recent years, he's turned towards studying ancient history, comparative mythology and Indo-European folklore.In our conversation today, Tad has turned towards the fairy tale Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) and what it might have to stay about the indigenous memory of Europe. Chances are, you've seen the Disney version of the story, though I would highly recommend you pause this episode and read the original Grimm's tale before continuing.Read the Grimm's version hereTad and I focus in on a particular moment, when after a 100 years of enchanted sleep, the prince approaches the briar hedge that encircles the castle and the Beauty lying within. We explore themes of seduction versus courtship and degradation of trust between men and women. We speak about the historical role of the Court and the tragedy of extracting too much from Nature's innate abundance.And finally, we explore how folk tales can hold practical wisdom for modern masculinity and how to sustain the mutual life between humans and the holy.The Mythic Masculine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.DON'T MISS Tad and his collaborator Kakisimow Iskwew have a number of deeper dives into the story of Briar Rose:* Briar Rose - 6 Week Online Program Begins Jan 5th* All details on Briar Rose OfferingsMORE LINKS* Tad's website Marketing for Hippies* Tad's Substack ‘On Culture Making'SHOW NOTES 03:46 Welcoming Tad Hargrave 04:43 The Origin of Marketing for Hippies 05:47 Exploring the Fairy Tale of Briar Rose 06:56 The Symbolism of Briar Rose 11:50 The Dangers of Seduction and Coercion 14:11 The Pickup Artist Experience 25:14 The Concept of Courtship 25:33 The Etymology of Courtship 31:19 The Modern Mimicry of Courtship 39:19 The King's Riddle and Nature's Abundance 40:40 Indigenous Wisdom and Sustainable Harvesting 41:39 The Consequences of Mistrust and Overextraction 43:56 The Art of Courtship in Different Cultures 45:48 The Tale of the Tree of Life 50:22 Mentorship and the Importance of Timing 58:07 The Beauty of Courtship and True Love 01:08:29 The Wisdom in Stories and EldersThe Mythic Masculine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Mythic Masculine at themythicmasculine.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the 8th House, Scorpio's lair, associated with Tarot minors 5-7 of Cups and its King. This fixed water sign shares ‘Spooky Season' with Halloween, Samhain, All Soul's, Dia De Los Muertes, and the thinning of the veil. Scorpio teaches that when we walk alongside fear, navigating our own darkest shadows, we discover an uncanny power to transcend the sharp pain of grief and loss, and move towards deeper connection with Spirit.'I'm the cobwebbed stairsthe ancient bonesI'm the shadow rippling cobblestonesI'm the stagnant swampthe black lagoonI'm the branches scratching at the moonI'm the funeral servicethe unknown mournerI'm the demon cowering in the cornerI'm the sexton's spadethe new thrown clayI'm what's left when they walk awayI'm the ebony coffinthe satin liningthe pale, thin lips in the back room dyingI'm the walking deadthe fly by nightI'm the last of the fading lightI'm the unbarred doorthe open encasementI'm the steps leading down to the basementI'm the four post bedthe let down hairI'm the cross that you forgot to wearI'm the highest voltagethe shining slabthe crack of midnight in the doctor's labI'm the night beforethe morning afterthe echoing of the baron's laughterI'm Jonathan HarkerI'm Lucy's trancethe elegant count's hypnotic glanceI'm the wooden malletthe sharpened stakeI'm the precautions you forgot to takeI'm the mummy's cursethe passing bellI'm the fortune they wouldn't tellI'm pyromania, TransylvaniaI'm out of breathI'm worse than deathI'm the late night airexhilaratingI'm with you in the darkness, waiting'Silent Scream, T.S.O.L.*Episode Art: Guardian of the Night Tarot, Supra Oracle, Mary-El TarotAcknowledgments & Mentions: Aliya & Madeline; Faith, Hope & Carnage, Nick Cave; Die Wise: A Manifesto of Sanity & Soul, Stephen Jenkinson; 36 Secrets, T. Susan Chang; Pholarcos Tarot, Carmen Sorrenti; Blood Moon Tarot, Sam Guay; Dust II Onyx: A Melanated Tarot, Courtney Alexander; Wildwood Tarot; Otherkins Tarot, Siolo Thompson; The Crone & Dark Goddess Tarots, Ellen Lorenzi-Prince; The Carnival at the End of The World Tarot; Mary-El Tarot, Mary White; Blank Ink Tarot, Evvin Marin; Ghosts & Spirits Tarot, Lisa Hunt; Medicine Woman Tarot, Carol BridgesDisclaimer: Passages may be truncated or modified.8th House Healers Podcast is Eliza Harris and Sarah Cole-McCarthy. All rights reserved. Find us on Instagram and Eliza's Tarot in her Etsy shop. We'd love to hear from you! Send your questions, comments & suggestions to us at: 8thhousehealers@gmail.com. Podcast cover photography, ‘The Lovers', by Eliza/Esmerlize (esmerlize.com). Original podcast theme music, ‘Languid Stars', by Dylan McCarthy (dylanmccarthymusic.com).Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/8th-house-healers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Click here to send me a text message ...Out here, on the far side of conventional religion, no path is more compelling than the one that leads us to know our natural place within the larger earth community. And there may be no better modern guide than Bill Plotkin, the author of four books on the subject and the founder of the Animas Valley Institute. The way is called "soul initiation," which is devastating to the ego but life-giving to the soul. And it just might help save the planet.Two TipsThis episode is longer than most, so you might find it helpful to reference the Chapters tab above and listen in convenient chunks.You might also find it helpful to read along with the poem with which we begin our conversation, "What to Remember When Waking," by David Whyte. Here's a link: https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=994ErrataThe notion I mistakenly attribute to Stephen Jenkinson, that true elders consider today's actions in light of their effect seven generations out, is in fact a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) principle I had read about in Robin Wall Kimmerer's excellent book, "Braiding Sweetgrass." I regret the error. However, both Jenkinson and Bill Plotkin assume a similar point of view, that elders seek to honour both the ancestors who have gone before and the generations yet to come when considering the actions we take today.Bill's BooksSoulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche; Soulcraft; New World Library, 2003Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World; New World Library, 2008Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche; New World Library, 2013The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries" New World Library, 2021The Animas Valley InstituteHome page: https://www.animas.orgPersonal LinksMy web site (where you can sign up for my blog): https://www.brianepearson.caMy email address: mysticcaveman53@gmail.comSeries Music Credit"Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Limelight, 2005; licensed under SOCAN 2022

On this first episode of Season 6, Sarah talks with Csenge Kolozsvari who, along with her four year old daughter, traveled from Montreal to her home village in Hungary to accompany her father on his dying journey. She shares the intimate and personal details of being present to her father's needs during his final weeks. Csenge is an artist and bodyworker. You can reach her here:https://www.thebreathing-room.com/en/homeAnd she mentions this book, Die Wise, by Stephen Jenkinson in our conversation:https://orphanwisdom.com/shop/die-wise/Support the show

In this episode, podcast producer Jackson Kroopf interviews Kimberly Ann Johnson and Stephen Jenkinson about their upcoming live audio series Never Land / Sever Land - Dirt, Place, Ancestry, and The Making of Culture From The New World.  They discuss the impact of their recent trip to Ireland on their ongoing collaboration around culture making in the wake of a global pandemic. They reveal details about Stephen's work-in-progress manuscript and how it relates to orphan wisdom. They consider the implications of the “New World” in contemporary circumstances, the sticky territory of ancestry, and how dirt fits into all of this. A glimpse into a very special offering to come, this conversation gives you a preview into what happens when these two come together to consider the topics and work they've devoted so much of their respective writings and teachings to: how to consider (your) place when history is never far past.   What you'll here wonderings about: What it means for North Americans to visit their ancestral homeland The consequences of being cultural orphans Native culture and its relationship to whiteness What ancestry means to your travel plans The difference between making culture from and making culture for... Peter Behrens' book "The Law of Dream" Stephen's musings on Tobe Hooper and Stephen Spielberg's film Poltergeist Back to the land / farming fantasies Dirt and its layered wisdom Shifts in Stephen's teachings from warnings to descriptors The Unauthorized history of North America What it means to always feel like you're running Why its different to listen to this series live... What wellness has to do with all this... You can learn  more and sign up for their upcoming class "Never Land / Sever Land: Dirt, Place, Ancestry, and The Makings of Culture From the New World" from October 20th-November 17th at: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/never-land/ photo by Mattias Olsson  

In this episode, we explore why hope, while seemingly positive, might actually be keeping you stuck. Drawing inspiration from the slang "sus" (popularized by the game Among Us), we'll dive into how hope can sometimes feel like a trap—suspicious, even. With teachings from Pema Chödrön and Stephen Jenkinson's Die Wise, we'll uncover how clinging to hope can numb us from reality, especially at life's end. Join me as we unpack the idea that letting go of hope could be the key to finding true peace in the present moment.

Melinda Norris, born and raised in the 70's in Melbourne (Narrn) suburbia, had a far from a typical suburban upbringing. Both her parents, who were immigrants to Australia, kept their family traditions, such as homesteading and growing their food;  we now know these practices as permaculture. One very important tradition that held strong to in the family was caring at home for the young, and the old, and the dying.   Having lived with the dying and attended as many funerals as christenings and weddings, Melinda has been attuned to this part of life for as long as she can remember.   And having had a number of near death experiences herself, Melinda has a familiarity and reverence for the terrain and the journey that we all must take someday. With a curious nature, she was destined for adventure and has lived a full life, exploring, creating, and travelling. Professionally, Melinda is best known as a Festival and Event Producer, Arts Worker, and, more recently, a Tiny House Builder. Today, she's here to discuss a deeply personal topic that resonates with many—our relationship with death and dying. She is a death Doula, a term that means helper, who facilitates, guides, and emotionally supports families. Melinda is a bridge to allay fears, communicate expectations, and gently guide individuals towards grace and peace during the dying journey. Through stories and wisdom from her ongoing reverence for this profound subject, Melinda offers a unique perspective on a conversation increasingly present in the global collective. SHOW NOTES: For care and support regarding end of (this) life care, feel free to call Melinda Norris 0400 798 425 Resources / practical - GOVERNMENT QLD Public trustee: https://www.pt.qld.gov.au/  The office Public Advocacy:  https://www.justice.qld.gov.au/public-advocate Government Age Care Commission:  https://www.agedcarequality.gov.au/  Aged Care Guides: https://www.agedcareguide.com.au/information/what-about-complaints  Resources / practical  - NON GOVERNMENT https://www.gentle-conversations.com/ https://www.gatheredhere.com.au/ https://tenderfunerals.com.au/  https://held.org.au/  https://www.willed.com.au/guides/living-wills-what-are-they-and-why-are-they-important/  Local meet up: Gentle ConversationsCommunity Conversations  about living and dying at Limberlost Nursery Stratford 1.30 pm on the 3rd Thursday of every month Leanne B: 0428 160 863  Leanne: 0407 277 385 Books & Films: Die Wise, Stephen Jenkinson https://orphanwisdom.com/ Sacred Death Care, Dr Sarah Kerr  https://sacreddeathcare.com/  On ScreenSBS:  The Last Goodbye - 3-part series with Ray Martin https://iview.abc.net.au/show/australian-story/series/2022/video/NC2202Q016S00  ABC Australian Story: A Community Undertaking: https://iview.abc.net.au/show/australian-story/series/2022/video/NC2202Q016S00  **THE ELDER TREE TROVE PATREON COMMUNITY** You can join our Patreon ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and gain a deeper connection to our podcast. Pay only $2 per week to have access to bonus and often exclusive resources and opportunities- plus support the Elder tree at the same time!  To find out more about The Elder Tree visit the website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.theeldertree.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and donate to the crowdfunding campaign ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also follow The Elder Tree on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sign up to the newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Find out more about this podcast and the presenters ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get in touch with The Elder Tree at:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠asktheeldertree@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The intro and outro song is "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sing for the Earth⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠" and was kindly donated by Chad Wilkins.  You can find Chad's music ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

How do we show up for ourselves when the river of grief threatens to sweep us away? Do you allow space in your life to touch the tender places that pain us? To truly grief for those we have lost? To make peace with death? This is a mini episode on Grief and Grace, as Stephanie Hazel steps in to support Tonielle Christensen, our regular Permaculture Segment host, during her own time of grief. Stephanie explores different cultural practices for working with grief when a loved one dies, and discusses three powerful herbs to support us in times of grief. Stephanie recommends the book 'Die Wise' by Stephen Jenkinson. It's also available as an audio book narrated by the author, which is pretty lovely. *THE ELDER TREE TROVE PATREON COMMUNITY** You can join our Patreon ⁠here⁠ and gain a deeper connection to our podcast. Pay only $2 per week to have access to bonus and often exclusive resources and opportunities- plus support the Elder tree at the same time! To find out more about The Elder Tree visit the website at www.theeldertree.org and donate to the crowdfunding campaign here. You can also follow The Elder Tree on Facebook and Instagram and sign up to the newsletter. Find out more about this podcast and the presenters here. Get in touch with The Elder Tree at: asktheeldertree@gmail.com The intro and outro song is "Sing for the Earth" and was kindly donated by Chad Wilkins.

In this special edition of “First Voices Radio,” Host Olivia Clementine interviews Tiokasin Ghosthorse for “Love & Liberation with Olivia Clementine,” a podcast about relationship and consciousness: exploring wisdom in relating with ourselves, each other and our greater world. For nearly 20 years, Olivia has been immersed in the exploration of relationships and spiritual nature. She works with individuals, couples and groups to cultivate relational capacities and self-understanding. She also has a background as a four-season farmer and herbalist. The Love & Liberation Podcast airs in depth conversations in the fields of spirituality, ecology and relationships. Recent guests have been Bayo Akomolafe, Stephen Jenkinson, Helen Norberg-Hodge, Khandro Choying and Lama Tsultrim Allione. Listen here: https://oliviaclementine.com/podcasts/Production Credits: Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive Producer Liz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), Producer Karen Martinez (Mayan), Studio Engineer, Radio Kingston Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Audio Editor Kevin Richardson, Podcast Editor Music Selections: 1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song) Artist: Moana and the Moa Hunters Album: Tahi (1993) Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand) 2. Song Title: Ball and Chain Artist: Xavier Rudd Album: Jan Juc Moon (2022) Label: Virgin Music Label and Adult Services Australia (P&D) 3. American Dream Artist: J.S. Ondara Album: Tales of America (The Second Coming) (2019) Label: Verve Forecast / Universal Music Canada 4. Spoken Word: There's Nothing Wrong With Us Artist: John Trudell Album: DNA: Descendant Now Ancestor (2001) Label: Effective RecordsAKANTU INTELLIGENCE Visit Akantu Intelligence, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuintelligence.org to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse

Bree Rose is an "End of Life Doula & Transition Guide" who utilizes ritual, sound healing, education, and advocacy to assist the leaving and bereaving through the mysteries of the inevitable. She is a modern PSYCHOPOMP of sorts, and part of Seattle's Stone Circles Collective, whose mission is to support individuals in maintaining their sovereignty in death. We discuss her unique pathworkings, the confluence of art & magick, and the pragmatic side of banishing the taboo of death itself. WATCH THE LIMINALSTREAM: https://www.youtube.com/live/XT-jKd8nXZ4?si=LNVU73bgTmhzFgkR  BREE ROSE LINKS: Stone Circles Collective: https://www.stonecirclescollective.org Instagram:   https://instagram.com/stonecirclescollective Patreon:   https://patreon.com/stonecirclestransitions OTHER (Musick): https://other-band-seattle.bandcamp.com/album/sacred-and-profane REFERENCES: Stephen Jenkinson: (BOOK) “Die Wise – A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul“: https://orphanwisdom.com/die-wise/  (DOC) “Griefwalker“, a feature length documentary, sets its lens on theologian Stephen Jenkinson in an unforgettable exploration of death phobia as a culture.” https://www.amazon.com/Griefwalker-Stephen-Jenkinson/dp/B007VQGZOQ  “Unfuck Your Grief: Using Science to Heal Yourself and Support Others” by Dr. Faith G. Harper : https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/7095  “Death Nesting: Ancient & Modern Death Doula Techniques, Mindfulness Practices and Herbal Care” by Anne-Marie Keppel: https://a.co/d/0indbUT2  Musick this episode courtesy of REVEL ∴ ROSZ: MANY NAMED (The Second Body) ∴ songsigil01 by REVEL∴ROSZ WATCH THE NEW VIDEOMANCY CONJURED FOR THE FIRST REVEL ROSZ SONGSIGIL, ‘MANY NAMED' (The Second Body): https://youtu.be/Y0PJ4cnBu5w?si=hpGCnYJoKGanTGwi Follow REVEL ROSZ for updates on forthcoming songsigils and live dates: BANDCAMP: https://revelrosz.bandcamp.com/ INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/revelrosz To support a new era of WE THE HALLOWED and the many media magicks we've conjured, we launched http://HALLOWEDPRESS.ART as a means to collect our many completed projects from Published Literature, Illustration, Albums, Audio Sigils and now, custom apparel and wares designed by WtH Seer Eric J. Millar and Revel∴ Keats Rosz! FIND EVERYTHING PRAG∴MAGICK: http://pragmagick.com SUPPORT VIA PATREON: https://patreon.com/pragmagick http://patreon.com/pragmagickPAYPAL: http://www.paypal.me/keatsross WE THE HALLOWED: https://wethehallowed.org I want to give a big thanks to Eric J. Millar for his invaluable partnership in weathering the proud tides of human error. And of course, all the amazing patrons that have stayed with me as I swayed these past couple of months. Thank you Temple of Babalon Choronzon (Bobby, Leah, Stashia & Groucho), Frater Perseus, MetemPsychotic, Saroth The Mage, Sam Shadow, Lya & Azure Edwards, Kendall Esse, JJ Reine De Blanc, Jenny Rocky, SorcerersHomie, Cal Desmond Pearson, Alex Leadbetter, Bibi, CW Chanter, Jonicide, Jilly Beans, Corrie Anne, Spooky, Derek Hunter Vanessa Sinclair, Carl Abrahamsson, Tony Davis, Arnemancy and you, dear ghost, for your ongoing support! You, too, can pledge your support to PRAGMAGICK & WE THE HALLOWED for as little as 1 dollar to help finance all the many artistick mediums we release our works through! http://patreon.com/pragmagick GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DID NOT CREATE, AUGMENT or INSPIRE ANY ARTISTIC MEDIUM EXPRESSED WITHIN THIS PODCAST or WE THE HALLOWED ARTWORKS WRIT LARGE. CELEBRATE HUMAN ERROR.

“The first half of my career was spent putting people to sleep, and after my midlife crisis, I realized I had to start waking people up, including myself.”My guest today is Dr. Stephen Faulkner, a former medical doctor, pilot, and one of my key mentors on the path of mythopoetic masculinity.In this episode, Stephen reflects on his nearly 70 years of life and shares his profound emotional and spiritual contentment despite facing chronic health issues. He emphasizes the critical importance of engaging in inner spiritual work to avoid the bitterness and regret that often accompany aging.The Mythic Masculine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Stephen recounts his spiritual awakening at age 35, guided by the mythic maps found in "Iron John," and highlights the healing significance of connecting with nature and ritual. We speak on the transformative power of men's circles and the profound influence of Robert Bly on his journey, who also kindled a love of the great poet and artist William Blake.He shares the tale of Gilgamesh & Endiku which was part of how we first met.And finally, Stephen speaks of his recent near-death experience that brought him an unexpected sense of peace. He concludes with a heartfelt call for older men to mentor and support younger men, ensuring the continuity of wisdom and tending the fire across generations.LINKS* The enduring presence and power of William Blake (featuring Stephen Faulkner)UPCOMING OFFERINGSNext month, Deus and I are holding our next AWE (Awakening the Wild Erotic) Men's Weekend July 26-28 in Black Creek, about 3 hours north of Victoria on Vancouver Island. It's a ritual immersion in the archetype of the Lover, and if this calls to you, come join us. We're 60% full already.In September we're also launching our next cohort of The Deep Masculine, a 12-week online expedition into the alluring, seductive force that animates all of life - Eros and beyond. It's the most comprehensive container I've co-crafted to condenses almost a decade worth of men's work, myth, and somatics into a powerful journey. Book a Discovery Call now and see if it's right for you.And finally, for all genders, you're invited to take my online course Iron John: A Mythic Story About Men, which is a fantastic introduction to the book & a great way to integrate the chapters alongside my special guests like Stephen Jenkinson, Michael Gay, Sophie Strand and more.What do you think of this episode? I'd love to hear your comments below. Get full access to The Mythic Masculine at themythicmasculine.substack.com/subscribe

As a prequel to my upcoming tour of British Columbia I speak with Tad Hargrave, best known for his Marketing for Hippies movement, but also eloquent in culture making and something of a storyteller, improv actor and street magician. You want this guy at your party!In our conversation we touch upon his own path to discover of the richness of his Celtic heritage, learning from cultural heavyweights such as Stephen Jenkinson,  discuss indigenous knowledge, heritage crafts, and trans Atlantic idea sharing. We reference at least one road trip and a selection of Scottish storytelling elders, and finish with a story about the gold in one's own home.There's also a traveller anecdote in there that makes me laugh out loud!We discuss my upcoming storytelling tour of British Columbia and Washington state and why he felt to instigate the trip.Find out about the BC tour here:storyconnection.org/bctour/Read about Tad's culture making here:https://substack.com/profile/39800440-tad-hargraveSort your business out whilst maintaining your hippie credentials here:https://marketingforhippies.com/My live dates and online events:https://linktr.ee/dougiemackayMy newsletter (where all the good stuff goes first):https://sendfox.com/dougiemackaystoryThanks for listening!

Talking points: purpose, initiation, adversity, grief, culture It isn't always easy to find a sense of purpose or meaning in life, never mind feeling initiated into maturity. In these chaotic times, it gets even harder. This is a special compilation episode featuring four masters of finding humanity, clarity, and meaning in life. Their combined efforts have helped legions of people get a better handle on life and all of its twists and turns. Two of them are people I revere as elders, and three work with men and purpose on a regular basis. Featuring ideas from... -Lion tracker, coach, and storyteller Boyd Varty: https://boydvarty.com/ -Depth psychologist Francis Weller: https://www.francisweller.net/ -Culture activist Stephen Jenkinson (unreleased material!): https://orphanwisdom.com/ -Writer, teacher, and coach Rainier Wylde: https://www.rainierwylde.com/ -Purpose guide Tim Corcoran: https://www.purposemountain.com/ (00:00:00) - Boyd Varty on the role initiation plays in a man's life—and what happens without it (00:16:20) - Francis Weller on why we need to (but can't seem to) handle the unknown, failure, and grief (00:25:45) - Why the soul needs failure to find meaning, and how Francis runs grief workshops (00:30:35) - Given our current times, what does it mean to be a “generative ancestor”? (00:33:05) - Stephen Jenkinson on what defines and gives meaning to your humanity (00:39:47) - Rainier Wylde on how to find a sense of purpose in chaotic times (00:55:27) - Tim Corcoran on how to practically define purpose, and what's often in the way (01:05:29) - Where does the “soul” fit into all of this? *** Henson Shaving brought this episode to you! No more nicks, no more cuts—and no more subscriptions! Go to https://hensonshaving.com and enter MANTALKS at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. (Note: you must add both the 100-blade pack and the razor for the discount to apply.) Build brotherhood in person. Join a Men's Weekend Pick up my book, Men's Work: A Practical Guide To Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, And Find Freedom: https://mantalks.com/mens-work-book/ Check out some free resources: How To Quit Porn | Anger Meditation | How To Lead In Your Relationship Build brotherhood with a powerful group of like-minded men from around the world. Check out The Alliance.  Enjoy the podcast? If so, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Podchaser. It helps us get into the ears of new listeners, expand the ManTalks Community, and help others find the tools and training they're looking for. And don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify For more episodes, visit us at ManTalks.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

On this episode, my guest is , a friend and scholar who recently completed his PhD in Cultural Geography from The University of Edinburgh where his research centered on themes of displacement and memorial walking practices in the Highlands of Scotland. A child of Greek political refugees on both sides of his family, Christos' work looks at ways in which ceremony and ritual might afford us the capacity to integrate disconnection from place and ancestry. Further, his research into pre-modern Gaelic Highland culture reveals animistic relationship with mountains which disrupt easy definitions of colonialism and indigeneity.Show Notes:Summoning and Summiting a DoctorateThe British Empire & EverestThe Three Roots of FreedomHillwalkers and HomecomingThe Consequences of Staying and LeavingThe Romans Make a Desert and Call it PeaceFarming EmptinessLandscapes as MediumsRitualized Acts of WalkingHomework:Christos Galanis' Official WebsiteTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Christos, to the End of Tourism podcast. Christos: Thank you, Chris. Chris: Thank you for joining me today. Would you be willing to let us know where you're dialing in from today? Christos: Yeah, I'm calling in from home, which at the moment is Santa Fe, New Mexico in the United States. Yeah, I moved out here for my master's in 2010 and fell in love with it, and and then returned two years ago.So it's actually a place that does remind me of the Mediterranean and Greece, even though there's no water, but the kind of mountain desert. So there's a familiarity somehow in my body. Chris: Sounds beautiful. Well I'm delighted to speak with you today about your PhD dissertation entitled "A Mountain Threnody: Hill Walking and Homecoming in the Scottish Highlands." And I know you're working on the finishing touches of the dissertation, but I'd like to pronounce a dear congratulations on that huge feat. I imagine after a decade of research and [00:01:00] writing, that you can finally share this gift, at least for now, in this manner, in terms of our conversation together.Christos: Thank you. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life in terms of a project. Yeah. Nine years.Chris: And so, you and I met at Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School many years ago. But beyond that from what I understand that you were born and raised in Toronto and Scarborough to Greek immigrants, traveled often to see family in Greece and also traveled widely yourself, and of course now living in New Mexico for some time. I'm curious why focus on Scotland for your thesis? Christos: It was the last place I thought I would be going to. Didn't have a connection there. So I did my master's down here in Albuquerque at UNM and was actually doing a lot of work on the border with Mexico and kind of Southwest Spanish history.I actually thought I was going to go to UC San Diego, partly because of the weather and had some connections [00:02:00] there. And two things happened. One was that you have to write your GRE, whatever the standardized test is you need to do for grad school here in the US, you don't have to do in the UK. So that appealed to me.And it's also, there's no coursework in the UK. So you just, from day one, you're just doing your own research project. And then I wanted to actually work with what Was and probably still is my favorite academic writer is Tim Ingold, who was based in Aberdeen up in the north of Scotland and is kind of that thing where I was like, "well if I'm gonna do a PhD What if I just literally worked with like the most amazing academic I can imagine working with" and so I contacted him. He was open to meeting and possibly working together and so I was gonna fly to Scotland.I was actually spending the winter in Thailand at the time, so I was like, if I'm gonna go all the way to Scotland, maybe I should check out a couple more universities. So, I looked at St. Andrews, which is a little bit north of Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh, then visited all [00:03:00] three schools, and actually just really fell in love with Edinburgh, and then in the end got full funding from them. And that took me to Scotland. And I didn't know what was in store for me. I didn't even follow through on my original research project, which had nothing to do with Scotland. The sites that I was actually proposed to work with was on the Dine reservation out here in Arizona. There's a tradition, long tradition of sheep herding and there's a lot of, some friends of mine have a volunteer program where volunteers go and help the Diné elders and herd their sheep for them and what's happening is they're trying to hold on to their land and Peabody Coal, a coal mining company, has been trying to take the land forever and so by keeping on herding sheep, it allows them to stay there.So I was actually kind of looking at walking as forms of resistance and at that time, most undocumented migrants trying to enter Europe were walking from Turkey through Macedonia. So I was actually going to go there. And yeah, once I kind of hit the ground, I realized that that's way too ambitious.And I [00:04:00] decided to focus on this really strange phenomenon called Monroe Bagging in the Highlands of Scotland, where people work all week in their office, Monday to Friday, and then spend their weekends checking off a task list of 282 mountains that they summit. There's 282 of them and they're categorized that way because they're all over 3, 000 feet, which for us in North America, isn't that high, but for the Scottish Highlands, because they're very ancient, ancient, worn down mountains is pretty high.And also the weather and the climate and the terrain make it pretty treacherous out there. So it's, it's not an easy thing. Yeah. And I just thought this is a really weird, strange way to relate to mountains and to land. And it seems like a very British thing to do. And I kind of just got curious to figure out what was going on and why people would actually do this.And it came from a very, actually, critical perspective, to begin with. As things unfolded, that changed a fair amount in terms of getting to know people. But, yeah, that was Scotland. And, I think looking back, I think [00:05:00] I was called there by the mountains. I can give the bigger context maybe later on, but essentially one of the main mountain called Ben Cruachan, in Argyle that I ended up most working with and kind of going in and doing ceremony for, and with. I ended up later meeting my what would become my wife and married into her family and on one side of her family, they are literally the Macintyres who are from that mountain. So yeah ended up kind of going there and marrying into a lineage of a mountain that was the center of my my dissertation.So in the end I think I was called there. I think I was called to apprentice those mountains. And then I feel like my time ended. And I think this dissertation is kind of the story of that relationship with that courtship.Chris: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for that beautifully winding answer and introduction. So, you know, a lot of your dissertation speaks to kind of different notions of mountain climbing, summiting, hiking but you also write about [00:06:00] how our cultural or collective understandings of mountains have defined our ability to undertake these activities.And I'm curious, based on your research and personal experience, how do you think mountains are understood within the dominant paradigm of people who undertake these practices. Christos: Yeah, good question. I would say, I know I don't like to speak in universals, but I could say that one universal is that, as far as I can tell, all cultures around the world tend to not only revere mountains, but tend to relate to mountain peaks as sacred.And so in most cultures, at least pre modern culture, you will always find a taboo around ever actually climbing to the top of a mountain, especially a significant mountain. So ways that you might worship a sacred mountain, for example, you know, in Tibet is to circumnavigate. So hiking, walking around a mountain three times or walking the perimeter of a mountain, kind of circling [00:07:00] around and around the summit.But it would be absolutely abhorrent to actually ever climb to the top. So one thing I was interested in is what happened, what shifted, where in the past people would never think of climbing a mountain summit to that becoming almost the only thing that people were focused on. And I didn't know this, but out of all countries, the country that most intensely kind of pursued that practice was, was England, was Britain, actually.So it's really fascinating. There's this period, the Victorian era, where basically Britain is invading other countries such as Nepal, India, into China, into Kenya, parts of Africa, South America certainly here in North America and the Americas and of course mountain ranges serve as pretty natural and intense frontiers and barriers, especially back then before. You know, industrial machinery and airplanes and things [00:08:00] like that, you're going over land. And so to be able to get through a mountain range was a pretty intense thing. Really only became possible with kind of Victorian era technology and because they were able to penetrate these places that people really couldn't have before it was a way of kind of proving modern supremacy or the supremacy of kind of modern secularism.Because even in places like Sutherland and the Alps, the indigenous Swiss also considered like the Alps sacred, the mountain peaks and wouldn't climb them. And so as the British kind of came up into these mountain ranges. They had the idea of proving that essentially there were no gods on these mountaintops.There was nothing sacred about them. It's just a pile of rock and anybody can climb up and nothing's going to happen to them. And so they really started setting out to start summiting these mountains. And it was mostly military engineers. There's a big overlap between kind of military engineering and surveying and [00:09:00] map making and this kind of outdoor kind of Victorian kind of proving your manhood against nature kind of thing.And so it's a strangely poetic and very grief soaked proposition where increasingly humans had the technology to penetrate anywhere on the planet, you know, more and more. And maybe I'll just go into the story of Everest because it was perceived that the, the earth had three poles.So the North pole, the South pole, and Everest is the highest peak on the whole planet. So there was this race to set foot on the North Pole on the South Pole and on Everest. I don't know much about the North and South Pole expeditions I think they were first but Everest was kind of like yeah I think Everest was the last literally the last place on earth that humans weren't able yet to physically step foot on. And so the British set out to be the ones to do it after World War one. And there's another overlap where most of the men that were obsessed with mountain summiting after World War I had [00:10:00] been through the horrors of World War I and had a lot of PTSD and shell shock and kind of couldn't reintegrate back to civilian life.They kind of needed that rush of risking your life for some kind of larger goal, which warfare can provide. And, slowly they kind of got better technology and eventually by, I think it was maybe 1952, 1953, they finally conquered Everest. And it's almost like the moment that they penetrated this last place of wilderness that was holding out the British Empire started collapsing, which the timing is quite fascinating. You know, they lost India and Pakistan. And as soon as you kind of are able to dominate everything, there comes this nostalgia immediately for wild places. And this is where Scotland comes back in. Where, Scotland, the Highlands have been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.There's nothing wild about them. There were villages everywhere. But what happened through the [00:11:00] 16, 1700s was the Gaelic population, the indigenous population were ethnically cleansed. And then kind of the lands that follow for maybe 100 years. And then when the English started coming in, they were like, "Oh, this is wilderness.These mountains have never been climbed before. We're going to be the ones to conquer them because we're the superior race." And they did so, and when I chose the the title of my thesis used this little known word, Threnody, which is actually from Greek, Threnodia, which translates something as like a song of grief or a song of lament.And I think for me, this incessant kind of like summiting of mountains and risking and sometimes losing your life to penetrate these places where you actually don't retain control, or it's very hard to retain control, right, because of like storms in the weather, that it's almost like a kind of mourning for the loss of the very things that this technology has kind of erased or has compromised.So it's almost, I can't even put into words the feeling around it, but it's almost like, [00:12:00] You're doing the thing that's destroying something, but you have the impulse to keep doing it as a way of connecting to the thing that's being lost, if that makes sense. And I can imagine, you know, maybe all the work that you've done around tourism might have a similar quality to it.There's, I don't know, there's like a melancholy that I experience interviewing and going out with these people that I don't think they would ever be conscious of or even name, but there's a longing for something that's missing. And so that's where also this kind of song of lament theme comes into my, into my dissertation.Chris: Yeah, it's definitely something that shows up over and over again in these conversations and thank you for putting it into such eloquent words is that. I think it really succinctly speaks to the, the condition or conditions at hand. And I guess I'm curious you know, in regards to what you just said about notions of freedom [00:13:00] that are often experienced in touristic experiences or contexts and some of your dissertation centers around the freedom that your friends and hill walking acquaintances experienced there in the Highlands and freedom can often seem like a kind of recurrent trope sometimes in describing the tourist's reasons for travel.And surely outside of a trope for many people's reasons for travel you know, especially in the context of migration. Beyond the surface, we can wonder about the inheritance of ancestrally or ancestral indentured servitude, the commons and the lack thereof in our time and also like a kind of communion or relationship with what you refer to as other than human worlds. And I'm curious what kind of contradictions or insights came up for you in regards to the supposed freedom that was either found or sought after by the Hillwalkers you encountered.[00:14:00] Christos: Thank you. Yeah, I think before I started going deep into this, I probably, I probably shared most people's notion of freedom, which most of us don't ever really sit and wonder that deeply about.But there's a section of my dissertation where I go deep into freedom and I actually look at three different cultural and kind of etymological or linguistic lenses through which to understand freedom. And there's two that the people I interviewed, I think, were most practicing. So the word freedom itself comes from the Germanic, and it's two words.It's broke frei, which is "free," "to be free." And dom, translates kind of as "a judgment." So if you know like doomsday or the doomsday book. What the doomsday and judgment day actually mean the same thing It's just doom is like the older Germanic word for judgment. Okay, and so freedom can kind of translate as like freedom from judgment freedom from constraint and it has this quality of like spatially removing [00:15:00] yourself or getting distance from something that might constrain you, so you mentioned indentured servitude and slavery, which are as old as human civilization across the world.And all these different things that, basically, we are more or less constrained by, whether it's, family, the state, our living conditions, poverty, excess wealth, you know, all these things that might, or the expression of our true life force. And so for a lot of the people that I was working with, that was certainly what they would describe, you know, like I work in an office as a manager Monday through Friday in Edinburgh, and then it's only on the weekends that I get out into the hills and I truly feel alive and free, right? Because I'm in this vast expanse and, I mean, It's not my climate. I'm Greek by both sides. Wet, soggy moss and mold and endless rain and drizzle and cold and dark is not my thing, but it is visually stunningly beautiful. And you know, [00:16:00] and I'm sure we all know the experience of getting up to a peak of something and that sense of kind of almost being removed from the everyday and that sense of like maybe connecting to something higher or bigger.So that sense of freedom is obvious. The other, another lens is through Latin liberty or libertas, which comes from ancient Roman society, which was a heavily hierarchied society where up to 60 percent of people were actually slaves. So, there's a big distinction between those who are free and those who are slaves.And so the idea of liberty, and this also came up with my informants is the idea that you have to compare yourself to another and the more freedom you have compared to someone else, the better it feels. And I think of that as all the mechanics of like air airports and you know, first class lines and first class seating.I had the experience once flying because flying from New York through back to [00:17:00] London to get back to Edinburgh. And for the first and only time in my life I was bumped up to first class for some reason, I don't know why. But it was on, I don't know, one of the newer kind of jumbo jets, and the difference between economy class and first class in many ways is pretty profound.At the same time, it's ridiculous because you're all sitting in the same tube. But I remember the feeling that happened once we took off and they drew the curtain between the first class and everyone in the back. And it was this experience where everyone back there just disappeared.It's just kind of like, you can't see them, they're out of sight, out of mind, and you're just up front. You can lay down completely horizontally in these chairs, you have real glass, glassware and real cutlery, you know, and people treat you super, super nice. But like, in order to enjoy that, you need other people to not be enjoying that, right?So the idea of liberty kind of requires another, or it's almost a zero sum game where someone else has to be losing for you to be winning. And you know, I think of that with tourism, the idea that those of us from the North, you know, are stuck [00:18:00] at home in the winter while those with money, you know, can fly off to Mexico or Costa Rica and stuff like that.So that difference that like your experience is enhanced by other people's discomfort or suffering. And then I came across another lens, which comes from the Greek. So the Greek word for freedom is Eleftheria. And I didn't know the etymology, but one of my office mates in Edinburgh was from Greece, and we sat down with like a Greek etymological dictionary and I discovered that the Greek notion of freedom is completely different.It's almost counterintuitive, and it translates as something close to " loving the thing you were meant to love" or like "being the thing you were meant to be." And even more distinctly, the rios part in Eleftheria would translate into something like "returning to your home harbor after like a long voyage," and it's that, it's literally the experience of coming home, [00:19:00] which in a way is the freedom of not wanting to be anywhere else or to be anyone else, which is in some ways, I think to me, the most true freedom, because you don't want for anything, you actually love everything you are and everywhere you are, and you don't want to go anywhere else.So in that way, I think for me, cultivating a connection to place as an animist, you know, and I think that's a lot of what you and I I imagine experienced, you know, listening to Steven Jenkinson's many stories that keep circling around this idea of, you know, belonging is cultivating that place in you or that muscle in you that doesn't want to be anywhere else, doesn't want to be anybody else, but is actually satisfied and fulfilled by what is, which it's probably at the heart of most spiritual traditions at the end of the day, but to think of that as freedom, I think for me, really, really changed my perspective from, the idea of going around the world as I have and certainly in the past to experience all these different things and to [00:20:00] feel free and to be a nomad versus I would say the freedom I have here of loving Santa Fe and not imagining myself being anywhere else right now.Chris: Well, the theme of homecoming is definitely woven into this work, this dissertation, alongside hill walking.They seem, generally speaking, superficially very disparate or distinct activities, homecoming and hill walking. One is going and then it's coming. And I'm curious if you could elaborate for our listeners a little bit of what those terms mean, and where or how they come together in your work.Christos: Yeah. So the title of my dissertation, you know, is a "A Mountain Threnody: Hillwalkers and Homecomers in the Highlands of Scotland."So I set out to study hill walkers, which is basically a British term for going out for a walk or a hike where the focus is summiting some kind of peak, you know, whether a hill or a mountain, but that's what most people do there. When you set out on a walk, it's just assumed that you're going to end up going to the top of something and then [00:21:00] back down.What ended up happening is actually through Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School, I met several other Canadians of Scottish descent who had already or were planning on going quote "back" to Scotland to connect with their ancestral lands and their ancestors which is a lot of the work with Stephen's school and that, you know, that idea of connecting with your ancestry and with your roots and with your bones.And I kind of just started following along and interviewing people and talking with people that became friends just out of curiosity, because, you know, that's a lot of my background with being first generation Canadian and growing up in a huge Greek diaspora in Toronto and speaking Greek and going back to Greece multiple times and this idea of kind of being Canadian, but really home is in Europe and Greece, even though I've never lived there.So, there's a lot there, personal interest and eventually against my supervisor's advice, I was like, this might be an interesting [00:22:00] conversation to put these two groups together, these people who are spending their weekends summiting mountains in the Highlands and then these other people coming from Canada and the US and New Zealand and Australia who are going to the same mountains to connect with their ancestral, you know, lands and and people. And these two groups are probably the two biggest sources of tourism, like, in the Highlands, which is fascinating. Wow. Except that the one group, the Hillwalkers tend to imagine that they're in a pristine wilderness and that there's never been anybody there. And the homecomers like to imagine that the hills used to be covered in villages and their own people that were there for thousands of years and that they're reconnecting.So it's interesting how the same landscape is both imagined as being repopulated and also emptied. And that both groups are kind of searching again for this kind of belonging, right? This belonging through freedom, for this belonging through ancestry. The other piece that gets, [00:23:00] well, you know, we're interviewing this, we're doing this interview November 21st and we're, I think most people these days are pretty aware of what's going on in Israel and Palestine and this idea of home because to have a homecoming means there has to be somewhere out there that you consider your home.And that's such a loaded, loaded, loaded concept, right? Like many wars are fought over this idea of who a land belongs to, right? I mean, I know you and I have talked about both our families being from the borderlands with Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and those borders just change over and over and where you belong to what is home keeps changing depending on which war has happened, which outcome and things like that.And I think for those of us, I'll say in the Americas, who don't have deep roots here this idea of home being somewhere else other than where you live, is a very complex prospect because certainly when I go to Greece, people don't recognize me as being home, you know, they, they consider me a Canadian tourist. And at the same time growing up in Canada, I certainly never felt [00:24:00] like, "Oh, Canada is like my ancestral home. You know, it's, it's skin deep. My parents came over in the sixties. Right." So this idea of homecoming and, you know, maybe we can just riff on this for a bit. Cause I know you've explored this a lot. It's like, is it tourism or is it something else? Because a lot of people in Scotland, including people I interviewed, just laugh at these Canadians who come over and just start crying, standing over some rocks in the Highlands and who will buy some shitty whiskey at a tourist shop and feel that they're connecting with their roots and buy bagpipes and by kilts and all this stuff, whereas like most Scottish people don't wear kilts and don't blow bagpipes and don't necessarily drink whiskey all day, so there's these kind of stereotypes that have often been just kind of produced by the media, but it's almost like, other than that, how do people actually connect with the homeland, right?Like, what does it even mean to connect with a homeland? And one thing that I found that I think is one of the most powerful things is the idea of walking. So [00:25:00] this is why the comparison and the contrast with hill walking and homecoming is most people, when you go back to your homeland, there's something really central about walking in the footsteps of your ancestors, right?So walking around in the same village, walking the same streets, going to the same house, maybe even if it's not there anymore, going to... I remember going to my mom's elementary school in the little village that she grew up in the mountains of Greece and walking down the same hallways with her, and we went to the auditorium, and she, showed me the little stage where she would literally be putting on little plays when they were, like, in third grade and there's something about standing and stepping in the same place that is so fundamental. And so I'm kind of looking at homecoming through these kind of memorial or commemorative practices of walking. So it's not just walking, but walking and activating a landscape or activating the memories that are kind of enfolded in a landscape. And I've come to believe and understand that walking is a kind of almost magic technology that I [00:26:00] almost see it as really like opening up portals to other times and other places when done in a ceremonial kind of ritualized manner.So a lot of my work again, as an animist and kind of being as far as I know, the first in my field was just cultural geography, to kind of bring an animist lens to the field and kind of look at how, doing ceremony on a mountain, going into these glands and doing ceremony is more than just the material kind of walking, but is actually kind of connecting with these memories and these people in these places.In a way that's, I think, deeper than tourism and that's maybe the distinction between tourism and let's say homecoming on the surface that you might actually be doing almost the same thing, but I think there is this kind of animist lens to understand homecoming through where you let's say you bring a stone from home or you take a stone and bring it back home you know, like these kinds of Ritualize little practices that we do to connect with the place that I don't think tourists do in the same way, [00:27:00] you know?Because in tourism, you're often just trying to get away from where you live and experience something different, where this is trying to reconnect with something that's been lost or something that's in the past. Chris: Yeah, definitely. This leads me into a lot of different directions, but one of them is this question of animism that I'd like to come back to in just a moment but before we do, I want to ask you about. These heritage trips sometimes they're referred to as within the tourism industry, homeland returns which in most cases is a paradox or an oxymoron because most people are not returning to the places that they either were born in or lived in.They, typically, like myself, had never actually been there before. I'll just pull a little quote from your dissertation because I think it precedes this question in a good way. You write that quote, "the commissioner of Sutherland advocated for a state administered program of colonization in the Scottish Highlands, similarly arguing that the [00:28:00] Gaelic race and its inferior temperament presented an obstacle to the onward march of civilization. Locke set out a vision for the colonization, displacement, and reeducation of Gaelic Highlanders, where eventually, quote, 'the children of those removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers.'Locke's vision has broadly come true," end quote. And so, within the context of the wider spectrum and calendars and geographies that we've kind of been discussing, but more specifically in the context of Scotland, I'm curious if the people that you met there, either locals or visitors and especially in the case of those coming for a homecoming or heritage trip had an understanding of these things, of this history.Christos: No, that's what I found out. [00:29:00] What I've found in my lifetime, cause this isn't the only kind of project around this kind of theme that I've done. Maybe we'll get, I did another project with Mexican friends going back to Spain and kind of repatriating or reconnecting back through the kind of the displacement of the Spanish civil war.But what I've found is those of us of the colonies, that's kind of what I consider myself in ourselves, like people of the colonies. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that we're the ones that hold on to the stories and the memories and the people back quote "home" or in the "homeland" for the large part have moved on and don't really give much thought to these histories of displacement.It's almost, oh my God, it was strange to be in this country where most of the place names in the Highlands are Gaelic, and 98 percent of Scottish citizens cannot read or understand Gaelic, so partly it was this strangeness of being in a country where only two out of every hundred people could even understand the names of the places where they lived, even [00:30:00] though they had never left there and their people had never left there.And you know, if you let that sink in, it's like, let's say you and I being of Greek descent, imagine if 90 percent of Greeks couldn't understand Greek, you know what I mean? And couldn't understand the name of their own village. And well, there's, here's another angle to this in Scotland.When you want to learn traditional Gaelic fiddle, you go to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia in Canada because that's where the Highlanders who immigrated to Nova Scotia in the past kept the tradition pure and kept fiddle playing what it had always been. Whereas, you know in Scotland now, they're into hip hop and trap and drum and bass and stuff like this.And so if you're Scottish and you've never left Scotland in order to connect with the music of your ancestors you have to go to Canada, so most people that I interviewed and I think this is fair, you know to assume of most people Don't [00:31:00] think much about the ethnic cleansing that went on whichever side that they were on And it's kind of left to us in the colonies either to also let it go and move on and try to settle into these new lands or you kind of keep holding on to this memory of a place you've actually never lived, you know, and it's almost like both propositions are grief soaked.Both are kind of almost an impossible poem to hold because obviously there were people here before our European ancestors came. Obviously, we don't have these deep roots or memories or connections to this place. We don't have ceremonies or songs or much that's derived from this land, at least not yet.And yet many of us lose the language and the ceremonies and the traditions of the places where our ancestors came. It's almost like at least we still know where we've come from. Whereas to be in Europe, or at least in Scotland, and to have never left, but to nevertheless have also lost the connection with [00:32:00] your own ancestors and your own language and those places it's almost like a parallel process where there are people that get on the boats and leave, but there are people that are left behind. But it's almost like, regardless whether you leave or whether you stay, the fabric of that culture just gets completely rendered and torn apart by that displacement. And somehow, even though you never leave having so many of your people leave actually kind of compromises the ability to stay where you are, and to be connected to where you are. ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber!I interviewed one woman who had an ancestor who in Scotland, they call like psychic abilities, the second sight.So the idea of having kind of psychic premonitions or all of a sudden knowing that like your brother has died, even though he's in Australia, you know, that kind of thing. That people had that when I lived in Scotland and when they moved to Canada, they actually lost that ability. You know, so it's this idea that it's not that you carry almost these knowledges or abilities just in you, but it's actually comes from the connection [00:33:00] to the place.And once that connection becomes severed, you lose those capacities. And I've actually never said this out loud, but I wonder how much the people that stayed behind actually lost because of all the people that left, if that made sense. It's almost like, how does a culture stay resilient when almost everyone between the ages of like 20 and 40 leaves and never comes back.I think you could consider that this is all just stuff to wonder about. But like, for those of us that come from these kind of like largely settler countries like Canada and the U. S, we're still living through these questions. We're still living through these implications of like, how long do you hold on to the past? And at what point do you just kind of let go and move forward? And If you do so, how do you move forward in a place that you don't have any roots?Chris: You know. I remember going to see, going to my father's village in northern Greece for the first time some eight years ago, and knowing that I had [00:34:00] one baba or grandmother left there, and after searching for a few hours, she was hard of hearing at the time, finally found her, finally found the house and shared a delicious meal and traded photographs.I had no Greek or Macedonian language ability at the time. And then I was I called a taxi later on some, you know, at the end of the day to go back to the city, to the hotel, and standing in her garden there, she began to weep, right, without having said anything, even with the language barrier, I could understand what she was saying, and she was, she was mourning the migration of my family or my side of the family, or my father's side of the family to Canada, and then, her son and his family to Germany.And so, there's this question of what comes upon the people that quote unquote "stay." that's so often lost in the discourses [00:35:00] around migration, kind of always focusing on the individual, the migrant themselves, or the places that they arrive in.But do we just let it go? And how do we do that? I have this other quote from your dissertation that lands really strangely in this moment, in this conversation and it has to do a little bit with the kind of what I think you refer to as a national geographic imaginary.And so this is the response of the people in Scotland, in the Highlands embedded and engaged and indebted to these hill walking and homecoming industries. And so in your dissertation, it's written that "in February of 2017, an uproar on all sides erupted when, in a rare sign of bipartisan solidarity, both Mountaineering Scotland and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association attempted to pressure the Scottish government to abandon a [00:36:00] proposal to increase woodland cover, trees, from 17 percent to 25%. by 2050. The commitment to plant 10, 000 extra hectares of trees between now and 2022 was made in the government's draft climate plan. The protesting organizations argued that there had not been enough consultation and consideration given to the changes to the highland landscape that would come about by this tree planting initiative.And they were voicing their concern on whether, quote, 'adequate weight is being given to the significant changes this will have on the landscape of Scotland, and in particular, the dramatic open views and vistas which have come to signify to the outside world that which is unique about our country.'" End quote.And so this seems to be, to some degree, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but a manner of contending [00:37:00] with that past in a way that is, you know, perhaps ignorant of it. Or that is perhaps also faithfully serving the needs, the economic needs of the people, of the place.Christos: There's a lot there. I'm, what's coming to me, do you know this quote? It's from ancient Rome. It's a bit convoluted, but this is a Roman text talking about the colonization of Britain, so of the Romans conquering the Gaelic people in the Picts, but it's In a speech written by this Roman historian that he's attributing to like the Gaelic king, basically. So it's not, this wasn't actually said by a Gaelic king, it's just a Roman kind of putting these words in his mouth to kind of create like a battle scene, but but a lot of people quote this and it's from the Gaelic perspective referring to the Romans saying "the Romans make a desert and call it peace."[00:38:00] And that's kind of what's happened in Scotland is the villages were cleansed, literally. You know, the houses were burned down and knocked down. The people were forcibly, sometimes violently, thrown out of their homes into the cold. Many of them just had no prospects to be able to stay and move to Glasgow.And many of them, you know, came to Toronto and Saskatchewan and North Carolina and all this. And so after they left, these highlands kind of became empty, like this vast emptiness. And then once the Victorian English came into that landscape and started painting it and writing Victorian poems about it, this aesthetic of this, treeless, vast expanse became kind of that National Geographic kind of aesthetic of the mountain peak and the colorful heather and then the loch or the lake, kind of [00:39:00] reflecting the mountain.You can just imagine the scene, right? Of like the mountain peak being reflected in inverse in the lake, you know, kind of thing. It's just that perfect kind of symmetrical perspective photograph or painting. And then that kind of became the symbol of freedom and tranquility which is basically like a site of ethnic cleansing becomes a symbol of beauty.And then what happens is you keep managing the landscape to maintain that aesthetic, which is why you find the strangeness of, like, environmental groups arguing that planting trees is ecological vandalism, that you're ruining the ecology of a place because your trees are gonna get away in the way of these vast expanses.So it's it's this weird wondering on, like, how certain aesthetics become symbolic of something. And then you manage the land, to maintain that aesthetic. Even though it's [00:40:00] absolute death for the wild, the wildlife and even the people in that landscape, to maintain it in that way. The thing that might not be obvious to most people which wasn't I didn't know about this whole world before I moved there, but Scotland's one of the few if not only place in all of Europe where you can still be a feudal lord like they call it a laird, l-a-i-r-d, but it's like a lord where all you need to do to be a lord is you just buy land and if you have enough land you're you claim title of Lord Wow.And most people that are lords in Scotland these days are not even British. You have people from Saudi Arabia, from all over that have bought up the highlands in many ways. And they have these estates and you know, Balmoral estate, which is like the Queens, or I guess she's dead now. Now it's King Charles's estate.And what you do is maybe once a year you and all your rich friends from all over the world fly in [00:41:00] and do this traditional game hunt where you might be hunting deer, but more often you're actually hunting wild birds. You know, so grouse especially. If anyone's seen, I find it fascinating watching Downton Abbey, that TV series, because it's kind of, it covers a lot of the kind of that, that time in Britain.And there's an episode or two where they go into the Scottish countryside to go, you know, go hunting. So it's this weird aesthetic where you dress up in a certain way, kind of like an old time Scottish lord, and you go out on the land with dogs and you shoot down birds, and in order for the birds to live there you need the landscape to basically be wide open, because that's actually what they prefer.And so, this is why, again, for the context of that quote, you have an environmental group, and basically, rich, elite gamekeepers working together to keep the government from planting trees in this landscape because it's in both their interest to maintain [00:42:00] this landscape as an ecological wasteland, essentially that people can't sustain themselves off of or people can't live in So you're kind of farming emptiness if that makes sense in a way you're like cultivating emptiness. Yeah. For tourism. Which again I mean, you've been talking to so many people about this subject. To me, it's fascinating what tourism can be or what it can mean, you know, or like what need is trying to be fulfilled in these, in these landscapes that often get kind of territorialized as touristic, you know, because most people, when they travel, they don't go to walk around the suburbs of a city. There's only certain places that tourists are drawn to, right? Hmm. And so I'm always curious about why and what tourists are drawn to, you know, what is like almost like the resource there that is being extracted. In Chris: the context of your work, you know, largely in regards to, to landscapes and we've spoken a fair amount today about [00:43:00] landscapes as, as objects at the very least.But in, in your dissertation, you know, there was a line that struck me certainly I think coming from your animist tendencies and sentiments where you say that "landscapes are mediums and landscapes are a process," and I'm curious, as we kind of wind ourselves towards the end of our time together, if you could elaborate on this for our listeners a little bit, this, this idea of landscapes as mediums or as processes.Christos: Yeah, so I've done my, my PhD in the field of cultural geography, or sometimes called human geography, which is kind of like anthropology except kind of rooted in place, I'd say that's the big difference. It's not as popular here in North America, but in the UK it's much more popular. And probably the primary focus in that field is landscape, which I think most people might be familiar with that term in terms of like, maybe landscape [00:44:00] gardening or landscape painting.But when you get deep into it, which is kind of what grad school is, is you're like a big weirdo and you just get so deep into something so friggin specific that, you know, most people think you might think about once in your lifetime, but you end up spending nine years thinking about and writing about.It's almost like you can't perceive a place without some kind of filter, if that makes sense. It's almost like there's no such thing as just like a place or land that's just objectively out there. Like, I spent most of a winter, you know, down where you are in Oaxaca, but you having lived there for this long, like if you and I walk around in the streets of Ciudad Oaxaca, you're going to perceive so much more than I am, or at least many different things than I am, right?I'm going to be purely a tourist, I'm going to be reading on a surface level where you might have dozens of memories come up from your time living there and different things that have happened. And [00:45:00] so, in that way, like a landscape is almost, is always like a medium, meaning like our own perceptions, our own projections, our own memories are always affecting the way that we perceive a place.And so cultural geography, the field that I'm in, kind of looks at that. It looks, literally at the kind of the, the collision of culture and geography and like the politics of a place. You know, I was talking about like earlier about landscape management. You know, there are people that are choosing how to manage the landscape in the highlands, where to allocate money and where to cut money from.And all of those decisions are based on preferences of aesthetics and land use, in terms of landscape. So for anyone that's interested, it's a fascinating field to start looking at what we perceive in a place or in places [00:46:00] and how, what we perceive or what we wish to be there affects, you know, the politics of a place.And again, the contemporary crisis right now, Israel Palestine, this question of like, who belongs there? Whose land is it? What do you see in that landscape? For some people, they see an ancient Jewish homeland that these persecuted people are trying to return to and reclaim and for other people, they see, you know, an indigenous Arab people that are being displaced by outside colonizers and, you know, both in their way are right and wrong.I'm not going to wade into the politics of it, but the way that landscape is used as a medium, politically, economically, culturally, is a really fascinating subject, at least for me.Chris: Well, thank you for that, and to finish up with a question around pilgrimage, which Jerusalem being the quote unquote, "holy land" and where so many pilgrimages landed in in previous times and of course in contemporary ones as [00:47:00] well. I'm curious about what you could describe as ritualized memorial acts of walking. And I'd like to finish by asking what have been the most achieved and enduring acts of ritual that you've encountered? What lessons might they have to teach us in a time of hypermobility?Christos: Again, that's like a huge question. Okay, I'll try to be succinct if I can. I don't know why I'm drawn to these kinds of histories, but anywhere I go in the world, I tend to be drawn to, yeah, histories of displacement, I would say.It's a strange thing to be interested in for most people, but it probably speaks to the fact that I am the fourth generation of men to leave the country that I was born. You know, that's between both sides of the family, it's not all one lineage. But being of Greek descent, Greece has long been a country where people leave, you know?Like, right now, the [00:48:00] United States is a country where people come to, but to be claimed by a place where for hundreds of years now, so many people, whether by choice or circumstance, leave their home probably does something to you, you know? And so Anywhere I've traveled in the world, I tend to either seek out or be sought out by these kinds of histories, and so I referred a bit earlier to this project I did years ago where I was spending a lot of time in Mexico and ended up meeting what became a friend is an artist from Mexico City, Javier Arellán, and he was second generation Mexican.His grandfather was from Barcelona in Spain and was a fighter pilot for the Spanish Republic, so like the legitimate democratically elected government of Spain. And when Franco and the fascists kind of staged a coup and the Spanish Civil War broke out you know, he was on the side [00:49:00] of the government, the Republican army.And Barcelona was basically the last stand of the Republicans as the fascist kind of came up from the from the south and when Barcelona fell everyone that could literally just fled on foot to try to cross into France, nearby to try to escape, because knowing that if they were captured they would be imprisoned or killed by the fascists who had basically taken over the country now.But the French didn't want tens of thousands of socialists pouring into their country because they were right wing. And so rather than letting people escape they actually put all the Spanish refugees in concentration camps on the French border. And that's where my friend's grandfather was interred for like six months in a place called Argilet sur Mer, just over the French border.And then from there, Algeria took a bunch of refugees and he was sent to Algeria. And then from there, the only countries in the whole world that would [00:50:00] accept these left wing Spanish refugees was Mexico and Russia. And so about 50, 000 Spanish Republican refugees relocated to Mexico City. They had a huge influence on Mexican culture.They started UNAM, like the national university in Mexico City. And my friend Javier Grew up in Mexico city, going to a Spanish Republican elementary school, singing the Spanish Republican National Anthem and considering themselves Spaniards, you know, who happened to be living in Mexico. And so when I met him, with my interests, we, you know, overlapped and I found out that him and his wife were soon setting out to go back to that same beach in France where his grandfather was interred, in the concentration camp and then to walk from there back to Barcelona because his grandfather had died in Mexico before Franco died, so he never got to return home. You know, maybe like a lot of Greeks that left and [00:51:00] never did get to go back home, certainly never moved back home.And so we went to France and we started on this beach, which is a really kind of trashy touristy kind of beach, today. And we thought you know, that's what it is today, but we then found out talking to people that that's actually what it was back in the 1930s, 1940s was this touristy beach and what the French did was literally put a fence around and put these refugees on the beach in the middle of like a tourism beach literally as prisoners while people on the fence were like swimming and eating ice cream and, you know, and being on vacation.So even that site itself is pretty fucked up. A lot of people died there on that beach. And it was 15 days walking the entire coast from the French border back to Barcelona. And whereas Javier's community in Mexico city actually raised [00:52:00] funds for us and we're really excited about this idea of homecoming and going back home to Spain.We quickly discovered when we started talking to locals about what we were doing, they would stop talking to us and walk away and they didn't want anything to do with us. They did not want to know these histories. They didn't want to touch it. And what we found out is like Spain has never really dealt with this history.And it's such a trauma and nobody wants to talk about it. So again, it's this strange thing where it's like us from the Americas, you know, my friend from Mexico was wanting to return home and it was a strange trip for him because he thought of himself as a Spaniard returning home and these Spaniards were like, "you're a Mexican tourist and I don't want to talk to you about the civil war, you know?"And I think that really hurt him in a lot of ways because he almost kept trying to prove that he wasn't a tourist, whereas for me, I knew that I was a tourist because, you know, I have no history there.[00:53:00] In terms of pilgrimage, I've done other pilgrimages, other walks I won't get into now, but there's something about walking a landscape or walking a land as opposed to driving, obviously, or flying that the pace of walking, I think, allows you to interact with people and with places at a rhythm that is maybe more organic, maybe more holistic. I did do the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage in Spain, like I did that another 15 days as well. And for me there's nothing like walking. You know, there's, there's something that happens. To your mind, to your body, to your spirit when you're moving that I've never experienced through any kind of other travel.And unfortunately there are only so many places in the world where you can walk for days or weeks on end that have the infrastructure set up to do so. And I know that here in the Americas other than walking on busy roads, it's pretty hard to get long distances through walking.And so I think another thing that tourism has done is kind of cut off the transitional kind of walking and you just kind of fly off and just kind of plop yourself [00:54:00] down and then get extracted out through an airplane, but you don't have the experience of seeing the landscape change day by day, footstep by footstep, and experiencing the place at that speed, at that pace, which is, you know, a very slow pace compared to an airplane, obviously.Chris: Mm hmm. Perhaps, perhaps very needed in our time. Christos: I hope so. I think there's something about it. I think there's something humanizing about it. About walking. Chris: Well, I've asked a lot of you today, my friend. And we've managed to court and conjure all of the questions that I've, that I had prepared for you.Which I thought was impossible. So, on behalf of our listeners and perhaps all those who might come to this in some way, your dissertation at some point down the road, I'd like to thank you for your time and certainly your dedication.And I imagine a PhD, nine year PhD [00:55:00] research process can be extremely grueling. That said, I imagine it's not the only thing that you have on your plate. I know that you're also an artist a teacher, writer, and Kairotic facilitator. I'm saying that right. To finish off, maybe you'd be willing to share a little bit of what that entails and how our listeners might be able to get in touch and follow your work.Christos: Yeah, first I'll just say thanks for reaching out, Chris, and inviting me to do this. I've listened to your podcast and love these kinds of conversations around these topics of place and belonging. It's obviously deep in my heart and I said this to you earlier, other than my supervisors and my examiners, I think you're the first person to read my dissertation, so I appreciate that you took the time to read it and to draw quotes and to discuss it with me because, I think most people that have done a PhD know that it can be a pretty solitary process to go so deep into such a tiny little corner of like knowledge that for most people is not what they're interested in every day and to [00:56:00] share these stories. Thank you. So yeah, my website is ChristosGolanis. com. And part of what I do is working with this Greek term, kairos. So in Greek there are at least three words for time. One is chronos, which is like linear time. One is aeon, which is like kind of eternal time.And one is kairos, gets translated as kairos, which is like almost the appropriate time or ceremonial time. And my best definition of that is you know, there are some things that are scheduled, like you and I for months ago planned this particular time and this particular day to do this interview.But deciding, let's say, when to get married with your partner doesn't follow any kind of rational, linear timeline. That's more of a feeling. And so the feeling of like when some, when it's appropriate for something is what Greeks consider to be keros, like, you know, keros for something like it's, it's the appropriate time for something.So. What I do is I kind of counsel people to craft [00:57:00] ceremonies or rituals for big transitions in their lives to mark things in their life through ritual or ceremony. Like I said, for like a homecoming two weeks of walking the coast of Spain can be a ceremony, right, of kind of walking your dead grandfather back home. I think there's something about the impulse to go out into the world, to find something, to integrate something, to process something, right versus staying right where you are and kind of with community, with others. It's kind of ritually marking it, integrating it, and you know, it's cheaper, it's easier on the environment, and sometimes can, can go a lot deeper than going away and coming back, and maybe not much has changed.But it can be dealing with the transition of someone from life into death or a birth or a career change. And so basically using ceremony and ritual to really mark and integrate these significant moments in our lives so that we can be fully with them as they're happening or as they've happened in the past, but haven't been able to be integrated.So that's some of the kind of [00:58:00] work that people can do with me if you want to reach out through my website. Chris: Well I very much look forward to seeing and hearing your dissertation in the world outside of these small groups of podcast interviewers and academics. So, hopefully one day that's the case if there's any editors or publishers out there who enjoyed what you heard today and want to, want to hear more, please get in touch with me or Christos and we can, we can get that into the world in a good way.Christos, thank you so much brother. It's been a pleasure and I hope to have you on the pod again soon. Christos: All right. Thank you. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

With special guest host Stephen Jenkinson, Kimberly and Stephen consult with three engaged couples and an unmarried woman to wonder aloud about the institution of marriage.  Stephen describes his experience, when he was asked to marry several couples, how he did his homework.  What does it mean to approach matrimony as something other than a predictable, foreseen conclusion?  Are weddings overly performative? Is it possible for a wedding to feel authentic?  Kimberly describes what she learned from having a wedding in the working terreiros culture of Bahia, Brazil.  Stephen describes why a ceremony has no audience - it only has witnesses and participants. Stephen and Kimberly contend with how contemporary couples, longing for ceremony in their matrimony, strive for integrity in their union. This episode is just the tip of iceberg.    Starting February 25th, Stephen and Kimberly will start their 5-part Online Series "Forgotten Pillars: Patrimony, Matrimony, Kinship, Ancestors & Ceremony."   They will dive much deeper into the lessons gleaned from working cultures of the past to inform meaningful ways for couples, families, and communities to come together for experiences that linger long past the "big day."    Find out more or join us: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/forgotten-pillars/

On death, grieving, service, and releasing our fixation on redemption.

Enjoy this deep and soulful conversation with “The Griefwalker” Stephen Jenkinson. My guest Stephen Jenkinson is the author of the award-winning book Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul and the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School. He discusses the Nights of Grief and Mystery project, which he created with singer/songwriter… Continue reading Ep. 440 Nights of Grief and Mystery with Stephen Jenkinson

Welcome back to Slo Mo. With this episode, we complete the list of the Top 10 episodes for 2023, and share with you some moments that really left a mark on me. I've grown as  a person with every conversation, and I hope that if you've been with us for the whole year, some have left a mark on you. For yet another shift in our perspectives, and for an always happier new year, listen as we revisit the following moments from 2023. I love you all. Caggie Dunlop (full episode here) was an original cast member of the award-winning UK-based reality show Made in Chelsea. She is also a singer/songwriter, poet, entrepreneur and now author. Her new book Saturn Returns explores the relationship between planetary movements and the ups and downs of life. Stephen Jenkinson (full episode here) is someone I consider an important teacher in my life. He is a cultural activist, he is a farmer and a philosopher. He is the author of a number of books including some that are my favorites. He has years of experience as a palliative care worker and is a former program director at a major Canadian hospital.The Minimalists (full episode here), one of the most popular in the world, are a trio of like-minded people helping others achieve a happier lifestyle by removing the unnecessary items that may clutter up their lives.  Original members Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus were joined by  T.K. Coleman in 2022. April Rinne (full episode here) is the author of 'Flux: 8 Super Powers for Thriving in Change.' She is also a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and ranked one of the “50 Leading Female Futurists” in the world by Forbes.  Hannah Lord (full episode here) is a psychologist and business consultant. Hannah's goal is to rewire the cognitive pathways keeping people stuck through her work as a therapist and her online program, The Weight Lift. You'll hear why she is much more than a guest on the show.YouTube: @mogawdatofficialInstagram: @mo_gawdatFacebook: @mo.gawdat.officialLinkedIn: /in/mogawdatX: @mgawdatWebsite: mogawdat.comDon't forget to subscribe to Slo Mo for new episodes every Saturday. Only with your help can we reach One Billion Happy #onebillionhappy

In this special podcast edition of the live event "From the Ruins of a Greenhouse", Campfire Stories founder Mattias Olsson interviews activist, farmer and author Stephen Jenkinson. The evening opens with a song by Petronella Sjöö, followed by part one of the interview, where the topics range from farming to village mindedness to animism. The set is closed out by a live performance from Stephen Jenkinson and Gregory Hoskins' show "Nights of Grief and Mystery". This event was recorded live at the farming collective Under Tallarna in Järna, Sweden.Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of Campfire Stories: https://www.patreon.com/mattiasolssonOr, to make a one-off donation, visit: https://campfire-stories.org/boxoffice/To watch all of the Campfire Stories' films, visit: https://campfire-stories.org/film-library/And to listen to all podcast episodes, check out: https://campfire-stories.org/podcast-library/Follow Petronella Sjöö on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petronellasjoo/Find out more about Gregory Hoskins here: https://gregoryhoskins.com/Read more about Stephen Jenkinson and the Orphan Wisdom School here: https://orphanwisdom.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stop, be still, make room for the darkness Links: O Night: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=778236623110531&set=a.573965980204264 Praise to the Holy Dark: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=776085349992325&set=a.573965980204264 Dark Still by Stephen Jenkinson: https://orphanwisdom.com/2014/12/20/dark-still/

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…

Tahnee sits down with the formidable and incredibly inspiring, Kimberly Ann Johnson, for a raw and potent chat about the feminine experience. The women explore the role of archetypal rites of passage; birth, menarche, menopause, death, and the unique, nuanced and powerful technology that female physiology inherently embodies.   Informed by her work as a Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, author, yoga teacher, mother and postpartum advocate, Kimberly speaks with true reverence for the cyclic nature of womanhood, expressing that the faculty of listening, witnessing and holding space for the processes that are forever unfurling themselves within the body, mind and spirit of women is one of the most nurturing acts that women can offer both themselves and others. When we give our deep attention to the beauty, wildness and non linear nature of the feminine experience we agree to a rebellion against the rigid societal structures that feel as though they are designed to keep women confined to an existence that is far too small for the raw force of their intrinsic nature.  Kimberly shares her work with people in trauma, defining trauma as the outcome of an incomplete cycle, an event that because it has gone unwitnessed and unacknowledged in its full, lingers as injury in the body and psyche. Here we are introduced to the profound impact of circle work, of sitting in the presence of and holding space for the buoyancy and the dullness that colour the spectrum of human experience.  As Kimberly speaks she allows herself to feel and express emotion as it arises, her voice at times choked by the acknowledgement of grief, joy, love and despair, and it is truly freeing to receive. The courage of heart, the embodiment of all she teaches and practices is a breath of fresh air, a humbling gesture of solidarity to the part in all of us that longs to feel safe within the full scope of our somatic experience. I loved this one, I hope you do too.    Kimberly & Tahnee discuss: - Kimberly's origin story. - Community and what women really need postpartum. - The power of witnessing and circle work. - Feminine trauma, what it is and how it presents in the body. - Archetypal rites of passage. - Menopause & not giving a f#ck. - Kimberly's work with Stephen Jenkinson and the  value of wisdom and eldership in our society.   Resource guide Guest Links Kimberly's Website. Kimberly's Instagram. Kimberly's Facebook. Kimberly's YouTube. Kimberly's Linkedin. Mentioned In This Episode Mother Circle Online CourseKimberly's BooksSecond Spring Book - Kate CodringtonJane Hardwicke Collings WebsiteJane Hardwicke Collings Four Seasons JourneyJane Hardwicke Collings Autumn Woman Harvest Queen WorkshopUma Dinsmore-Tuli Yoga Nidra Related Podcasts The Power Of Menopause with Jane Hardwicke Collings (EP#77)Only Living People Die with Stephen Jenkinson (EP#203)Sexual Activation and Feminine Embodiment with Eva Williams (EP#144) Connect With Us SuperFeast InstagramSuperFeast FacebookSuperFeast TikTok SuperFeast Online Education   Check Out The Transcript Below: https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/articles/trauma-the-feminine-experience-with-kimberly-ann-johnson-ep-210    

Margaret (Meg) Wheatley (collapse theorist, global leadership consultant) is something of a legend in her field. She has worked for 50 years helping humans adapt to their world using systems analysis, chaos theory and deep spiritualism (she's good friends with one of my heroes the Buddhist monk Pema Chödrön). Poets, scientists and philosophers quote her writing, she has worked in countless disaster situations around the world and was commissioned to transform the leadership of large institutions such as the US Army and the National Park Service. Plus she's the author of 12 books, including Who Do We Choose to Be? and the forthcoming Restoring Sanity. Meg has also researched the collapse of civilisations throughout history and is a leading voice among a community of scientists, economists, historians and philosophers who are arguing that our civilisation is also currently heading toward collapse. This is a challenging conversation and the subject has its deniers. Meg steers our focus to becoming the leaders we want to see amid the cascading crises facing the world and to create “islands of sanity” amid the despair. In this conversation, we cover the responsibility of the rich, why it's redundant to talk about saving the world, and how to sit in despair and create a meaningful life from it all.Meg and I also recorded a second and even more challenging episode that can be found over at my Substack. In this extra episode we cover how long we've got left (when will collapse occur?), how to cope when others are still consuming and distracting themselves away from the issue, how to raise kids in this knowledge, where to live in coming years… SHOW NOTESMeg references the poet David Whyte who has also been a guest on Wild You can purchase Who Do We Choose to Be? now and preorder Restoring Sanity (coming March 2024)Find out about her workshops and events hereOther Wild conversations with elders: Stephen Jenkinson, Sister Helen Prejean and Margaret Atwood If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

'We're all dying from the moment we are born.' It's the truth, but a truth we never really acknowledge or contemplate. I never could have imagined how much I was going to love this conversation with Stephen Jenkinson. He's a philosopher and a wordsmith, a deep-thinker and an articulate communicator, and he has a way of weaving linguistic magic that took my mind into places it loves to go.  We talk about death and what it means to die. How we wrestle with fear of it and thus in the process of which, do we truly live? As humans we are tiny, fleeting and somewhat insignificant on this earth... What happens if and when we make peace with this concept? Or can we make peace with it at all? SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au STEPHEN JENKINSON Website: orphanwisdom.com TIFFANEE COOK Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: rollwiththepunches.com.au LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tiffaneecook/ Facebook: facebook.com/rollwiththepunchespodcast/ Instagram: instagram.com/rollwiththepunches_podcast/ Instagram: instagram.com/tiffaneeandcoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

00:03:00 Mistakes driven learning 00:07:00 Awe and mystery 00:11:00 Crisis and choice 00:15:00 Giving away your best stuff, wisdom and dying 00:19:00 Leaving room for others 00:22:00 Suffering and being a burden 00:28:00 Grief, practice and love 00:36:00 Regrets and beliefs   Links: Stephen Jenkinson: https://orphanwisdom.com/about/   Nights of Grief & Mystery Tour: https://orphanwisdom.com/nights-of-grief-and-mystery/   Link to 1st Interview with Stephen: Understanding How Things Have Become as They Are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7JnwNg0xLg   Podcast Webpage & Transcript https://oliviaclementine.com/podcasts   Support Enjoy these episodes? Please leave a review here. Scroll down to Review & Ratings. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-liberation/id1393858607

Today Tahnee sits down with Stephen Jenkinson, author, storyteller, musician, and culture activist, for a very real and very potent conversation around living, dying, and what it takes to embrace the fragility and asymmetry of life.  Influenced by a diversity of life experience and his work in death centred care, Stephen holds deep reverence for the art of living, a journey that is synonymous with loss. As an advocate for embodying death within the experience of life, Stephen asks us to engage with the practice of loss, of learning to live in the absence of something we once held dear or true as a preparation for the promised and very tangible characteristic of life; death.  Stephen views dying as a moral obligation, inviting the idea that to die mindfully, deliberately and consciously is a political act, a religious or spiritual event worth respecting as much as the breathing part of life.  Stephen poses the very important question that is so absent in our western culture; what is to become of me when I die?  Inviting us to hold awareness around the suggestion that to acknowledge the transient nature of life, is to be pertetually overwhelmed, a notion that is so beautifully captured in the following line he recites from an old provencal prayer; "God help me. My boat is so small and your sea so immense."   Throughout this discourse, Stephen encourages us to welcome the entire spectrum of living, to embrace the varied gradients that are expressed and experienced. We're summoned to ask ourselves whether we can cultivate the courage and embody the wisdom to remember the ones we love in the myriad of contexts they may inhabit. Whether we can we love the decrepit and decaying aspects of ourselves and others with as much vigour and enthusiasm as the parts that are robust, shiny and effervescent. If we can we sit alongside the dying with a smile instead of a grimace as they dissolve out of the breath based living that is so pedestaled and celebrated in our death illiterate culture. We are prompted to consider why death is continuously shunned and sanctioned to the dark corners of our psyches, asked whether we, in our enduring efforts to be the biggest, brightest and most gallant version of ourselves, are missing the poetry of loss?  It's in these questions that perhaps we begin to decipher the language crafted around our living and therefore our dying, to know and to develop the relationship we share with it.  A powerful and important chat today.   Stephen & Tahnee discuss: - Stephen's journey into death work.  - Living as an embodiment of death.  - Natural vs medicated death. - The extension of life as an extension of death. - Shepherding children through death and loss. - Approaching death with willingness vs resistance.    Resources Guest Links Orphan Wisdom Website Orphan Wisdom FacebookStephen's Youtube Mentioned In This Episode Die Wise Book Faith, Hope and Carnage Book Related Podcasts Death, Ceremony, and Walking Towards Grace with Zenith Virago (EP#117) Connect With Us SuperFeast InstagramSuperFeast FacebookSuperFeast TikTok SuperFeast Online Education   Check Out The Transcript Below: https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/articles/only-living-people-die-with-stephen-jenkinson-ep-203  

“We're not trying to be right. We're trying to see if we can see clearly.” In this agile and authentic episode, returning guest Stephen Jenkinson offers a lucid view of the world. How might our understanding of the world change if we approached life with a willingness to see things as they are rather than a need to only affirm that which we desire? Ayana and Stephen journey together to consider what had brought us to this modern time – prompting vital questions about the value of tradition, the importance of strangerhood, the possibility of reckoning, and the meaning of ancestry. Stephen asks questions that disrupt and unsettle the status quo, and perhaps these questions will lead us to the lessons we so deeply need. STEPHEN JENKINSON, MTS, MSW is an author, culture activist, ceremonialist and farmer. He teaches internationally and is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, founded in 2010. With Master's degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work), he has worked extensively with dying people and their families, is a former programme director in a major Canadian hospital and former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. He is the author of several books including 'Reckoning', 'A Generation's Worth', 'Come of Age', 'Money & the Soul's Desires' and the award-winning 'Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul'. Stephen is the subject of the National Film Board of Canada documentary 'Griefwalker', and 'Lost Nation Road', a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the wheelhouse of a mystery train. Nights of Grief and Mystery world tours, with singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins, are odes to wonder, love letters for the willingness to know endings. Music by Nights of Grief and Mystery. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Grief literary advocate Stephen Jenkinson connects with Raghu for a thought-provoking conversation on palliative care and dying wise.In this episode, Stephen Jenkinson and Raghu Markus peruse:The importance of storytelling and the human voiceFinding an alternative outlet for divinityExistential fear and dying wiseMoral and ethical dilemmas within the healthcare systemWhat constitutes care and the many gaps in medical practice wisdomMedical assistance in dying to relieve sufferingWhy limits and endings give life meaningThe wisdom and belonging of sadnessBargaining for more time instead of examining the quality of timeA better way to relate to the transition of life into deathThe idea of being ‘too late' and the consequences of our perceptionsHope as a mortgage on life and the certainties we falsely rely onDeath as a deity that we should accommodateTwo cultural icons. Two unique perspectives... One understanding of the presence of the way.Ram Dass' Love Serve Remember Foundation and the Alan Watts Organization invite you to open your mind, open your heart, and tap into the living truth of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. Learn more about this special 4-week Virtual Course:"The Presence of the Way: The Dharma of Alan Watts and Ram Dass"“I think if we cultivated a capacity to be sad we would make enormous headroads into our propensity for fear. I think sadness is an absolutely compelling and legitimate alternative but it needs at least as much tuition as fear does. You have to learn to be afraid, obviously, and you have to learn sadness as well.” – Stephen JenkinsonAbout Stephen Jenkinson:Stephen Jenkinson is a cultural activist, international teacher, and author. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School and has Master's degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work). Apprenticed to a master storyteller when a young man, he has worked extensively with dying people and their families. He is the former program director in a major Canadian hospital and former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. Stephen is also a sculptor and traditional canoe builder.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary In this episode, Kimberly and Khadija reflect on their recent mutual aid efforts in the wake of fires in Maui. Khadija shares what she has witnessed in her community and the tremendous impact of donations that have directly reached her neighbors. They reflect on destination travel and the impact of tourism on both the land and the people of Hawaii. Khadija describes what led her to invite Kimberly and Stephen Jenkinson to Reckon on the island this coming November. They wonder together about the ethics of retreats, tourism, and what it means to be an “under-the-scene” worker.    To learn more about Maui Reckoning with Kimberly Ann Johnson and Stephen Jenkinson, hosted by Khadija Striegel, go here. This is a gathering for the Maui ‘ohana. You can contribute to the event by making a donation here. Bio Khadija is an herbalist, bonesetter and farmer born, raised, and living in Maui. She's in graduate school studying Hawaiian language and culture. Khadija works with a non-profit caring for the native plant gardens at a Heiau, an ancient Hawaiian place of prayer. She offers Lomi Lomi body work to her community, in addition to tinctures and remedies under the title Family Traditions Maui.   What You'll Hear: There are not only stories as a result of the fires in Maui - there are still ongoing lives and lived experiences. The variety of extremes that co-exist in Maui - of destination weddings, vacations, and those walking heavy with grief. These fires aren't an isolated incident. They are part of a broader timeline of things that have taken place on Maui. The donation effort of money and herbs and medicine are no small thing. This community is making an impact. There are still areas of the island that do not have safe water. Opening care packages with kids after a disaster. Development and tourism on the island has directly impacted the land in a way that doesn't feed the land, water, and people. The fires are inextricably linked to this. Lahaina as a special gathering place, whose streams lack water as a direct result of hotels and vacation homes and visitor rentals Land stewardship is actually simple. An act of love. Loving something not just for ourselves. Loving something by letting it be. The parallels of tourism and addiction. The addiction of going anywhere, doing anything, wherever I want. Whose job is it to teach the culture of a place? And to what audience? There is a longing to belong for many people. Many people find it in Hawaii. But at what cost? The difficulty of land and home ownership for native Hawaiians. Retreats in Hawaii. The infrequency of native Hawaiians leading sacred nature experiences? The power of a voice that doesn't  say simply “it's all okay” when it's clearly not “all okay. What does it mean to be under-the-scene workers? Not behind-the-scene but under-the-scene? Reckoning in November is to offer something to the residents of Maui.   Resources   Maui Reckoning, with Kimberly Ann Johnson and Stephen Jenkinson, hosted by Khadija Striegel, for the Maui ‘ohana   You are welcome to contribute to the event. Please send your donation via PayPal to Khadija here with the note “Maui Reckoning Donation”.   If you would like to send herbs and materials directly to Khadija to support the community in Maui, find Khadija's letter and list here.    You can connect with Khadija via khadija@familytraditionsmaui.com   

“Grief-walker” Stephen joins me to talk death, myths about death, how to have a good death, death phobia, ageing, The West, decadence, initiation,  young people, climate change, gender identity, divorce, and some wisdom for Ukraine. A very very deep one.   To join our courses and our community go to www.embodimentunlimited.com Find Mark Walsh on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/warkmalsh/   More info on Stephen Jenkinson work: https://orphanwisdom.com/

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. 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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.

In this very very special episode the fellas speak with Stephen Jenkinson, a renowned author, storyteller, and grief worker. Jenkinson has a master's degree in theology from Harvard Divinity School and another in social work from the University of Toronto. He led the counselling program for the country's largest home-based palliative care program, and has worked with thousands of people facing death and dying. The fellas are enthralled as Jenkinson discusses his views on death, grief, and the importance of engaging with these topics in a meaningful way. He shares insights from his work as a social worker and his own personal experiences with death. We also talk about the cultural factors that contribute to our "death phobia" and "grief illiteracy." But don't worry, this episode is not all doom and gloom. Jenkinson also shares some of his own unique (and sometimes humorous) insights on how to live a more meaningful life in the face of death. This episode is a powerful and thought-provoking exploration of one of the most important aspects of the human experience. If you are interested in learning more about death, grief, and how to live a more meaningful life, then this episode is for you... even if you're a little bit scared of dying.

This conversation blew my mind. It's one of the deepest, poetic and most profound conversations I've had in many years. A must listen to episode. This episode is not just about dying but about LIVING Today we're joined by Stephen Jenkinson, an activist, teacher, author, and farmer. He is the founder of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada and the author of four books, including Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, the award-winning book about grief and dying, and the great love of life. In this episode we discuss:  Spiritual/wellness industry and death Self healing or healing in community? How to navigate living & death Living well so you die well. Our collective Echo chamber and how it impacts us Cancel culture Story telling & creativity to process endings What has Stephen's work taught him about himself Ways to Connect Stephen GET “NIGHTS OF GRIEF & MYSTERY” TOUR TICKETS- HERE Website- HERE Ways to connect with NATALIE Carry on the conversation on Substack Visit - www.natalie-miles.com for all her offerings and services. Including mediumship and psychic reading sessions Instagram - Follow Natalie Instagram- Follow Things That Die Credits Podcast Music: “Things That Die” by Baljit Rayat Editing - Kelly Whinnem

My guest today is someone I consider an important teacher in my life, Stephen Jenkinson. He is a cultural activist, he is a farmer and a philosopher. He is the author of a number of books including some that are my favourites. He presents life as it really is and because he has worked with the dying for so many years, he attempts to anchor us in the reality of where we are. There isn't a time that we need this more.This might not appear to be a very cheerful conversation but if you understand my work, I expect to have one of the most cheerful conversations about the reality of where we are today. This is definitely an important moment in my life when I meet one of my teachers.  Stephen Jenkinson is an author, a farmer and a philosopher. He has years of experience as a palliative care worker and is a former programme director at a major Canadian hospital. Stephen has Master's degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work). He is also a co-founder of The Orphan Wisdom School. Listen as we discuss:03:30 - Tie your camel 05:00 - The internal shift 07:00 - A Wondering Dervish 08:00 - A useful compromise 11:30 - The human struggle 15:00 - Is it too late? 16:30 - Finding peace 22:00 - The answer is asking the right question 26:30 - Hunger for money 30:00 - What the soul needs 33:00 - The spirit work 37:30 - From awful to awe 40:00 - A drop of the Divine in us all 42:00 - Gilgamesh 45:30 - More God than you need?  Find out more about Stephen Jenkinson and his work here.YouTube: @mogawdatofficialInstagram: @mo_gawdatFacebook: @mo.gawdat.officialTwitter: @mgawdatLinkedIn: /in/mogawdatWebsite: mogawdat.comDon't forget to subscribe to Slo Mo for new episodes every Saturday. Only with your help can we reach One Billion Happy #onebillionhappy

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