Dear friend:
In spring, we shared with you that we’ve begun a new chapter in our story: creating an intergenerational, interspiritual community. In the months since then, we’ve been easing into rest and relationship as a group of 27 strangers-turned-friends, gathering online and in-person as we get to know one another and explore our shared covenant.
At the heart of this experiment is a hope in, and aspiration toward, kinship culture. As we wrote at the outset:
"We covenant in order to name and visibilize the ways we are beholden to one another, to the web of life, and to our highest calling. Countering the hyper-individualism of the society we live in, we covenant together to create new capacities and courage to walk away from imperial culture and toward kinship culture."
With this as our north star, we keep asking one another: how do we actually practice walking away from empire and walking toward kinship?
Holding this inquiry, community members Sarah Jane Bradley and Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev began a praxis circle entitled “Biblical Practices for Collective Liberation." In a pedagogical journey of intention, reflection, and action; the circle explores six practices from Hebrew Scriptures – Covenant-Making, Sabbath, Shmita, Jubilee, Radical Hospitality, and Pilgrimage. More than half of our community has joined in this rich experiment in “learning toward action,” bringing these ancient biblical practices to our contemporary moment through their own experiences, spiritual backgrounds, stories, and questions.
In the spirit of harvesting our insights along the path of walking toward kinship, we offer glimpses into Sarah and Nahum’s learnings below. In these brief excerpts, they share what they are learning about our community experiment and how they are choosing to be in this societal moment of collapse and renewal:
Walking toward kinship, together
Sarah:
"I think what drew me to this covenantal community is a deep longing and desire to find kin in the quest for living otherwise, and to be doing that in community because I think that's really the only way that living otherwise can happen. We're not creatures that can exist in isolation. What does it mean to, and how can we try to live outside of or in defiance of the ravages of capitalism, colonialism, and various forms of supremacy culture? And instead, move towards right relationship and kinship? Return to our place in the community of creation? I think that's a really hard journey … so I need partners in that journey, I need teachers and peers and collaborators and elders.”
Nahum:
“...it feels like the Earth, the human community on the earth, and all that is living on the earth, is really calling profoundly for us human beings to find a radically different way to live: to be in right relationship with the full Earth community. … It seems like that can only be done in community and partly where we've gone so far off is the way that we've been isolated and held up the individual and not in living communities context. So it seems like a core to the way back is really living in community.
This is a very challenging journey, and I'm going to fail a lot at it because we need to find a way to live which is different than how I've been schooled to live in this culture, and I need companions and fellow risk takers and learners, people who will lovingly hold me accountable in support.”
How do we want to be together?
Sarah:
“How do we want to be in collapse together? …There's a lot that I could say about [how] we need to be making decisions about how serious we are about a just transition to a regenerative economy, and a just democracy, that actually is an expression of our pluralism, respecting sovereignty, sovereignty of people and sovereignty of places of the earth and the waters and the air… there are so many things that we could do, right? There's so many things we can make, big plays and big risks to organize for, but the thing that's coming to mind is...
In collapse, how do we want to be? How do we want to be grateful for the experience of life? How can we love every member of creation, every species, every tree, every bird that is going extinct, knowing that they will likely go extinct? What is it to love a place knowing that it will likely be destroyed by what we have done? What is it to love, love so many parts of being human that will no longer be accessible or be available to us? What is it to enjoy and have pleasure and laugh in the face of collapse, and be thankful in the midst of collapse?
It feels like a moment that calls for great risk, and a great showing up to what our stakes are. A moment for letting go and a gratitude and a respect for the stories that are so much bigger than us. … A moment for holding the grief, holding the joy, while also not losing sight of the great things that still need to be done in order to try to walk that road of re-covenanting or re-finding our way towards right relationship, or finding our way towards right relationship for the first time."
Nahum:
"We live at a time of dramatic environmental degradation. … We're in the midst of the sixth great extinction. And the question is, how great will that be? And how many species will that include, and will that include us? … I mean, to just face that. The time is now, that significant action needs to be taken, to live otherwise. And deeply connected to that awareness of environmental collapse, as unbelievable as that is, as hard as it is to grasp, I also see us living in the final gasps of 6000 years of imperial culture. … We live in a time when we need to respond to [how] this imperial system has been going on for 6000 years, [and how] one way or another it is coming to an end. So the times call upon us to reach deeply within and without to find another way of coming together in society? That's what time it is.
"… The whole earth community is calling deeply for wild experiments about how to leave behind imperial culture and create communities of kinship culture, communities of mutual and reciprocal care. And so for me, that's what time it is and that's what the call is: can we come together and create communities of kinship culture?"
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We hope these brief glimpses into the slow and deep work of release and renewal might inspire your own walk toward kinship culture. May we all be a refuge for one another in collapse, a source of inspiration in renewal, and kin in this quest for living otherwise.
–Katie, for the N&N Community
PS. Rabbi Nahum wrote a book called The Liberating Path of the Hebrew Prophets: Then and Now (Orbis Press) where he develops many of these ideas further. Learn about the book and his work here.