Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Over the past few years, we have witnessed the pressures of a changing climate intensify.

Baring down on populations across the globe, fallout in the form of prolonged drought, devastating

deluge, severe storms, and insidious sea level rise is unraveling the inhabitability

of landscapes that we have occupied for millennia. So profound are the expected consequences,

famine, economic disruption, political instability,

that it is estimated that by 2050, over a billion people will have been displaced by climate change.

As affected communities move in search of refuge, how will those in more privileged regions wield their power?

In the crucible of adversity, when survival becomes tenuous, what shapes will empathy and hope take? This week, we share a short story by Mexican author Leo Gouffresa that imagines the chaos of a world ravaged and divided by climate change.

And be damned, translated by Sophie Hughes, thousands of climate refugees find themselves forming

settlements on boats as they wait endlessly to cross a heavily guarded border in pursuit

of safety. Desperate for hope amid such uncertainty, one woman is tasked

with holding prayers for the community's salvation. As faith entwines with fragments of the grim

reality, she wonders what or who truly holds the power to change their circumstances.

Music to change their circumstances. I wake up and the first thing I do is look at the hinge.

That's my job.

It looks as splendid as ever, just as polished and inert.

I've been keeping watch over the hinge since before I could talk, since before I could walk.

It's my calling, or so I was told by the people keeping watch over me.

I slide my feet over toward my partner's warmth, but find only an empty space, cold sheets.

...