Welcome to Emergence Magazine Summer of Practice, a special series of guided audio practices.

I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, host of this podcast, an executive editor of Emergence Magazine, located on the unseated

ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people in present-day Marin County. Starting with this episode,

and continuing through the end of August, we're bringing four practices from past print issues

to life on the podcast.

Each guided practice, encountering trees, listening to the language of birds, being with

the dark, and listening for silence, invites you to connect with the living, breathing earth,

bridge the worlds of spirit and matter,

and learn how simple and embodied practice of spiritual ecology can be.

And with these practices now in audio format, you can pop in a pair of headphones,

head out into the living world, and participate whenever and wherever you like.

From the lasting presence of old-growth forests to the rooted sentinels of our own backyards,

trees are humans' oldest and most constant companions.

Since the very beginning we have been intimately linked with

these beings, sharing breath within Earth's great respiration of carbon and oxygen. Today's invitation

is called encountering trees and is an extension of our interactive multimedia experience breathing with the forest,

which draws you into such an exchange with the Amazon rainforest.

This practice localizes this exchange, prompting you to encounter a tree in your immediate surroundings through the senses.

While we often reduce trees to merely enduring ornaments within our landscapes,

consume them as expendable resources,

they constantly invite us through bloom, shade, wonder, breath,

into closer relationship.

...