Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, host of this show, an executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people in present-day, Marine County.

Each week, we feature interviews, stories, poetry, and author-narrated essays,

exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

At our shifting landscapes retreat, held at Sharperm Trust in Devon last summer,

I gave two talks that were a simple invitation to fall in love with the Earth again and become enraptured by her.

For many years, I have strongly felt that at this time of ecological unraveling and climate chaos,

the earth needs us to be attentive and is asking us to return her ever-present gaze

with our tenderness and care.

How can we unravel the web of forgetfulness we've become encased in,

and learn to center the earth in our hearts.

How can we expand our love to embrace her in every moment, in every landscape?

What transforms when we become enraptured with the earth?

These are questions I have long sat with, and our central ones to what we're exploring together at emergence.

Yesterday afternoon, at the end of the discussion groups that we all were in, the facilitator of the group that I had joined halfway through,

asked everyone to share what they were grateful for,

what they were full of praise for.

And the last person to share, she said,

I have praise for the fact that the earth, the great seductress that she is,

will eventually lure everyone in. And she has faith.

Eventually she would lure everyone in.

...