Hello and welcome. I'm Krista and this is a small special series on foundations for the

Art of Living. A few tethering understandings towards imagining and walking our way into

our callings for now in the future. These have emerged across 20 years of conversation. They are

shaping how the on-being project meets the world that is now unfolding. We're going to begin with

a notion of phrase that I use all the time and I remember all the time that I need to define it.

The phrase is the generative narrative of our time, the generative story of our time. We are more

familiar with the story of catastrophe and dysfunction and that is real. But it's not the whole story of us.

That's what this phrase is insisting on. That there is also an ordinary and abundant reality of

things that are going right at any given time of learning and growth that is happening of evolution

and breakthrough. One of the things that happens when I use this phrase and speak of it and people

hear it for the first time is that they will say, well, give me an example. And I find that really hard

because my mind is so full and bursting with images, with faces and stories and particular people.

This generative story of our time for me is so embodied and vivid at this point. I had to

summon this phrase to describe what I was seeing in these years of drawing out

wise and graceful voices in our world, some of them famous, some of them not, but also being out in

the world meeting our listeners and meeting people in all kinds of disciplines and all kinds of

communities, all kinds of places and seeing how ordinary in fact it is that people are working

with forms that are broken, with a world that is in pain with institutions that don't make sense

anymore and finding ways to be of service, to have an edifying effect on the people around them,

to be healers in so many forms and to model and advance quietly, but so powerfully,

what it looks like when we rise to our best humanity. We are capable of beauty and joy and dignity

and incredible creativity and community and care. So the first invitation for you here is to see,

...