Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

I'd love to get a whole group vibe going because I want to start out with our traditional

meditation today.

And I've been putting it in the middle toward the end because I don't want everybody to have to come in

in the middle of that thing. So let me just tell you what the topic will be today. It's letting

the forest steer your life. And then I want to just, I'll chat about it for a second and then

we'll do the meditation and go from there.

So I've been talking to more and more people that I've known, like I have lived long now and I have traveled many places and I've had many jobs and I've met famous people and

impoverished people and wonderful people everywhere.

And it just strikes me that because we come from a culture that denies spirituality,

at least those, well, you're either going to go with religion or science, basically, in the way our

culture is set up. And from my childhood on, people kind of had to choose one of those two. And there wasn't as big a group

in the Western world that would sign a box that would tick a box that goes, I am spiritual but not

religious. And I went, I had a wonderful experience a couple of weeks ago going to see Ani DeFranco,

who is an amazing musician and poet, really.

I mean, her songs are really both.

Great music and great poetry.

And my partner, Roe, is a fan of her, like, crazy fan, like would drink her bathwater level fan

from way back.

And she's kind of a protest girl.

So I was very excited to see her in New York City.

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