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

I'm Martha Beck.

This is a special gathering room for me today.

So welcome, welcome, all of you from all around.

And I'm going to dive right in.

So a lot of you are being affected by the massive storm that has hit the U.S., the whole

country, which is a vast country, right? You can see here, the snow is well up past my window

here in upstate New York. It's about hip height here,

but we still have power. We still have, you know, systems of neighbors that are coordinating

snow plowing and things like that. In other words, I am still living among, in a state of enormous privilege where millions of people have lost power.

Millions of people are seeing destruction to their homes and properties and lives.

And, you know, it's a cliche to say our hearts and minds are with you, but they really are.

Even more, I want to talk, and this is the subject of this entire gathering room, about the disruption that is not just coming from the weather, which is, by the way, also influenced by what humans are doing on the earth, but not just coming from the weather, but the breakdown in systems that has taken precious lives

and disrupted many, many more, this loss of life and this horrific destruction coming from

the very institutions that people rely on to keep them safe.

This is a very real time to be concerned at the very, very least, petrified perhaps, but I'd prefer you not stay petrified.

So this whole gathering room is going to be about what I call wayfinding, which is a system

of finding your way through a world that has become chaotic.

If you've been through the Wayfinder life coach training, you know that one of the first

things I do is tell you it's not a life coach training program. It's a wayfinding program. It's meant

to teach you to build a life that works in any circumstances and it takes into account the breakdown

of social norms. And then you can teach other people about it for sure,

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