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, Marin County.

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

threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

I recently read Sunhouse by the writer David James Duncan, author of the best-selling cult

classics, The Brothers K and the River

Y. I found myself deeply moved by it, as it somehow struck a chord in me and included a

perspective I often feel is lacking. For the last decade, particularly in the ecological

sphere, we've been hearing about the need for a shift in collective consciousness

if humanity is to survive the myriad crises we've ignited.

But this important conversation often lacks what this changing consciousness might be like as a lived, embodied experience,

and one that includes a more contemplative or spiritual dimension.

For me, Sun House filled this gap, telling a very unique and at times deeply funny story

about love, spirit, and what it means to search for transcendence amid a world going out of balance.

It's not an easy book to summarize.

It's a tome at almost 800 pages.

But most simply, it follows the journeys of an eclectic collection of characters,

each seeking truth and meaning,

who ultimately come together to form an unintentional community in rural Montana.

It's a story that takes us into how a heart can be broken open

and transformed by both the beauty of the natural world

...