How does it feel to really believe that every molecule of my being belongs here?
How does it change my outlook to understand that you are “other me” and I am “other you”?
What are all these layers of pain and confusion I feel when I allow that to be my reality?
These are the sort of questions I have been asking for the last few years, ever since I realised that the Indigenous Peoples understand something that my body had forgotten.
I am hoping to continue exploring this with friends as a thread running through the Earthcare Gathering 2025.
We only know who we are in relation to each other, so a “healthy human culture” seems essential as part of this inquiry. What does this feel like? How do existing Quaker spaces support us to grow into our vulnerable, authentic selves? What are the mechanisms and assumptions that can hold us back? How do we hold all this with tenderness?
I am beginning to see how this, directionally, repairs the planet. I can imagine how authentic, grounded humans can be “change makers” in a society in collapse. I am learning how millions of people are already finding ways to live together in what we’d consider to be post-collapse conditions, so dismantling ideas of Western superiority opens the door to a rich source of learning about community organising.
I believe that Planet Repair is the brave work of remembering who we are as humans, finding our way back from the false narratives and assumptions embedded in our colonial/capitalist society. I have found that this process can be accelerated by working alongside the Pan-Afrikan Reparations community. They have a passionate dedication to truth-seeking and an instinctive resistance to comfortable distortions. The Earth, I believe, is calling us to let go of old patterns of domination, destruction, extraction, and exploitation and to reclaim the space for life and love.
This is what radical worship means to me. In my experience, it can also be beautifully described as trusting in the inward light, answering “that of God” in everyone, and allowing this experience to show me my shadows.
Jo Cooper