Part 3 · Seeing with New Eyes
Roots
Read the Lyrics
Singing Key
Life is moving me around in circles And I'm trying to nest my mind in yours Like the birds following light - Invisible lines - Pole to pole skies Listening to life I feel through the roots To the beating of our hearts I feel through the roots To what we all are Like the wolf roaming Or the raven, older than the night The why of the wind The wonder of water - giving life I feel through the roots To the beating of our hearts I feel through the roots To what we are Life is moving me around in circles And I'm trying to nest my mind in yours Like the woods building from light Making their way slowly through life Fashioning water into mind I feel through the roots To the life that's beating in our hearts I feel through the roots To what we all really are
Sit With This — reflect on any question that resonates with you
- What does love for another human actually feel like? Does it reach to something beyond the affection you share?
- Does the world look or sound or feel different when your body is filling up with love?
- Is it possible to feel these feelings without the attachment to another person?
- If love is there inside you, can you feel it now?
- What would it mean to organise society around care instead of extraction?
Notice-savour-gratitude ▾
A practice from the Work That Reconnects · Joanna Macy, Active Hope
A structured practice to notice, savour and give thanks — grounded in something specific rather than gratitude in the abstract.
How it works
- Notice — scan your recent memories and identify something that makes you think "I'm glad that happened."
- Savour — close your eyes and imagine yourself back into that moment. Notice colour, texture, taste, sound, smell, sensation in your body. Notice how you feel.
- Give thanks — who or what helped this moment happen? How can you give thanks, or offer something back?
Facilitation note: can be done solo in a few minutes, or shared aloud in pairs afterwards. Works well as a daily practice too, not just in the moment.
Web of Life (Group) ▾
"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.
Interbeing is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter" with the verb "to be", we have a new verb, inter-be. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are.
And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist."
— Thich Nhat Hanh
How it works
One person holds a ball of string or thread and names a living thing they depend on — the sun, the rain, a bee, the soil, the ocean, a tree. They hold their end of the thread and throw the ball to someone else.
That person names another living thing that depends on — or gives life to — something already named. They hold their thread and throw the ball on. And so it goes, each person adding a strand to the web: a forest, a river, a fungal network, a cloud, a whale, the wind.
Keep going until the web is strung between you all — visible, held, alive. Then: the facilitator names one element and removes it from the web. Everyone who feels a tug on their thread raises their hand. What else moves when one thread is pulled?
Works for any group size. 8–12 minutes. Standing in a circle or seated. No large-group debrief needed — the web speaks for itself. You'll need a ball of string, wool or garden twine — if you don't have one, use a cushion or any throwable object and ask each person to remember their connection as the object travels around.