According to climate activist Joanna Macy, there are three stories that explain the world we're living in.

The first is Business as Usual.

That is, "Don't worry. Everything's fine."

For example: "Global warming? No sweat — we're going to figure out how to suck carbon out of the air. No worries. The capitalist system will figure things out and the people who come up with the best, most valuable ideas will be rewarded. All is good."

Sounds reasonable, especially if you consume mainstream news and listen to experts and pundits promoted and funded by capitalism.

The second is the Great Unraveling.

As in, "We're doomed."

And it can sound like this: "The oceans are dying. Fisheries are collapsing. There's poverty everywhere. The climate is chaotic and dangerous. Everything's on fire or under flood waters. There's oppression and war and degradation, and income inequality is skyrocketing. And it's too late; there's nothing we can do anymore."

Well, I can't argue with any of that. When I read scientific papers on climate science and oceanography, when I talk with farmers — it's hard to feel a big surge of hope about our future.

And then there's a third story: the Great Turning.

The Great Turning says, "Let's build a just and life-sustaining society."

Living into the Great Turning isn't a spectator bet on what will happen, but rather a decision to get onto the field of play to affect the outcome.

And that's what my guest, Jess Serrante, and I, cover in this conversation.

So if you have been in despair and rage, bewilderment, and depression; or if you're thinking, if only we had elected the other folks then everything would be fine — this third story will offer you a way forward.

Links

We Are the Great Turning Podcast

JessSerrante.com

Jess Serrante on Instagram

"Wild Geese," by Mary Oliver

An amazing Padel point

YogaBody.com

I generally publish this podcast on Tuesdays. Today I'm breaking protocol, sharing it on a Friday for a bunch of reasons. Last night I recorded a conversation with Jess Serrante, who is a climate activist, a climate leadership coach and creator of the incredible podcast We Are the Great Turning. And one of the reasons I love this podcast so much is that it is a complete body of work. It's like a limited series. They did what they were going to do and then they stopped so you can take it all in and then

know that you have it all. And I wanted to talk to Jess, even if we arranged this well before the twenty twenty four presidential election in the U.S. and we decided not to record the day after just to give ourselves some time and perspective. But as it turns out, this is just a week later. And this these themes were that were kind of brought up to the country and brought up in relief.

for the the world to see are the essence of the work of the great turning, which is to say, and we'll get into this in the conversation, but I just kind of want to frame why this is so urgent for me right now. There's three stories that we can live into right now that we can believe that we can see the world through. One is business as usual. Everything's fine. Climate problems. Great. We're going to figure out how to suck carbon out of the air. No worries. The capitalist system will figure things out and.

The people who come up with the best ideas will be rewarded. All is good. Then there's the story of the great unraveling, which is we're doomed. The oceans are dying. There's no more fish. There's poverty everywhere. The climate is collapsing. Everything's on fire. There's oppression and war and degradation, income inequality. Also true. And then there's the third story, the story of the great turning, which is what we're going to get into in this conversation. So if you have been in

despair and rage, bewilderment, depression, or if you have been in elation, jubilation, or if you're thinking, man, if we could only just get back to where we were to business as usual to the normal neoliberal growth economies. This conversation will have something profound to say to you. So let's get into it without further ado.

Jess Serrante, welcome to the Plant Yourself podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, you're one of the best podcasters I know. it's. You know, very, very exciting. So, yeah, and that's how that's how I found you through an email that I got from Animas Institute from Bill Plotkin and Janine Hagen saying that there's this podcast about the work of Joanna Macy and

That's so kind of you to say. thank you.

and I listened to it and I listened to it again. these days it feels like it's something that's almost required on repeat just for almost like a kind of like emotional, psychological, spiritual dialysis. So I just want it. First of all, I just wanted to want to thank you for doing the work and maybe could begin by just.

You

you

introducing yourself and then we can get to the great turning and Joanna and the bigger issues.

Great, awesome. It was so kind of Bill to put that in the email thread. I was so grateful when I saw that. So my name is Jess Serrante. I am a climate leadership coach and a podcaster. And I've been working in the climate activism community since 2007. So when I was a college sophomore, or no college freshman actually.

I took an environmental studies class my freshman year and learned about the climate crisis and all of the environmental crises that we're facing. And from that moment forward, my entire life was about addressing climate change. So I organized through college. I worked for Greenpeace for a couple of years. I worked for another corporate accountability organization called Rainforest Action Network. And then while I was in that work, I had my first experience of burnout.

and turned toward coaching and met Joanna and came into the work that I do now, which is more about supporting leaders and activists and helping them to sustain themselves and to find the like spiritual fortitude that they need in order to carry on and do this work.

So when you just started talking about like you took this freshman course and it like lit you up to like devote your life to this, like the question that came to my mind, which I edited before I blurted it out, is like what like most people I imagine take that took that course or something similar or read about it and don't do anything like what motivated you. And then I'm like, I'm asking someone like.

You just heard that, the ship is sinking. What motivated you to try to patch that? Like, I feel like I feel like I shouldn't be asking you. I should be asking everybody else like why they didn't do what you did.

Yeah.

Well, so I should edit the story a little bit because of course I gave you the CliffsNotes version. What happened was that I learned about the climate crisis. I was devastated. And then a year later, a group of friends invited me to go to a conference called Power Shift. That was the first US based youth climate conference. And so I was there. I went down to DC from Vermont where I was in school.

And I was with thousands of other young people, mostly college-age people who were lit up about the same thing and who knew things that I didn't know. Like they knew about organizing and they knew about movement building. And I didn't know that stuff. mean, of course I had like heard about it through like learning about the civil rights movement and that kind of thing. But like it hadn't occurred to me. No one had really told me.

that I could organize, that we could build power, that we could sway people, that we actually had influence over this, because we all felt so small. And so that was actually the thing that catalyzed me into the rest of my life, was that moment being surrounded by the climate movement for the first time and being like, wow, it's intoxicating. So in many ways,

Hmm.

Yeah, it's like movement building and community have always been the heart of the work that I do, right? Like I became a coach because of my love for the movement.

Hmm. Well, I guess community, you know, there's the facts on the ground, right? There's the UN reports we could read and the scientific studies and the polar ice cap data. But it's like it's like community somehow spurs us into into identity and action in ways that it's almost more about the emotions and the contagion and the hearts than the facts.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, what are we doing this for if not for our community? Right? I mean, I I say that as if that's like immediately obvious, right? We live in a culture that thrives on separating us. The global corporate capitalism paradigm needs us to be separate in order to make money off of us. But the reality, of course, is that we're all inherently intertwined.

Hmm.

in separate, not separate in any way. And so.

I mean, and you know, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here because we're going to talk about the work that reconnects. But in many ways, this is what this work is about. This is one of the things that Joanna has taught me and that. And one of the reasons why I have taken on carrying her work with the fervor that I have is because I do believe that when we remember the reality that we are inextricably linked parts of a community, not just our local, but our global community, then we are

so much more motivated to act in service of the collective good. To move beyond the fears or the self, the like more selfish motivations, right? And I'm not, I don't mean to necessarily shame that we all have that self preservation for a reason, but we can move beyond the things that we've been taught we need to do or the ways we're supposed to get by in this life and learn that we can lean on.

community and how beautiful life is when we act in service of that.

Yeah, see, there's part of my mind, my brain going, you know, as a behavioral scientist like, yeah, but our minds are not set up for collectivism. Our minds are set up when there's threats to separate into us and them to be tribal. And then at the same time, you know, in Spain, where I live, we had we've had these tragic floods over the last couple of weeks.

Mm-hmm.

the government completely fell down and you see people from all over the country like driving their farm tractors and their trucks and bringing water and like there is this impulse to help people you don't know. You know, and and it's it's almost like like that's as natural as just reading it in the paper than going back to Wirtle.

Yeah.

Yeah, I I'm tempted here to like turn the question back to you and be like, you studied this. Like, is that really true? That are, you know, that it's just as natural for us or more natural for us to like turn in because that hasn't been my experience of life. And maybe it's because of the people that I surround myself with, but.

I also think it's very natural for us to turn toward one another, especially when we have fewer resources, right? One of the things that isolates us also in our culture is wealth, right? You can afford to buy your way through your problems, through your illness, your need for childcare, whatever. When you can't do that, you need other people. You need the village.

Hmm. Yeah. I mean, the best answer I can come up with is have you heard of Rat Park? So I'm going to lose all the details because it's a couple of years back, but some social scientists, some scientists, behaviorists were studying about like stress and addiction. So they get rats addicted or they, you know, to they do the shocks or they give them food and like, you know, and the rats would, you know, get addicted to

pushing the button for cocaine or they'd feel the show. Right. And it was predictable. Like, this is how rats are. Except in one lab, instead of separating the rats in their own cages, they had rat park and they had all the rats together and they had rat games and rat mazes and things. And they found that those rats didn't get addicted and they didn't exhibit weird behavior. And it turns like, when you study like who we are, depends on

the systems that we live in.

Yeah, that's a cool example.

So like if you know the work you do around community. Like, I want to get into this like I've been in situations where a bunch of strangers are together and someone knows how to weave them together and all of a sudden hearts just open. It's not it's not an effort.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we're all hungry for it, right? It's amazing. I mean, this is, I think this, that hunger is like what the work that reconnects runs on. All it takes, it's so much simpler than it might even look from the outside, like to facilitate this work. It's just an invitation. There's not like, we're not going into the room telling people how to open up.

Hmm.

We're just, you know, in the simplest form, we're saying, you know, you're invited to tell this person what it is that you love about being alive on earth, or what it is that breaks your heart about this moment, or what it is that you long to do in service of our planet. And like, to have an attentive, ready person sitting in front of you to hear your answers to those questions, people just, it just pours open.

Hmm.

Hmm. I can feel it. You know, I can feel my own flowering as you just offer those into the ether.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. And and how bad it feels to try to answer that by myself. How can how constricted? Like this, this would be like this is like a terrible like self-study program like, you know, write the answers to these questions. Yeah. And we can do it. We can reflect, but. It's it's climbing uphill.

Yeah, no, you're not meant to do that on your phone.

Okay.

Yeah.

I yeah, it's, I mean, it's nice to be self reflective, right? But like, again, this, the pain, the thing that has us shut down or not offer ourselves or stay inside is often the pain of separation, isolation, and the destruction of our world. So of course, the antidote is in coming together.

and in experiencing ourselves as a part of a collective, because that's the truest truth about who we are. Right? And I mean, and it's a labor in this culture. It's a labor to remember that. It's like the webs just like reform. Every time I remember, the webs like will reform over my eyes and I have to peel them back. And over time, it gets easier. But still, like our culture has done such a good

Mm-hmm.

job, horrifically good job at training us into believing in that separateness.

I was just before this call, I was coaching a client. He's an entrepreneur and he's very clear, like the startup he's creating is in the service of him learning leadership and learning problem solving. and he he like remembers that. And he says, I keep forgetting like I'll wake up in the morning and I'm like, what do I got to do today? And like, it's so hard to remember those big

the heart stuff when you're not in community. It's almost like trying to keep a human cell alive in a Petri dish. It's hell of a lot easier if it's in my body.

Yeah.

Yeah, Jelena calls that a cultural amnesia.

Hmm.

Yeah. And this work is at its heart, culture work. You know?

Yeah, yeah, and then.

Yeah. So I want to make sure I set up the work that reconnects with through through through through through your story. And you say you mentioned burnout. And I know, you know, from listening to We Are the Great Turning, that you you have a story of throwing yourself into the climate movement. And, you know, you said you met these people who understood movement building and activism. And I was thinking like, but do we really have any good

I was gonna tell people that first.

Mm-hmm.

Like stories like when has it succeeded? where? and you were doing a bunch of stuff. of kind of continue your story.

What particular part of it would it help to hear?

Well, maybe the, you know, the burnout, the. Right, because a lot of people are like, well, I would do something, but either I've already tried things and I've burnt out on it and I just I'm so exhausted and I haven't taken care of myself or I just I don't see a way to win. And so why am I going to put energy? Into a black hole.

Okay, so there's a couple ways, there's like my mind's going in all these different directions around this. I don't know that my burnout story is gonna be the most useful for this actually because I was burning out from...

from years and years of corporate accountability campaigning. Well, maybe it's related, right? Like I had spent, when I got activated as a college student, I joined Greenpeace as a student leader. And so I spent a semester in San Francisco learning the ins and outs of organizing from the campaigners and the staff at the Greenpeace office. I then ran campaigns on my campus.

huh.

I then worked on a nuclear campaign that was run.

And what does that mean? What is that? What's like? Give us a visual for running a campaign.

running a campaign. So to get really specific, we were running the first campaign I ever ran was trying was a campaign. I'm trying to remember the name of it. I can't remember, but it was called Clearcut. And Greenpeace was trying to get Kimberly Clark Corporation, the paper company to stop sourcing old growth forests in their toilet paper.

And so the way that they were, one of the ways that they were doing that was that they were mobilizing college camp, college activists from around the country to get their universities to drop their contract with Kimberly Clark. And so we were one of the universities that did that. ran, you we met with the administration. We did like creative actions. We dropped a banner off of one of the student buildings at one point with a big picture of the Lorax.

mobilize a bunch of students and we got the university to agree to it. and what was beautiful is that as a result of that and like, you know, a handful of other universities across the country doing that in that same couple years, they were able to tip the company. So oftentimes this is how these big corporate accountability campaigns work, right? It's like multiple mini campaigns that build enough pressure on a mega corporation.

that they start to see and feel the threat on their bottom line and then they change their policies.

So the thing that I was doing when I burnt out, when I found Joanna, was a similar campaign. I was working to transform the global palm oil industry. And so I was a part of an organization that was a part of a coalition. So we were taking on the food industry and we were taking on these big food corporations, Kellogg's, Pepsi, Campbell's, Krispy Kreme, you name it, and pushing them to change their.

Okay.

palm oil procurement policy because the way that the palm oil was being procured was destroying forests in Indonesia, utilizing and supporting slave labor in Indonesia and Malaysia and so on. I mean, I was lucky because I aligned myself pretty early with organizations that were really good at winning campaigns. You know, like...

Mm-hmm.

It was intoxicating, very, very powerful to be like, you know, this whole team of us might spend years and years of our lives pushing against this, but we shifted the food sector. And so for years, starting in college, my dream job was to be a corporate accountability campaigner. But then at some point I realized that changing these corporations wasn't actually what my life was for. And when that happened, I felt like I'd lost everything.

I didn't know where my purpose was. I was like, know that this isn't it anymore. Even though for like eight or so years I thought it was.

And can I ask what like was it that you were winning, but it wasn't making a difference or there was like what was what was not right about it for you?

I think after years of working in that, the...

How is it? Moving these big corporations makes a tangible difference, but I felt like it was still operating within the business as usual paradigm. Like it was like I was devoting my life to improving a corporation.

I mean, and that's obviously not exactly what it is, right? It's like, we're protecting forests. We're saving the lives of people who are in forced labor conditions. We're not saving them, but like changing the conditions that would harm these people's lives. That's meaningful and tangible, but I wanted larger paradigm cultural change. I didn't know that at the time. I can say that now because it's where I've landed.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

that doing the spiritual cultural work of this is what has really taken my heart. But at the time, I just knew in my gut that that wasn't the work for me anymore. I had to go out looking for something else.

Yeah. Well, it's almost like you're you're just pushing the same levers that the world pushes on corporations, right? Like profit, like, we're going to stop. We're going to make less money on college campuses or we're going to get bad press. So it's just easier, you know, our share to be good to our shareholders. We're going to do this.

Mm-hmm.

Right, right. And for me, was like the I don't want a better PepsiCo. I want a paradigm where there aren't mega corporations who have vested interest in like violating and destroying life in service of their bottom line. That's the world I want to live in. And it's like lofty. It's bigger. It's a bigger, you know, it's not an easy win in the same way. But that was what I had to move toward.

Yeah. And I guess there are multiple lanes. I saw a meme recently like there's many lanes of resistance and like I'm glad there are people doing corporate accountability. Right. And I'm glad there are people who have moved on, you know, who are looking at it from this sort of post capitalist, you know, a world that actually nourishes us perspective.

Yes.

Absolutely. So.

Yeah. So the, haven't gotten into the nuances of what the great turning is, but I'll say that the great turning, the podcast is called We Are the Great Turning, is the term that we use to describe the global paradigm shift that's happening toward a just and life-sustaining society. And within the great turning,

there are multiple kinds of work. So one of the aspects of the Great Turning we call holding actions. Like the actions that are stemming harm, that are protecting what can still be protected. But if we just do that, then we're just gonna be putting out fires, right? And we're not actually changing, we're not going upstream and changing the root cause. So the other parts of the Great Turning are also building new ways of living.

I like building ways of feeding people that don't require us to decimate ecosystems. And then also a shift in consciousness, learning to see the world and understanding, understand ourselves as a part of a whole so that like we can sustain ways of living that are, that are rooted in like sustenance and justice as opposed to destruction and isolation.

And man, just hearing that phrase like a just and life sustaining society and realizing like how far we are from it and how easy it is not to notice.

Yeah.

What do you mean, easy to not notice?

Like this is how things are like, you know, a better Pepsi co like, you know, you know, like Nestle likes, you know, stop giving the formula. Just just make chocolate like it's like the status quo has seemed from almost all my life to be doing good things, moving in right directions and only in the last. mean, for me, I think I've seen it for longer than a lot of people, but I think

Societally, everyone's going, no, this is all broken. Right, because, know, I've interestingly I have been in communication with people from the other side since the election and I'm the people who are like, you know, don't call me a racist stooge for thinking that like they think the same way I do at a really fundamental level, like something's broken and they have a different.

information ecosystem, but the fundamental feeling, the looking around and seeing this isn't working. I feel like like like 99 percent of the country voted for that. Something's not working. We need something else.

Yes. Yeah. And I mean, so I come from a family where the vast majority of my family members supported Trump. So I've had met, mean, and we've had these political differences for a very long time. So I also, you know, get to have these conversations with my parents. And one of the things that I've found, particularly in conversation with my dad about this, because it's, he and I talk about politics a lot.

for better and for worse, is that we agree that things are not working. We agree that the system is corrupted, that it's not serving people. Some of the things that we don't agree on are where the flaws are in the system.

Mm-hmm.

Right, like he's still very invested in the global corporate capitalism paradigm. This is the place where we meet the most tension. Because he's a businessman and it's part of his identity and it's a part of his experience of the world and how he provides for his family, right? One of the ways that he loves me is through his participation in this system. So when I call that into question, it's incredibly painful. But it's...

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

This is why I think the culture work is so important, right? Because I know that my father, who's now voted for Trump three times, has the biggest heart and wants a just world, right? When we get down to that, has beautiful grandchildren who he lives for, who he couldn't imagine a world being unsafe for them, you know? But how we get to that safety, what the paradigm is,

Hmm.

You think?

I see that paradigm as more responding to chaos through more control.

Yeah, right.

that that's where safety comes from in his perspective, versus for me, I'm a little more comfortable with chaos and I'm willing to gamble, to trust that collective wellbeing and collective care and a more like social collective way of organizing society will lead to more safety. But I also can see why someone who comes from an isolating paradigm wouldn't trust that, right? This is why this work matters.

Yeah, yeah. And I love how you sort of nimbly went from the word gamble to the word trust, because like they're so different and yet they look the same.

and

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm, cool. Yeah.

So I want to share, like, there's a bunch of people that I've been following for a while since I got radicalized about, the world as it is, you know, like this. We're not going to fix this incrementally. And I follow a lot of people.

Mm-hmm.

We're making it work.

Yeah, many of whom have been posting since the election or even just before, is like recognizing or thinking that Trump was going to win, saying this is all good. We're know, we're burning the system down. It couldn't happen fast enough. Like this is like it's all going to collapse and they're like really happy about it.

And I'd like to kind of offer that because these are the people that I have been following. And I'd like to offer the great turning as maybe you could talk about the three paradigms and what the great turning offers.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so let's talk about the three stories of our time. This is a piece of the framework of the work that reconnects the body of work of my teacher, Joanna Macy. And there are three stories that we can tell about this moment. So the first, we've been talking about all three of them for whatever it's worth, right? And anyone listening is gonna know, inherently recognize these stories.

The first we call business as usual. This is the global corporate capitalism paradigm. This is, you know, it's status quo economics, it's growth oriented, it's, you know, the idea that like any bump we hit, like when we hit the pandemic, right? It's not a symptom of a larger problem. It's just a bump that we need to navigate and that the economy...

can benefit from, as well as recover from. So it's the story of our society that we're told through a lot of mainstream media, through business schools and that kind of thing.

Mm-hmm.

All right, from people who are doing fine, largely.

Or, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think there's probably people who suffer from this system who also don't see outside of it, who believe that they just need to climb the ladder. Right, they just need to play the game better.

Okay, yeah.

So that's the first story and it's for many of us and for me certainly it's the first story that I was told about our society.

The second story is the story told by those of us who see that and see the destruction that it's wreaking on our planet. And we call this story the great unraveling. So this is the story where we see the corruption of the big pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies. And we see that the medical industry is broken and harming people and the ice caps are melting.

and income inequality is growing and isolation is growing and where authoritarianism is on the rise globally and shit shit shit, you know, like things are falling apart.

And this story is also true. It's happening, right? So the great turning, which we've already been talking about, is the story told by those of us who see that and don't want it to have the last word about who we are as humans on this planet. And that's the story of a transition toward a more just and life-sustaining way of living. And this is, you know, it's in local food systems.

It's in mutual aid networks. It's in restorative justice and abolition work. It's all of the efforts that we make to build the version of the world that we want to live in. So the important thing about all three of these stories is that they're all happening simultaneously. It's not like we have to pick one.

We have to put our vote on which one of these things is true. They're all true.

But for those of us who see the possibility of the Great Turning and who like hunger for it, we have the opportunity, the invitation to choose to dedicate ourselves. And that's hard work because of the web, the cultural amnesia we were talking about before. The stories of the unraveling and business as usual are incredibly seductive.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

And they want us, those stories, those paradigms want us to believe that the great turning isn't possible.

Yeah, I never thought about it before, but both of those are stories that invite apathy. Right. Nothing's wrong. Nothing to see here. Move along or we're fucked. So why bother? And you're saying that there's a story in which action and the word hope is a very loaded, fraught, ambiguous word in the great turning.

despair.

Yeah.

community. And I love the metaphor that you guys use in the podcast about like the soccer game. Like you're not expand on that because you did it so well.

Yeah, the way we put it is it's not like deciding, betting on which team you think is gonna win a soccer game. Right? It's not like, this is the team I think is gonna win. It's about choosing the team that you wanna win and getting out onto the field. Being an active part of it. That's the only way we build and grow the Great Turning. It's here. We need it to be bigger. We need to amplify it. We need it to gain cultural strength.

because right now we really are staring down the barrel of some incredible dangers. Right? And so it takes a lot of spiritual fortitude to have, and courage to say, you know what, rather than sitting here being like, I'm putting my money on apocalypse.

Thank

It's lot easier to do that, right? And people will protect themselves by being like, well, it's too far gone. It's too late. I can't do anything. I don't actually have any power. But to have the courage to say, you know what? I'm gonna live my life in service of the possibility that I want. That's the best I have to offer. Out of my own life, to my children, to future generations, to this planet that has

held me and nourished me my entire life, I'm gonna offer myself to this great turning.

So you said it's here.

Right. Yeah. Like I have I have a friend, Sophie Kranz, who's a global strategist and consultant. And she one of the things that she's always talking about is like, stop using tech bro examples in your case studies of entrepreneurship and innovation. Look instead at what's happening around well digging in Uganda or.

The Great Tourney? Yeah, it's here.

You know, like there's people all over the world. more stories than we could count, but they don't they don't make the news. They're not like so. You know, when you say it's already here, it's almost like we we don't see it because we're not looking for it.

And I would say that once you start looking for it, you will see it everywhere.

It's like...

It lives in every moment of kindness and generosity and service to something beyond oneself that you see.

Hmm.

You know, it's like, I just got this image. I used to live in New York City. And one of the things that I used to love, like in the subway is this moment where you really get to like feel the like density of the city, everybody moving so quickly. But something I always loved is like, you know, there's people carrying their groceries and carrying baby strollers.

And like people will like, and this is also a very New York thing, but like people will like leave their headphones in, but they'll just be like, you want me to grab that? And they just like grab the bottom of the stroller and walk to the top of the stairs, you know? And it's like, all right, see later. You know, they don't want anything for it. It's just like, we help each other. So I just got this image of like people carrying a baby stroller up the subway stairs together. It's like, we just kick in to help each other get by.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah, it is.

And of course it's not about by, it's also about thriving.

but it lives in every act of generosity.

It's so funny that you choose that as an example because it's a beautiful it's an impulse. It's an instinct, but it's also mediated by no commitment, no reciprocity, no entanglement.

Mm-hmm.

There's no right. That's kind of why I love that that image. And I mean, it's like imagine this place if we didn't do that for each other.

Right? Like it's much harder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of my favorite, I don't even know where it's from, it's sort part of my Jewish heritage, a story about someone dies and is going to, you know, they get to choose where they go to heaven or hell.

And they said, I want to see how you're going to heaven. But out of curiosity, I want to see hell. And hell is this big banquet table and nobody has elbows and they're all trying to feed themselves and they can't get the food close to their mouth. And says, my God, that's terrible. Then he goes, you know, alright, now take me to heaven. Exactly the same thing, but they're feeding each other.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. I love that story. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

So where I mean, I love that you say we can find it in these like very human moments that aren't you wouldn't look at someone helping someone carry a stroller upstairs and say, they're fighting the climate crisis or they're fighting poverty. Like it might be like a Wall Street tycoon who's going to go to work at Goldman Sachs and issue a bond that's going to lead to drilling somewhere.

Yeah.

But so how do we how do we translate those impulses and tell people like that's the great turning and there's more.

I mean, and there's more, right? Like, there's not.

I think part of what I meant by offering that example is that like, I think generosity and kindness are at the root of the cultural change that we need, right? Like we need cultural transformations that are reflections of that kind of let's help each other get by in this life that is hard enough as it is. Let's help each other live well, right? Like that can be, I grow food for you.

and I never meet you. Right? It can be, I help mediate conflict that unmediated might turn to gun violence. You know? You'll never know. But it's one contribution to...

Mm-hmm.

making the place that we live, making the communities that we live in, places that are more generous. It could be making art. You know, I've been saying recently that more and more I believe there is no great turning without art. Because the great turning is about creating a world that is beautiful. Or letting our world be beautiful is another way we could look at it, right? But the creative impulse of humans.

Hmm.

the desire to write songs that are about love and justice and to make visual art that moves people deeply. Like that is also a piece of a just and sustaining society. And none of us can do it all, right? I think that's another thing. One of the things I'm...

Mm-hmm.

It's, it's, there's a lot of inherent contradiction for us. One of the things that's very difficult about this time for us is that we have the astounding task of living in all three paradigms simultaneously in a big way, right? Like we still need to pay rent, right? We need to put food on the table and clothes on our children and you know, and like

Mm-hmm.

buy the medicine and whatever. And that requires some level of cooperation with the business as usual paradigm. So the fact that we do that doesn't inherently mean that we're against the other ones, right? It's like we make the best choices that we can in service of the outcome that we want. It's like sweet, I mean, or it's like well intentioned.

I think is a better way to put it. You know, the way that the environmental movement has often pointed us toward this is very American answer to an environmental crisis to about conscious, conscious capitalism, conscious consumerism, right? The way I'm going to deal with the climate crisis is I'm going to buy local organic produce. Like that's certainly a part of it.

But not everybody can afford to do that. And that in itself doesn't make the world that we want, right? So we have to be able to navigate the complexity and the imperfection and the uncertainty of aligning ourselves as best as we can with the outcomes that we want and inviting everybody else to do their best too.

Yeah, this reminds me like you've talked about, there's a lot of inner work that needs to happen. seems like this is like I make all those compromises and there's a voice inside me that just wants to beat me up and call me a hypocrite.

Right. Like, am I really serious? And look at your life and you've talked a big game, but you've never put yourself on the line. And to some extent, that's a welcome voice because it's it's true. Right. And it's challenging me to play bigger. But in another sense, it's pushing me down and it's making it's giving me less energy, less joy, less kindness and generosity to go around.

Hmm?

Yeah. I think this is a part of why I turned toward coaching. That like, there's no... Like, life is inherently messy and non-linear and everybody's path is gonna be different. But the place that I, that my practice as a coach and as a facilitator is dedicated to is helping people to find...

the place that is their most generous offering that is still within their capacity. Right? Because sometimes I often work with young climate leaders and I'm trying to, and I'm walking them back from burnout. They're giving, they're giving either too much or they're giving without, without taking care of themselves or they're working in ways that are exhausting them. Right? That's one end of the spectrum. And with those people, they're so all in, in service of the outcome that they want that

Mm-hmm.

It's about, fill your cup. Take care of the little piece of earth that is you now.

And then for some, it's like you are a person with resources and skills and like, how can you mobilize those more generously? What would be a stretch? What would be like a little, still safe, but like a little uncomfortable? Where you're gonna like go out and be in community or you're gonna go step out and do direct action and put your body on the line and be a part of resistance in that way.

or volunteer your time in service of something in your community that matters to you. So it's different for all of us, but I believe that there is a sweet spot that is our ultimate, that is an expression of our gifts and our generosity and our courage and being the version of ourselves that is truly a part of.

community or daring to try to be a part of community, right? Because I think for those of us who feel isolated, it can also feel really scary. Like I don't trust that there's anyone else out there that's really with me. You know, so it takes a lot of courage.

Yeah. And I guess one of the things I was thinking as you're saying that is going back to this idea of community that it's we we give courage to each other. Like what feels like a huge risk after the first person takes it is less of a risk or maybe feels like less of a risk. And so we can encourage each other in little ways that, you know,

iteratively kind of polish the edges of what look like things that are going to cut us if we touch them to to realize that maybe maybe there's there's more benefit here and less cost than we thought.

Yeah, yeah, and being willing, like, you know, going back to gamble and trust, right? Like, if you don't inherently trust that, take a step out and see what you find. You know, it requires vulnerability to find ourselves in the place of community that we long for.

So because one of the questions I wanted to ask you just to get some free coaching was around like the fear that I feel individually just about living on this earth, making enough money, supporting my family and how when I look at like what I have in the bank, it's not rational to be so as worried as I am. And yet it feels so real. And

Mm-hmm.

I was going to ask you about that, but I think the answer you're going to say is like in community, like, of course, I'm going to be insane as an individual. Right. Like the the the wrath in their own little cage.

Mm-hmm.

Well, it's like, what are you investing in? What is your, if you're, like the reality, I think everything that you just said makes so much sense, right? Like part of the devastating nature of this moment is like we have destabilized ourselves. We have made it so that water will be harder to find, food will be harder to find, right? Like shelter.

Meeting our basic needs is harder because we have destroyed the planet that provided and can still provides but like we have we have really harmed our planet's capacity to provide for us in the way that she always has because we've taken more than we've given over so many years so

Hmm.

There's an answer to that which is rooted in the same paradigm that created that problem, which is let me continue to accrue and hold onto resources. I will find safety by having more money, having more resources, and that will be the thing that protects me and mine from the destabilization that we've created. Now, I'm not, I understand that and I feel that.

I actually was just having a conversation like yesterday with a dear friend about the fears of like de-accumulation and what it would be to like give away resource, what it is to give away resources. But I think the paradigm shift and the one that I'm actively in as well is about like reorienting the way that I think about

what my insurance policy is, like what do I really wanna be held by? Do I want an individual solution to a destabilized world or do I want a collective solution? I believe in the collective, right? So redistributing resources in a way that make my community a healthier place is actually a really good investment for lack of a better term. A healthy response is saying like, actually the asset that I need,

Mm-hmm.

Hmm. It's almost like, yeah.

in the long term is people and people with many different kinds of skills.

Mm-hmm.

and people who I trust so that when things get, as things continue to destabilize, which I think they likely will over the course of our lifetimes, I have the safety in a network. it's so, I mean, for all's sake for myself, it's so much more beautiful than a number of my bank accounts.

What? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about a friend of mine I've had on the podcast a couple of times, Tyson Yonkaporta from from Australia. And he's kind of making fun of me because like right before Covid, I was already sort of into prepping. Like I had two freezers and he's like, you know, you know, real prepping is it's storing your wealth in your neighbor's bellies.

Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, that's prepping.

Yes, that's such, he's got such a way with words, my gosh. I'm gonna listen to that man talk forever, yeah. That's beautiful.

I'm looking at the notes that I made about what I'm covering a lot of it. yeah, the one thing. So I'm encountering a lot of what I consider to be magical thinking these days, and some of it I'm encountering in my own head, like thinking that they're going to discover that the votes were all wrong or that.

Mmm.

Yeah.

the people that I think are evil are actually sneakily being good or like or that the aliens are about to land like there was actually there was actually like yesterday there was a congressional hearing on UAPs unidentified anomalous phenomena and like, you know, these four star generals are like, no, we have the biologics of the like, OK, now's the time, guys like. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

If you've been waiting for the right moment, we could use you now, benevolent aliens. I mean, totally.

This. Yes. Yeah. And I don't. So at this point, I honestly don't know what's magical thinking and what's just like everything's up in the air. But there, you know, I feel there is a danger of looking at story, too, and then totally bypassing that reality into the great turning. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yes. So this is where the entire rest of the model of the work that reconnects comes in. So the framework of the work that reconnects follows a spiral. That's like our structure. And there's four stages of the spiral. So in practice and in community, we do exercises and have conversations that follow each of these four.

stages that very naturally lead into one another. So the first is gratitude. We ground in gratitude because that gives us the strength and resilience that we need to, well first of all just be grateful to be alive on earth. And it also gives us the courage and the fortitude that we need in order to go into the second stage of the spiral which is honoring our pain for the world. And honoring our pain for the world is about

being with the hard feelings that come up for us around what is occurring on our planet. So it's our fear, our rage, our grief, and it's also our emptiness, our numbness, which is increasingly a common response for people in the modern social media internet bombarded society, right?

Hmm.

that we just like, we can't even feel it. It's true for me and it's true for many of my friends. And when we honor those feelings, like really visit them and speak the truth of I'm really afraid, you know, like I'm afraid this is gonna happen or I'm so angry that this is unfolding in this way. My heart breaks when I see a houseless person on the street in front of my house and I don't know how to help.

or whatever, you know? That when we speak that, it naturally begins to free us. It begins to alchemize. And it brings us deeper into what we call the third stage of the spiral, which we call seeing with new eyes. And some people call it seeing with new and ancient eyes, which I really love because it's about a fresh perspective that is often one that our ancestors held, that is the understanding of our entwinement.

are in the ways that we are inextricably linked on this planet. And it's also about seeing with more clarity, like divesting ourselves from the dominant paradigm. Right? When I grieve, when I grieve the absolute horrific violence of the carceral system, right? Then I can allow myself to really

and like hold the mission of abolition in my heart more dearly that I can like see the prison system for the violent destructive oppressive force that it really is even though it paints itself as a system that is invested in public safety right like that's a paradigm that I had to shift over time just to give an example because I was told growing up especially as a white woman that that system was in place to protect me

So seeing new eyes with new eyes allows me to see my oneness and divest from those dominant systems. And naturally when we do that, the impulse that rises in us is to act and the fourth stage of the spiral is going forth. It's taking action in service of the world. It's embodying the love, being brave, reaching out, being in community, being generous in all the ways that we've talked about.

Mm-hmm.

So this spiral exists because like we need it to continue to alchemize the heartbreak of what it is to be alive. Right? Without it, we'll go back, the webs will reform and we'll stay in there. But this is like a way of continuously liberating ourselves from the amnesia, from the, you know, our...

I'm looking for a word and I'm not finding it, but like our participation in the dominant paradigm, shifting our allegiance to the great turning.

you

Yeah. So so yesterday I ran a call for people in my network offering. I called it What Now? And just sort of an exploration. And I kind of worked out like an agenda for it. And then two minutes before it started, I thought about you and Joanna and I put in bullet point gratitude. And it was really hard because no one wanted to start there.

Thank

So I'm like, you know, it sounds like I don't know. I don't know what a great before. So I'm like, how about this breath? And there's like I was just like, you know, shamelessly stealing from you guys like. Like. Yeah, like, don't know, like, you know, and in some ways it would have felt like I was meeting them better, like the five or six people who did show up.

Please! It's not ours! It's ours! All of ours!

if we had just started with with number two, with the pain and like because that's what they wanted to talk about. And that's where they wanted to go. And I don't I don't know that I did a great job of introducing. mean, there's a couple of minutes before. But I'm like, we got to do this first because I don't know when it's going to come back in, when we're going to have the chance. But it feels like starting with gratitude is a bit of a provocation.

Mmm, say more.

Well, it's like, I don't wanna like, like I'm here because everything's shit.

Hahaha!

Yeah, right, to which you say, and is there anything that's worth being grateful for? Is there anything that you love that you're, that's the reason, it's the reason we're heartbroken, right? Joanna always says, our pain is the other side of the coin of our love for the world. We're only heartbroken in whatever way it looks like, right? If it's irritation, if it's anger, if it's.

Hmm.

fuck this shut down numbness. All of that is because what we love is being assaulted.

Hmm.

So I get it, I get that it, and I kind of, I love the word provocation. It's like, that's, it's like let's irritate our own cynicism.

Hmm, wow.

Like, as a facilitator, I feel so excited that you got people to that point, because it's like when that kind of resistance comes up, you know you've done something. You know you've activated something inside them.

Yeah, love this is like almost like the the gratitude and the steps one and three is the gratitude and seeing with these new and ancient eyes, the possibility are sort of magnetically created by the pain.

Yeah. Yeah, it's all, I mean, it's really all connected. It's all entwined and it's one of the things I love about the fact that it's a spiral. It's just the fact that like these things, they naturally feed into one another.

Right? That we are grateful. You could even say like gratitude is another word for love. Right? Like I am grateful for my niece who is like one of the great loves of my life. She's four years old. I'm just obsessed. It's so, I mean, tears in my eyes the second I even invoke her, right? Like so in love with this child. So grateful for the gift of having her in my life. And on the tail.

of naming my adoration for this four-year-old is my absolute fear for the world that she's inheriting.

Hmm.

My grief that she won't get to see coral reefs like the ones that I got to see going on vacation with my family when I was a child or that she won't have the, you know, four feet of snow winters that I grew up having, digging holes, you know, in New Jersey. Like some of my favorite memories of my own childhood. Like she, it's a.

You had four feet of snow in New Jersey?

There were moments, okay, one of my favorite moments of my entire childhood, we had this picture window in our living room that was like maybe a foot and a half off the ground. was just this big window and we like, it was like all this, okay, maybe we didn't have four feet, but it got pushed up against the window so we built a tunnel and we lived in this, we hung in this little igloo where we can knock on the window and wave at our parents. And it was one of my favorite, one of my favorite childhood memories, right? And like.

Uh-huh.

I can't remember the last time I went home for Christmas and there was any significant amount of snow on the ground. I haven't lived there in a while, but I go back every year. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess one of the one of the gifts of the work that reconnects is the structure. Right. Because all this the gratitude, the love, the vision, the pain, the rage, the it's like when it's it's like trying to eat, you know, all the meals in one. Like let's throw in the brownie and the salad and the stew. And it's amorphous and gross.

And we don't know what to do with it. You're almost saying like there's a there's a recipe.

that we can we can have it all. not trying to like one of the most beautiful parts of the podcast was when Joanna is just raging against the Biden administration for allowing drilling. Like, you know, Joanna, you're a Buddhist teacher. You shouldn't be you shouldn't be mad. And she's like modeling this rage and then, you know, not effortlessly, but inevitably comes back to love.

Yeah, yeah, always. I mean, she's a rebel in that way, right? She is different than a lot of Buddhist teachers in that way. it's...

Yeah, I love one of the things I love so much about her is how fervently she loves this world. That she's not worried about fitting into scripts. She's not worried about doing it right. She's gonna be real about what is up. And it's so relatable. know, and the thing that it's infectious too. This is one of the things that I've learned for myself following her.

And now carrying her work, I now get the experience of moving through the world in a way that like as I carry this work with me, I incite these incredible conversations and experiences with people around me because we're all hungry for it.

Hmm. Yeah. gosh, I think like I'm just I'm just an ordinary guy, but that's all it takes. Right. Like I kind of put her on a pedestal from afar. And yet she's.

Yeah.

Like I was actually listen. I remember where I was walking when I was listening to that part about how fiercely and deeply she loves the world and is in love with the world. And I'm like, I would like that. I don't have it. So I have to manufacture something else in order to be like her. And yet you're you know, maybe I didn't get it from the podcast, but I'm getting it more from this and I'm getting it when I think about the equivalent of your niece in my life. like you might not be everything. You might not be every person. It might not be the

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

kebab restaurant. might not be the rocks on the beach, but there are things.

Yeah. Yeah. And we start there. Right? Start with what is easy to love. And I also think that when we endeavor to see beauty and to find love in the world, we do. It grows.

To whatever extent you're motivated to do that, right? I'm not saying that we should all try to love all of it. That's for the enlightened ones, maybe.

I'm glad to hear that's not a card I need punched.

you

It's not a recl-

Yeah, it's

I mean, what each of us loves is enough, right? It's enough to move us.

Hmm.

Right? Like.

If all there was was Joey, that would be my niece. That would be enough.

huh. Yeah. Yeah.

if I needed a singular motivation. You know?

Well, you know, Mary Oliver is floating into my mind. Her most one of her most famous lines. You only you don't have to be good. You don't have to crawl through the desert for 100 miles repenting. You just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Start there. Wow. I've just I've just heard that poem with new ears.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Wait. Remember the next line. Tell me about despair, or despair, yours, and I'll tell you mine.

Oof.

I've been quoting out of context. That's awesome.

Right? And then, and actually it follows the spiral if you think about it, next line is, it's something about,

the soft pebbles of the rain falling, right? And the wild geese, harsh and exciting. There's, goes into, there is like a, like a seeing with new eyes, seeing with a world of fresh. I've never, I've never considered that about that poem until this, thank you.

Hmm.

no. Wow.

Hey, I promised an hour and I've taken more than that. want I want to just it's almost my bedtime. So I'm I'm I'm bailing a little bit, but I want to make sure people know how to follow you and and for for folks who should hire you like to let like who who is like what are they thinking right now? Who are they? Who should call give Jesser on a call and and have her on your team?

Ow!

Great. Who are the people that should reach out to me?

Yeah, I mean, everybody should everybody should listen to the podcast. So maybe talk about the podcast, your website and then a little bit about your practice.

Great. Perfect. Okay, so the podcast again is called We Are the Great Turning. And you can find it on Spotify, on Apple Music, on YouTube. You can go to wearethegreatturning.com. It should be easy to find. Or you can also just put my name in, Jess Serrante. Or Joanna's name and it'll come up.

If you are excited about what you hear and you want or you're inspired by this conversation and you want to have conversations like this about these things with the people in your life, which I really hope you do, because I really believe that these kinds of conversations are an essential part of the cultural change that we need, there is a toolkit on the website at wearethegreatturning.com that has resources and question prompts.

and exercises for every single episode of the podcast. There's also eight bonus episodes that are facilitated exercises. So you can press play while you're sitting in the room with someone, and you can have a work that reconnects style conversation or do an exercise together. So we built it out so that you could really practice and bring this work into your life. So that's the podcast.

an online group program for leaders in the great turning to build community and learn together and get coaching on your work. I'll also be offering some retreats. So go find me in those places and you'll be sure to get the updates.

Awesome. Awesome. And who should call you tomorrow to work with you?

Mmm.

Leaders in the Great Turning. If your work is about ushering in this new paradigm, this new just and life-sustaining world, and you are looking for help to bring a project to life, you're looking for support to sustain yourself better in the great work that you're already doing, those are the kinds of folks that I love to work with one-on-one. And I do have some, I have...

I'm than I used to but I do still have some one-on-one coaching spots. Yeah.

Jess Serrante, thank you so much. I have been looking forward to this conversation since I found We Are the Great Turning. I've been really looking forward to it since I saw the results of the election.

Yeah, the timing. Yeah, thank you so much for having me in a really sweet conversation.

I still.

Yeah, thank you so much. Let's keep the spiral going.

And on and on it turns. All right, thank you. Be well.

All right, thanks a lot. Take care.

And that's a wrap. Find the show notes. Plant yourself dot com slash six one zero six hundred and ten. Movement news. Got a couple of tournaments coming up in the next few days. Got a all day league, Catalonian League Ultimate Beach tournament on Sunday all day and then Monday. Very exciting. I'm playing in my first sanctioned paddle tournament. If you know what paddle is, go on YouTube and look for P.A.D.E.L. It's kind of a weird sport. It's sort of Tennessee. It's sort of

a racquetball or squashy. It's played on a small tennis court with glass walls around the back sides. And it's good because, you know, you miss the ball, it just bounces off the wall and comes back to you. So it's good for aging athletes. And my friend Adam and I are entered into this league. And so for the first time, I'm going to be sort of ranked and measured and have a sense of where I stand and looking forward to all that. Otherwise, just

doing my workouts on the beach, adding in some runs on other days. And I discovered that someone I've known for a long time in a very casual sense. And I think we we did some interviews and maybe talk business like 15 years ago. Lucas Rockwood is in Barcelona. Not too far from me. He is the founder of YogaBody.com. And I rediscovered him when I was looking for ways to fix my tight back, hips, hamstrings, legs.

of everything, pretty much everything. think the one thing I can still do, I can still touch my shoulder blades, my elbows. Not quite used to, but everything else is as tight as hell. so I'm hoping that Lucas and his program, The Science of Stretching, which I'm now doing religiously 15 to 20 minutes every morning, is going to help me get my mobility back. That's it for this week. As always, be well, my friends.