Metamodern thinker Brendan Graham Dempsey joins Radio evolve in a deep exploration of meaning, a concept that has shaped much of human inquiry. Drawing from his extensive background in metamodern studies and his recent book, “The Evolution of Meaning: A Universal Learning Process”, Brendan offers a rich tapestry of ideas that span from the origins of meaning in matter to the complexities of human culture.
For Brendan, the journey into the realm of meaning is both personal and philosophical. He reflects on the haunting questions that have guided his life: What is it all about? What constitutes value, goodness, and even the sacred? As he navigates these inquiries, he emphasizes the evolving nature of our meaning-making processes.
Brendan proposes a broad and inclusive definition of meaning, rooted in the work of complexity scientists. He suggests that meaning connects us to our environment and plays a crucial role in our survival, even at a molecular level.
From whirlpools to living organisms, he underscores how different systems engage with meaningful information, highlighting a continuum of meaning that transcends human experience.
As we delve deeper into Brendan's theories, he guides us through the layers of meaning from matter to life, and ultimately to the mind. Each level introduces new complexities in how entities interact with their environment, showcasing a rich evolution of meaning across different forms of existence.
Brendan explains how life itself is a manifestation of meaningful information processing, illustrating the adaptive responses of organisms to their surroundings. This process, he argues, is foundational to understanding the emergence of culture and consciousness.
The conversation culminates in a reflection on cosmic evolution, where Brendan tracks the progression of meaning from the Big Bang to contemporary human societies. This expansive view not only contextualizes our current existential crises but also offers insights into how we might navigate them. Through Brendan's lens, we see that meaning is not a static concept but a dynamic process that reflects our ongoing engagement with the universe.

For many years, John F. Haught was Research Professor of Theology at Georgetown University. Inspired by the insights of the Jesuit priest and scientist Teilhard de Chardin, he studied the philosophical and spiritual significance of our Universe story as an evolutionary unfolding.

In his view, our Universe is unfinished. By tuning into the Not-Yet—the possibilities that are still seeking to emerge in our human and cosmic unfolding—we can awaken to a deep, life-affirming hope. This hope is not rooted in something already known, but in the potential for new capacities and new ways of being human together that we can co-create.

In our conversation, we speak about the significance of cosmological evolution for religion, the concept of time and the future of the Universe, the role of Omega in theology, religious identity in the context of scientific discoveries, and what Einstein and Teilhard might have spoken about if they had met.

In this view of forces that can overcome us, compassion is fundamental: “That’s why Buddhism starts with the principle of compassion. We're always struggling as humans; we are mumbling through and we're all in it together. There's this strong sense of interconnectedness. And maybe I can help someone just a little bit when I extend my compassion and wisdom to help them follow a better path. That also helps me follow a better path. Once you realize that you're part of a collective, if you can help someone else, then you're also helping yourself.”

From this truth of connectedness, a new way of being with each other and with the world opens up: “If we could imprint our brains and discipline ourselves into a different way of being in the world in recognizing the interconnectivity of beings, recognizing that beings at times can be overcome and recognizing that there are ways of cultivating the sensibility for sharing and charity, we could combat those forces and live in a less divisive world.”

Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist and author; he wrote books about Spiritual Intelligence, Dante, Owen Barfield and the evolution of Christianity, and in his new, highly acclaimed work, about the poet, painter and mystic William Blake. But his book “Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination” is not just a biography or reflection on Blake’s work, it is following the artists inquiry into what he called “Divine Imagination”. For Blake, imagination was not merely an individual capacity that we have access to in our own mind, but rather we exist in the wholeness of a spiritual world filled with imagination.

Mark Vernon says about Blake’s relevance for today’s world: “Like us, Blake lived in a tumultuous era of warfare, discontent, rapid technological change, and a deepening estrangement of humanity from nature. He exposed the dark sides of political fervour and social moralising, while unashamedly celebrating love and liberty. But he also conversed with prophets and angels, and was powerfully, if unconventionally, religious. If we take this seriously—not easy, in secular times—then Blake can help us to unlock the transformative power of imagination, key to his importance in today’s world.”

In this episode of Radio evolve we speak with Mark Vernon about a deeper understanding of imagination and its relevance for our time.

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

“I do believe it's the starting point of political possibility today: gathering around tables, sharing food together, both literally and metaphorically, because that is starting from the most deeply human, oldest, most common needs. Thes are the places where the polarized identities of today's politics dissolve in the face of our humanness, our simple, undeniable bodily needs to grow and eat food and be human together in each other's company. That's where I tend to see the seeds of hope, and also the nourishment that's needed for those who do go into the heart of existing systems in order to try to limit the damage. Those people need to be sustained by the same things that we experience when we gather around the table together.”

In this episode of Radio evolve, which is the recording of an evolve LIVE! Webinar from 2025, we explore with Dougald Hine how to find a meaningful place together in a time of multiple crisis.

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Elizabeth Oldfield holds a master’s degree in theology and the arts and spent the early part of her career at the BBC in television and radio. She is an experienced communicator who appears on various platforms, including in The New York Times and BBC One. She is host of the podcast “The Sacred.”

Elizabeth Oldfield lives a Christian spirituality that engages with our world. In Radio evolve we speak with her about a trust that roots us in life and allows us to grow in spirit.

In an interview with evolve, she says: “Usually, there's an important thing to care about. But there's a relationship between the sense of trust in something other than myself and the way that allows a certain humility. At its best, healthy spiritual practices right sizes us and helps us to realize, we're not God. I find it a tremendous relief not to be God. And trusting that there is a deep Love that is stronger than death allows me to realize, it would be arrogant to think all of this is my problem. But something in here is mine to do. I have been created with a particular set of gifts and talents that the world needs. That full aliveness is one of the filters that we can use to work out what to do in these times when everything is burning. What can I personally rescue from the fire of modernity and take forward? And trusting. Of course, my tiny contribution is not enough, but that's not my problem, because there is something bigger to trust in.”

Youssef Mahmoud worked with this approach when he served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General and led major peace operations in Central Africa. Over the course of his UN career, he held other senior leadership positions, including UN Resident Coordinator in Guyana and Director in the UN Department of Political Affairs.

In our Radio evolve we speak with Youssef Mahmoud about ways to restore trust and solidarity in a conflicted world.

In the midst of our many crises, the future can look like something to avoid or to fear. But Rob Hopkins sees the future as a field of possibility. The co-founder of the Transition Town Movement, which brings change to the concrete, local human level, sees his work for change rooted in our power of imagination. When we can imagine a new future and long for it, it will be the strongest motivator to act.

He created podcasts and trainings in which he travels into the future with his guests or participants to the world people want to live in. For him this changed his attitude as an activist and made him investigate the power of a love for the future, that he explores in his new book “How to Fall in Love with the Future”

Rob Hopkins says, “In my work I try to help people to imagine what a low carbon future could be like, if we take the fear out of it and cultivate a longing for it. Imagination allows us to generate longing. Longing is one of the most powerful and precious things that we have right now. As activists we often think, we just need to give people a sufficiently terrifying report and they're going to change the world. But that’s delusional. We're only going to create a different future if we long for it first.”

To awaken people to this power of imagination Rob Hopkins runs “Imagination Catalyst” trainings for organizations as diverse as Balenciaga, London Marathon Group, local councils and Museum Booster. He says about this work:

“We need to be able to fill people's imagination with possibility, stories, longing, desire and a belief that is about moving towards a future that's so irresistible and delicious that we have no choice. If it feels like we're being dragged away from something irreplaceable, we're not going to do it. So, we have to create that kind of longing. And that's the work of imagination, music, poetry, storytelling and art.“

In this inspiring conversation, Rob Hopkins explores the power of imagination, community, and collective vision in shaping a sustainable and hopeful future. He shares insights on how time travel, art, and diverse voices can ignite collective longing and action to address climate change and societal challenges.

www.robhopkins.net

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Therefore, Confucianism is a dialogical rather than dialectical civilization. It aims for understanding rather than victory, resonance rather than domination. This outlook makes it an inclusive civilization, not a closed one, capable of coexisting with differences without erasing them”, says Jianbao Wang, Director of the Center for the Humanities and Business Ethics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and student of the renowned philosopher Tu Weiming.

In this Radio evolve we will speak with Prof. Jianbao Wang about the ethics and spiritualty of Modern Confucianism, and the relationship and differences of Western and Chinese philosophy and spiritual thinking.

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

In Radio evolve we speak about these questions with Dario Ferraro, a project manager, facilitator, and filmmaker who divides his time between Vilnius, Lithuania, and the Torri Superiore Ecovillage in Italy. Dario is active in the European Ecovillage Network, whose annual gathering is taking place this year at the Nature Community near Regensburg with the theme “To Dare to Trust”.

More information: www.ecovillagegathering.org

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future.

In his new book Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All, he explores “a practical opportunity that is available to us as humanity to reorganize the basis of our world system”, he told us in an interview for our upcoming issue of evolve. “Our world system is based on exploitation, extraction and separation between people and from the rest of life. That's not what most of us as human beings want from the world. So, I explore what the world could look like if we would set the conditions for all beings to thrive on a regenerated earth.”

In Radio evolve, Elizabeth Debold speaks with Jeremy Lent about a possible world, in which cooperation, regeneration and deep connectedness to Life become guiding principles of organizing human society.

Our radio evolve archive with over 600 broadcasts:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Reverend Jane Field is Executive Director of the Maine Council of Churches and an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister who has served Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, and Lutheran churches in New York City, Connecticut, and Maine. She is part of the resistance movement against the surges of the ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Like in Minneapolis, in Maine and all over the United States immigrant citizens became targets of violence. In this challenge for the communities, a resistance movement flourished. At the forefront there were also faith leaders and communities from different religious backgrounds. Jane Field is one of them. She says:

“The Faith Community here in Maine was at the vanguard and the forefront of resistance efforts. We helped to push back against the activities of the ICE agents while they were here and against the federal government and Department of Homeland Security. We also worked at the forefront of aiding and assisting our immigrant neighbors who were under threat and being harmed. Many of them lived in lockdown in their homes or hiding in other people's homes. They were afraid to go to work, to let their kids go to school because those were places where ICE were waiting to snatch people. They would even snatch people out of their cars.”

Jane Field speaks with great determination and hope about the emergence of this networks of trust:  “There was a network through a hotline of volunteers who were walking kids to school, driving people to work, getting groceries for people who were in hiding and delivering them to them so that they didn't have to go out of their homes. That was all grassroots and decentralized. That was all mutual aid. It was not done through the government, not even at the state or municipal level. It was all just volunteers.”

In an interview for upcoming issue of evolve magazine, Elizabeth Debold speaks with Jane Field about resistance out of love and deep faith.

Our radio evolve archive with over 600 broadcasts:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and a former David Lam Chair in Critical Multicultural Education. Vanessa has worked extensively across sectors internationally in areas of education related to global justice, global citizenship, critical literacies, Indigenous knowledge systems and the climate and nature emergency. Vanessa is the author of “Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism” and “Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion”.

She says in an interview with evolve: “Modernity is a living story with several characteristics. It's a story that inhabits us, it's a singular story of progress, development and civilization. It is so powerful that it conditions the ways that we relate to the world, the ways that we think, imagine, hope, process both emotions and trauma, and the possibilities that we have for relating to each other and creating or enabling different futures.”

In Radio evolve we share a recording from an evolve LIVE! Event with Vanessa in 2024, in which she speaks about the process of hospicing a worldview that no longer serves us and how we can usher into a new way of seeing and inhabiting the world.

The Interbeing Monastery is a space to come together in practices like meditation, Lectio Devina (a sacred reading practice), Emergent Dialogue, the Interbeing Tea Dialogues and other practices. People can become a free community member and join practices in their own rhythm. These practices can form an ecology of practice that strengthens each other and offers a way for deep transformation of self and culture.

In this episode of Radio evolve, we speak about the role of spiritual practice in the transformation of culture, the power of shared intention, about the shared global presence that is possible in online spaces, and the invitation that the Interbeing Monastery offers.

More info: www.evolve-world.org/interbeing-monastery/

Our Radio evolve Archive with over 600 shows:

www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve

www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Kitt Johnson says about her work: “I highly believe that the things that we are occupied with as private people in our private life, have a lot of energy. If there's something really urgent and interesting for you, there's a lot of energy there. To create a performance from that point of departure has a huge potential to also be valuable for other people. In a way, my job is to transform what is urgent for me as a private person into something that can be hopefully universal to all times and cultures. That's very ambitious. Or at least to be relevant for other people because these themes are existential. The themes themselves are relevant to everyone, because there's a lot of power where it burns.”

In Radio evolve we speak about the power of an embodied investigation of our shared human condition.
More Info: https://kittjohnson.dk/en/

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:
www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve
www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

„The dance is more than the dancers,“ says Arawana Hayashi, creator of Social Presencing Theater at the Presencing Institute. Hayashi has worked with systems change catalyst Otto Scharmer to bring together her experience as a dancer with his work with organizations. What does it mean that the dance is more than the dancers? The dance has its own energy and coherence beyond, but not separate from, the dancers. In other words, the fields of connection between us hold wisdom that our bodies can sense. Social fields—the energy and knowledge implicit between us—can open pathways to understanding and response that the rational mind cannot see.

The Art of Making a True Move is the title of Hayashi’s book. She has developed a practice that brings meditation and movement together that enable new shared potentials to be revealed. Working with the „stuckness“ that often gets in our way individually and collectively, Hayashi teaches us to respond from a deeper, embodied place that opens up ways to truly move through and beyond being stuck. A greater whole is tapped into that is accessed through the social field.

“When we relax a little bit, then a gesture emerges that is not planned or thought about. That's what we call the true move. It comes out of nothing or a gap between discursiveness or conceptual frameworks. An openness that ties with genuineness and simplicity. And it can open completely new possibilities that we cannot access by thinking or individual insight.”

In this conversation from an evolve LIVE event in 2025, Arawana Hayashi and Elizabeth Debold engage in an inquiry into the embodied knowing that leads to a true move: How can our embodiment become a pathway to wisdom? Why does an awareness of the social field open up the potential of our togetherness.

More Info on Arawana Hayshi: www.arawanahayashi.com

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:

www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve

www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Elizabeth Debold in Dialogue with Toke Moeller

Thursday, January 15^th, 8 pm CET

For thirty years, Toke Moeller has been hosting conversations that matter in a world of complexity, conflict, crisis, and division. These are the conversations that feel so necessary and yet so often are avoided. Inspired to bring people together to respond to the many conflicts that divide us, Toke trusted the human capacity for curiosity and care. With his partners, he developed The Art of Hosting, an approach to these conversations that comes from generosity--the generosity of holding a space as a host. The Art of Hosting opens up a participatory, communal form of leadership that Moeller has taken into 32 countries.

And there was something else that opened up in this practice. They called it „The Magic in the Middle.“ What is this magic? A mysterious opening to a shared perception that happens when the participants let go of their assumptions and agendas and listen. Toke has reverence for this magic, feeling that it is inappropriate to try to pin it down. In an interview with evolve Magazin, he says:

“When you come to that kind of gentle, conscious space, it's like the magic of life unfolding, not the magic that you want to cook up as mysterious. When we feel that goodness, that well-being, that wish to support each other and respect each other's lives becomes more important than being right.”

In this Radio evolve, which was recorded at an evolve LIVE! Webinar, Toke Moeller and Elizabeth Debold inquire into the Magic in the Middle and the importance of hosting the conditions to create the future. How does hosting create a space for Life to unfold? What can we learn from the space between us about the future that wants to emerge?

More about Toke Moeller:

www.interchange-tomo.com

Mike Kauschke in Dialogue with Roman Krznaric

Political Scientist and bestselling author Roman Krznaric is challenging our relationship to time. Inn his view we are stuck in a “Tyranny of the Now”, a “chronic short termism, an inability to see beyond the immediate here and now”. In his books “The Good Ancestor” and recently “History for Tomorrow” he invites us to see ourselves and the world in a much wider trajectory of time and unfolding that includes the times before us and ahead of us.  For Krznaric this inclusive, long-term view opens up a source for deep hope. In an interview with evolve he says:

“I often draw a distinction between optimism and hope. Optimism is the idea that everything's going to be okay in spite of the evidence. I'm not optimistic about the prospects for our species, we are going in utterly the wrong direction. But I'm hopeful in the sense of being committed to the vision and the values that you have, even when the odds are against you. We may well be able to not have our civilizations break, but rather bend, in the face of all the challenges that we face. And this requires a huge sort of shift of consciousness in terms of our relationship to time and the living world. But the question is, can we do it at the speed and scale required, given that we might be going over and already have gone over tipping points? And anybody who's working in the realm of deep ideas will point out that cultural evolution has rarely been fast.”

In Radio evolve we speak with Roman Krznaric about the deep transformation of consciousness and identity that opens up in a much wider, inclusive relationship to time.

More on Roman Krznaric:

www.romankrznaric.com

www.dumont-buchverlag.de/personen/roman-krznaric-p-2900

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:

www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve

www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Thursday, 4. December, 8 pm CET

More than 20 years ago, social activist and artist Dr. Rama Mani and leadership development expert Prof. Alexander Schieffer, founded the organization “Home for Humanity”. They brought students and change-makers from all over the world to their home in France to facilitate transformational learning journeys that unleash the unique creative potential of every person to contribute towards peace, sustainability, unity and wisdom.

Based on that experience and the many connections Rama and Alexander forged during that time, they now embarked on a Global Journey, which they call “Our One Home Journey 2024-2030 – 7 Years for 7 Generations”. The seven-year journey began in April 2024 and completed its first year in the summer of 2025. It reached over 11.000 people in 20 countries on five continents: Egypt, Bhutan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, the USA, Morocco, Turkey, and France.

Rama and Alexander traveled “from home to home,” supporting transformative initiatives, connecting change makers, and accompanying future builders on their journey toward committed Earth citizenship. At each stop, they lived in the homes and organizations of local partners, shared their daily lives, learned from the communities, and supported them—from urban slums to Indigenous villages, from refugee camps to ecovillages, from universities to businesses. For this work of bringing people together, Alexander and Rama recently have been awarded with the Gusi Peace Prize.

In this session of Radio evolve Rama and Alexander shared the depth of their vision and the integral approach they are developing that sees beauty, wisdom and creative potential in every individual and in every culture, which can be unleashed for a sustainable, peaceful and wise global community on our home planet Earth.

More info on Rama, Alexander and the “One Home Journey for Earth Citizenship”:

www.homeforhumanity.earth

www.homeforhumanity.earth/jointheonehomejourney

Unser Radio evolve Archiv mit über 600 Sendungen:

www.evolve-world.org/radio-evolve

www.youtube.com/@radioevolve7543

Thursday, 20. November, 8 pm CET

The Interbeing Tea Dialogues, a new form of collective ritual, have grown out of the Emergent Dialogue practice that the late Thomas Steininger and Elizabeth Debold developed with the evolve World team over the course of many years. It is a practice that gives us an experiential access to the truth of Interbeing, which is our already connectedness with all Life and with each other and the sacred depth of reality.

The Interbeing Tea Dialogues give rise to a space in which we can bring in our deepest concerns and inspirations to explore them in the shared field of Interbeing. It is a practice that shows were the personal meets the universal, in which we move beyond fragmentation and separation into the wholeness of life, undivided.

The space is set with a ritual, based on the timeless practice of tea ceremonies known in many cultures, which also connects us to the wisdom and presence of plants and the more-than-human-world. Through a process of inquiry, participants are invited to share their own themes and one of those themes is explored in depth together.

In this Radio evolve session, Dr. Elizabeth Debold, co-founder of the Emergent Dialogue practice, speaks with evolve editor and cultural anthropologist Dr. Nadja Rosmann about this practice and the dimensions of togetherness that it opens between us.

More info on the Interbeing Tea Dialogues: www.evolve-world.org/interbeing-tea-dialogues

We live in an evolving universe, in which also God is becoming. This idea of a “Not-Yet God” leads Ilia Delio to investigate our role as humans in the cosmos in a breathtaking and heart-opening way as participants in the unfolding of the forces of love and unification. Drawing from the insights of evolutionary mystic Teilhard de Chardin, depth psychologist Carl Jung, quantum physics, theology, and science she lays out her vision of Relational Wholeness as the evolving reality that we are in.

Beginning a career as a scientist, Illia Delio moved to the contemplative path of a Carmelite monastery and later joined a Franciscan community. She is a theologian, author, university professor and founder of the Center for Christogenesis, an online educational resource for promoting the vision of Teilhard de Chardin and the integration of science and religion.

In Radio evolve we explore how a deep awakening to the evolving wholeness of the cosmos changes our view and being in a Universe of Love.

More information on Ilia Delio: www.christogenesis.org

Thomas Steininger, our friend and companion, editor of evolve, founder and host of Radio evolve, passed away on October 9. He succumbed to the effects of a brain tumor that was diagnosed two and a half years ago. Like his life, he completed this transition of dying with an unshakeable trust in the eternity of life.

Thomas was imbued with a deep love for the new horizons of our humanity. For the possible, the creative, the not-yet-realized, the true, beautiful, and good that can still happen in and between us. The sacred space between people was his guiding star, the interbeing that can be experienced vividly in Emergent Dialogue, which Thomas co-foundedwith his partner Elizabeth Debold.

Thomas was a pioneer, a trailblazer, a co-creator of a contemporary culture of consciousness in which spiritual depth, anawareness of the sacred, clarity of thought, and ethical heart come together. He tirelessly sought dialogue and created spaces for encounter, in which the essential, the deeply meaningful, the mystery of life could reveal itself creatively.

Mary Adams, Steve Brett and François Demange where partners in this dialogue in different ways. This week, Mike Kauschke, managing editor of evolve, talks with them in honor of Thomas Steininger about a life committed to the sacred.

Metamodernity is a new cultural trend, worldview or quality that aims to bring together the values and learning from modernity and postmodernity. Brendan Graham Dempsey is one of the vivid explorers, thinkers, and critics of this new movement. His special interest lies in the relevance of these ideas for our understanding and practice of spirituality.

Brendan Dempsey has a rich background in theology and applies this to find a way to reimagine religion in a time of global crisis. But he is not only theoretically reflecting about this, at his Sky Meadow Retreat Center he is engaging practically in an experiment of metamodern practice and community.

Metamodern spirituality is taking seriously the criticism of postmodernity but tries to find a new meaning and relevance of the sacred for our lives and culture. In an interview with evolve Brendan says:

“Metamodern spirituality is a reconstructive endeavor. It is a sort of spiritual practice that invites us to reconceive of grand narratives and holistic meaning-making from a self-aware stance. We are earnest and sincere by trying to creatively generate new symbolic forms and mythic images that we can use in genuine reverence of the beauty and profundity of reality. At the same time, we’re maintaining a certain reflective distance from them because they are constructed artifacts of our own creative imagination.”

In Radio evolve evolve editor Elizabeth Debold explores together with Brendan Dempsey the qualities of metamodern spiritual thinking and practice and why they are relevant for our culture and a possible religion of the future.

“Interbeing, like life itself, is given. Life is nothing that any one of us made happen. The tree with leaves that dance gold and green in the sunlight were not made by human hand. The pleasant warmth of the sun on your face just is. These are given to us. We are made to seek beauty; to see and smell and taste it in the life world we are in the midst of. Life as such is a gift, even in the midst of suffering and confusion. The awareness of Interbeing steeps us in belonging. We come home to a deeper dimension of self and relatedness that feels so familiar and yet is a surprise. Interbeing is a gift, and it is for giving.

In giving Interbeing, we honor the gift. Just like the gift of life, it us up to us to make something of it. As individuals, the love and curiosity and meaning and creativity that we bring to life is our responsibility. Interbeing depends on human beings to co-create with it so that its capacities can develop. Interbeing as given invites us into a co-conscious co-creativity with each other through its synergistic force. This takes practice—to sense the field, to discriminate, and to be available.”

With these words form an article on the Gift of Interbeing from our recent issue of evolve magazine (here you can read the whole article) evolve editor and co-founder of Emergent Dialogue Elizabeth Debold points us to a deeper perception of Interbeing as the deep connectedness inherent in life.

In our Radio evolve we will explore together how we can become aware of the reality of interbeing as a gift and what it means to give from interbeing together.

“You cannot work for the Earth without joy – you know why? Because we are leaving the linear, top-down view of reality that has gripped us through most of the patriarchal era, and we are moving by necessity to an understanding of the reciprocity at the heart of the Universe: If you act, you are met. If you act for Earth, you feel her strength right under you and inside you, just as when you act for the forest, it is by the grace of the forest”, says Joanna Macy in an interview with evolve. 

Dr. Joanna Rogers Macy was a religious scholar, Buddhist scholar, environmental activist, and author. For decades she lived out of love for the earth. As a pioneer of deep ecology, like no other she has studied our connectedness with the living earth and has worked for its preservation. In 2020 we spoke with her about her view of the challenges we face today for our evolve issue on the climate crisis.

Joanna died in July this year with 96 years, leaving a legacy of love and heartfelt action for the earth. In honor of her work, we offer the recording of our interview with her.