"We need you, We need you"

Kaira Jewel's May 2025 Newsletter

May 26, 2025

Dear friends,
I am so grateful for the chance to have spent the day yesterday mostly outside, at the monastery Adam and I are stewarding. Thimo Wittich and I hosted a day of practice in nature with some 13 friends. It was restorative and energizing to slow down, reset and allow ourselves just to be in the living world, together, not just with each other as humans, but with the many other species who live there.

At the end of the day, we reflected on our experience sitting in a circle. Several people shared that the lying down guided meditation we had done in the morning, looking up at the trees and the sky, feeling the support of the earth, was such a rare and welcome experience. It was a time to relate to the world around us from a very different vantage point, humble, vulnerable, close, intimate. To let life around us hold us so we can absorb and learn from its wisdom. We realized that some of us had not done this since we were children. We reflected on the wonder and awe that spending the day in the woods had brought up.

Last week I also had the pleasure of co-leading a 5-day Ecodharma retreat at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in MA. I titled it, Living Ecodharma: Finding Fulfillment in Healing and Loving the Earth, because I really wanted to emphasize the pleasure and joy we can touch when we turn toward connecting with and protecting our world. One of the things participants found particularly powerful was the chance to spend a day alone in a spot they had chosen in the woods. They described a dropping away of the usual pressures and mind-directed way of living that runs our lives, and an opening to the instruction of what was around them: the music of the stream, the shifting clouds, the hum of insects, the aliveness of the Earth, and the sense that we belong within it all.

At the retreat someone shared that they heard a bird call that sounded like “we need you, we need you.” I heard the same call when I returned home to NY, and it was a powerful reminder. I learned later that this is the Eastern Phoebe bird, widespread in eastern and central North America.

It is so clear that we need the living world, or the “more than human” world, as so much healing and restoration can happen for us when we let ourselves be with it. And it is also true that the more than human world needs us. When I reflect on this message of the Eastern Phoebe, my heart and mind receives it on many levels:

We need you, we need you…

…to just be, to stop and come home to yourself

…to be with us, to come play with us

…to learn about us and care about us

…to protect us and love us

…to know you are not separate from the web of life and act on that

No other group of humans living on the planet has had this much responsibility for what comes next. As Paul Hawken has said,
"We are the first generation in history to be charged with the task of consciously protecting the planet. We are also the last generation who can."

A key part of our human species shifting so that we actually can protect our planet, en masse, is reconnecting with our innate wonder and awe, reverence for the incredible beauty and intelligence of the world around us, so that see it is worthy of our protection and love, and we remember we are not separate from it.

Thimo led us in the practice of Qi Gong in the woods yesterday. I was touched by the mindful, gentle way all of us moved in unison. It felt like we were making an offering, a gift to the beauty and stillness of the forest around us, in a flow of generosity and reciprocity.

Dacher Keltner has done profound work on awe and wonder, especially in the context of the natural world. According to Keltner, awe is most commonly evoked by experiences in nature. Mountains, forests, ocean vistas, the night sky—these encounters trigger a sense of vastness that shifts our attention away from ourselves and into deeper connection with life.

He notes that nature-based awe reliably leads to reduced stress, increased generosity, a greater sense of belonging and interconnection, and a quieting of the ego.Wonder isn’t just a pleasant emotion—it’s a vital human capacity. It opens us to mystery and reverence, disrupts habitual, narrowed perception, anchors us in the present moment, and fosters humility and prosocial behavior.

And awe and wonder make us kinder, more cooperative, and more oriented toward collective well-being.

“Wonder helps us to reimagine what is possible in our world.” —Dacher Keltner

Wonder is thus deeply political and spiritual. It calls us into a different relationship with life—less dominated by extraction or control, and more tuned to kinship and care.

Wonder can be cultivated:

By slowing down and paying attention to natural beauty (trees, water, birdsong)
Through awe walks—short walks with intentional awareness of the vast and beautiful
By allowing space for the unknown, the unnameable, the sacred

Can you see the tree frog? What amazing powers of camoflage!

***

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”— Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“To be spiritual is to be constantly amazed.” —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

***

Below you’ll find a list of my upcoming events. I especially invite you to consider joining the course Inner Transformation for Social Changemakers: Clarity, Resilience & Purpose, which begins today! (See below).

May we hear and respond to the world calling to us “we need you, we need you,” and may we live in constant awe and wonder,

Kaira Jewel

Upcoming retreats, daylongs, and talks:

May 26 - June 28, 2025, Garrison Institute: Inner Transformation for Social Changemakers: Clarity, Resilience & Purpose with Kaira Jewel Lingo, Dr. Dan Siegel, Yuki Imoto, Arawana Hayashi, and Annie Carpenter

You can use the 50% OFF code KAIRAJEWEL50 to register.

In a time of profound global change, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. This 5-week online course series offers a space to pause, reflect, and reconnect with what truly matters—so you can lead with clarity, resilience, and purpose.

Join a global community of social impact leaders, nonprofit professionals, and changemakers as we engage in live conversations with expert speakers, explore practical, effective tools, and cultivate sustainable leadership practices. The contemplative practices that will be offered are suitable for those who are starting a practice as well as those who have practiced over time.

More info here. Online.

May 27, 2025 7:30-9pm ET Spiritual Radicals: Saints and Bodhisattvas of the Beloved Community Speaker Series. Hosted by the Beloved Community of Engaged Spirituality (formerly Buddhist Christian Community of Meditation and Action). The Fierce Urgency of Love: Dr. King's Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance with Kazu Haga. More info here. To register on zoom here. Online (Also check out his new book, Fierce Vulnerability, below, which I wrote the foreword for!)

Kazu Haga is the author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and the recently released Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging from Collapse. A seasoned nonviolence trainer and restorative justice practitioner, he brings over 25 years of experience in social change, grounded in Buddhist practice, trauma healing, and grassroots organizing. Kazu teaches across the U.S. in prisons, schools, and activist communities, and is a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network and a founding member of the Ahimsa Collective. He lives at Canticle Farm on Lisjan Ohlone land in Oakland, CA. You can find out more about his work at www.kazuhaga.com.

Please join us for the final session of our Spiritual Radicals Speakers Series. We look forward to seeing you at our next gathering!

June 18 - 22, 2025, Garrison Institute: Defiance as an Act of Love, Healing & Transforming Ourselves Annual BIPOC Retreat with Kaira Jewel Lingo, Marisela Gomez, and Joe Reilly.

In a time of increasing disruption and loss of cohesion, it is more important than ever before to have a place of refuge that is stable, especially for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities. This is possible. There is a home inside of us that no one can take away, that cannot be destroyed. It is our true home. And it is a collective home we can cultivate in our communities. Learning and practicing to be in the now helps us to return to and dwell in this true home inside of each of us. Every moment offers us the possibility of coming home to the now, where healing and transformation can happen. This inner transformation provides the bridge to collective transformation and liberation from oppression and injustice.

More info here. In person.

August 17 - 23, 2025, Belonging To Each Other: An Ecodharma Retreat for People of Color at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center in Boulder County, Colorado with Kaira Jewel Lingo, Kritee Kanko, and Imtiaz Rangwala.

More Info here. In person.

Ongoing every Thursday at noon ET: Weekly BIPOC Meditation Sangha Online
We extend a warm invitation to Black/Indigenous/People of Color to join for an hour of meditation, teaching and sharing with Kaira Jewel Lingo and Marisela Gomez, and other guest teachers, who alternate teaching every Thursday from 12 - 1pm ET.

By donation. More info here and to register here.

Good things I’m spreading the word about.

My good friend Abby Reyes just published A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice

Spanning three decades and three continents, Truth Demands charts Abby’s parallel journeys as she navigates the waters of loss, purpose, and impermanence while fighting for truth and accountability from big oil. A profound and haunting memoir, Truth Demands is an invitation into the current. It shows us how to hold fast even as we let go—holding us as we bear witness and welcome with courage and skill what the truth demands of us all.

Abby and I at her recent book reading in NYC

My endorsement of Abby’s book:

This book is a wise and tender unfolding, demonstrating what real healing and transformation can look like in the face of unspeakable loss and ongoing destruction and devastation. This is a love story, both deeply intimate and individual as well as vast and collective. It is a love story that will break your heart in a way we all need our hearts to be broken, broken open so we can touch our profound interconnectedness with all of life. It beautifully articulates the delicate dance between stillness and action and how we can hold space for both. Deftly weaving the personal and the political, Indigenous ways of self-determination and earth-based, grassroots activism, interlacing the stories of local communities brilliantly rising up from the Philippines to Columbia to Standing Rock and beyond, this book is a compelling call to action, a different kind of action that challenges oppression and domination without othering. It is essential reading, filled with exactly the kind of truth that this precarious moment demands.

Kaira Jewel Lingo, author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption and Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation

Recent articles, interviews and talks

Order of Interbeing Retreat - Dharma Talk by Sr. Kaira Jewel

Recorded live April 25, 2025

Watch on YouTube here.

From Collective Trauma to Collective Healing: Understanding Our Past for a Future to Be Possible

Presented by Kaira Jewel Lingo, the 9th Speaker in the Mindfulness & Anti-Racism Speaker Series. As a culture we have not acknowledged and taken care of the deeply rooted, often still unconscious wounds of colonialism, genocide, slavery, patriarchy and so many other forms of domination and systemic violence. The refusal to face the truth of our history and metabolize it through grieving, restoration and reconciliation is why these many forms of violence continue to re-emerge in different forms, including the desecration and rape of our planet. What if the key to our collective healing is turning towards the pain of our ancestors, embracing the tender, wounded parts of our collective psyche? What would it mean to stop repressing our pain at the collective level? Giving space to and listening to this pain, both individual and societal, is necessary for our collective healing.
Recorded live April 30, 2025

Watch on YouTube here.

On May 12, I was interviewed by Motoko Rich from the New York Times for an article titled For Catholics, the Pope Is a Holy Father. For the World, He Is a Powerful Voice.

Read the New York Times article here.