19 WAYS TO A VIABLE FUTURE FOR ALL BEINGS

The changes we are called to make so that the earth and all beings might survive are extensive and extreme. They require comprehensive and global shifts of consciousness and activity. No one is exempt from such a challenge. As extreme, at this time, as are the dangers to all, are the signs of possibility we witness and experience each day. These are 19 ways that have been communicated to me over the years. They are certainly not the only ways but it seems that each one is essential. They represent a significant change in consciousness from seeking development or vision for oneself to seeking out the precise offering one is being asked to make on behalf of the future. It could take a lifetime to apprentice oneself to even one such way of transformation. We are called to meet each one of them – and perhaps more. We may be called to commit ourselves to recognizing and understanding the nature of each one of these, as best as we can, by 12/20/2012. Each day we have less time to enter these sacred ways. As they indicate, these are Ways that can best be realized in community, that is with each other. Basic to entering and securing a 5th World are alliances with all beings and following the teachings of Spirit

Covid-19 Meeting a Species – Threatening Illness on Behalf of a Future

This is not the first time I have had to confront the possibility that I might soon die. In 1977, I had breast cancer.   Like so many people facing a life-threatening illness, I began to re-examine my life, considering deeply what matters and what should fall away. This deep soul journey parallels the physical process […]

SLAM DUNK – COVID-19

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then […]

WHO ARE THESE MEN? WHAT WORLD IS THIS? WHAT COULD IT BE?

Who are the men, these power brokers, whose actions and ambitions might well be endangering humanity and all life, who have no restraints, no limitations, no checks and balances? As they are operating without any controls is it any wonder that their AI progeny are expected to be out of control in a short time and, likely, dangerously so.

And how do we meet this moment?

AN OPEN LETTER TO RIGHT A WRONG AND SAVE OLD GROWTH FORESTS

In May 2019, the College of Forestry at Oregon State University clear cut a15.6 acres of predominantly old growth Douglas Fir with trees ranging from 80 to 260 years old with an origin date of 1759 and one tree dating back to 1599.  A memorial was held on October 20th sponsored by the Spring Creek […]

The Lost Etiquette: Sharon English Converses with Deena Metzger at Dark Mountain Project

Recently I was interviewed by Sharon English. The interview I have posted below can be found at The Dark Mountain Project. I met Deena Metzger in 2014 when she visited Canada to teach a weekend workshop on story and healing. As a teacher and writer myself, deeply interested in how writers can address ecological and […]

Meeting the Times November 9 2016

Yesterday, two experiences early in the day assured me of the existence of spirit. Then I was, as are many of us, mystified, stunned and fearful as the unimaginable came closer. Donald Trump was elected president. For some the world shattered. I have to ask: What are we called to at this moment? Let me […]

LIVING BY DREAM

LIVING BY DREAM was published in the inaugural issue of Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, edited and published by Lise Weil. http://www.darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com Dark Matter publishes writing and visual art created in response to an age of massive species loss and ecological disaster. It is a home for dreams, visions, and communications with the nonhuman world…especially those […]

A Brief History of a Feminist Mind

This in 2022.  It is eight years since I gave this talk for the Feminist Majority.  On March 1, a new novel of mine, La Vieja: A Journal of  Fire will be published and it follows A Rain of Night Birds and the poetry, The Burden of Light.  It is interesting to me to see […]

SOLSTICE 2012: MYTH AND POSSIBILITY

December 21, 2012 — Many of us were involved in a myth that could carry us into consciousness and bring healing and restoration to our besieged and suffering planet. There were many opportunities for exploitation, obfuscation and fear mongering around the date, and most of them, if not all, were utilized. But those who had […]

The Ones Who Accompany Us to 2012

This is Day 16 before 12/21/2012. I awakened this morning without dreaming except for a continuous image of a thick Modern Library book, entitled Change.   I felt the need to listen deeply to voices that are not my own nor human. I was reminded of the “Transmission Letter,” I wrote in May 1986. It circled […]

THE WORK OF THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

The Work of the Next Five Years A Letter from Deena Metzger    Dear  Community:   If we want to change our mind, we have also to change the means through which the change occurs. In the process of real transformation, everything changes. I moved to Topanga on April Fool’s Day, 1981. It is good to start […]

THE REAL STORY OF HEALING

THE REAL STORY OF HEALING was written

Deena Metzger’s Message on the Environment – A Talk on Teshuvah Delivered to Beyt Tikkun Synagogue on Erev Rosh Hashanah

More than twenty years ago, I had the great pleasure and honor of being with Reb Zalman Schacter when he was celebrating Rosh Hashanah at Mt. Madonna in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There was a stream not far from where we were meeting and we went there for tashlich. Everyone was so happy to be in […]

MORNING THOUGHTS TO REVERSE EXTINCTION

[This was written and not posted on April 1 2019.  Today is September 20, 2019.  The Climate Strike is gathering millions across the globe.  I am preparing for ReVersing Extinction that will convene here in Topanga in a few hours.  It feels right to post this now as an offering for the future. After it […]

WHAT OUR BODIES KNOW

In 1977, I thought that illness, as a messenger, would be the catalyst that would inspire us to change how we live in substantive ways that would benefit everyone. People responded very thoughtfully when asked, Why is this illness, in particular, occurring to you, in particular, at this time in your and our common lives? And how, then shall you live to bring healing to yourself and to others? What are the underlying causes of the illnesses which are afflicting so many? Consistently, people found meaningful answers that revealed social, political, environmental, spiritual issues at the core of their lives. Accordingly, healing required them to make significant changes to the ways they were living that could also have impact on others. I thought then that we would change our personal lives and our common lives. That we would change culture and society so that everyone could be more alive. I thought we would find the underlying causes of our afflictions – the social, political, environmental causes – would admit the dire effects of the Anthropocene and devote ourselves so that the healing activities on behalf of any one individual healed all. Seeing the extent of the pain and suffering that was emanating from our life styles and which we were each suffering, I thought, hoped, that each person’s healing path would affect everyone. I would heal – you would heal. The wolves would heal. One action and one beneficent consequence for all beings.

Extinction Illness: Grave Affliction and Possibility Featured Essay on Tikkun by Deena Metzger

“Everyone says climate is the most important issue of all, and yet they just carry on as before. I don’t understand that. Because if the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me that is black or white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go […]

Deena Metzger’s Opening Convocation at International Free the Elephants Conference & Film Festival April 27-29, 2018, Portland, Oregon

It is a great honor to be asked to give the convocation speech, to call us together, to invoke the heart that can guide us in this visionary and terrible work which began with an intervention on behalf of eight, now five, Elephants in the Oregon Zoo, extended toward ending Elephant captivity of all kinds, […]

The Mystery: Approaching the Elephant People After Seventeen Years Part II

The Mystery was published in issue # 5 of Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, edited and published by Lise Weil. http://darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com/issues/June2017/articles/The_Mystery-Approaching_the_Elephant_People-Deena_Metzger.html Dark Matter  publishes writing and visual art created in response to an age of massive species loss and ecological disaster. It is a home for dreams, visions, and communications with the nonhuman world…especially those with […]

This Earth Day, Let’s Not Forget the Long Environmental Plight of Native Americans

I began writing a novel, A Rain of Night Birds, about two climatologists, one native and one non-native, who upon meeting each other had to face the emotional and spiritual anguish of their profession. Unsurprisingly, the non-native woman goes to Cameron and discovers that the sands are hot. Her professional training doesn’t help her solve the mystery, but she pays respect to the profoundly wounded earth.

BEGINNING AWARENESS: APPROACHING THE ELEPHANT PEOPLE Part I Thula Thula and Chobe

Saturday, February 11, 2017, Topanga California At the very end of December 2016, I returned to Africa with Cynthia Travis and Matt Meyer to meet with the Elephant People who teach us so much by who they are individually and as a species. Understanding the connection they and I have forged over seventeen years comes […]

A NOTE FROM DEENA METZGER AT THE END OF THE YEAR About Going to Standing Rock, About Going to be with the Elephant People, About Meeting These Times,

Today is the winter solstice, 2016.  On this day in 1996, I was in Norway at the Arctic Circle.  I had gone to Lofoten Island for ten days of silence and dark, hoping, without success, to see the Northern lights.  This was the penultimate day.  I spent it in ceremony.  Suddenly, the night sky turned […]

Returning to Africa and the Elephant Ambassador

I am refering you to the essay The Language of Relationship: Engagement with Elephants again (see below) because it is the reason I am going to Africa with Cynthia Travis of Everyday Gandhis. Not for my / our own sakes, but because we are so heartbroken about the world. As you, who are reading this […]

HOW TO START A DREAM THEATER from Dream Network Journal, Spring 2014 [with dream from Ayelet Berman Cohen

Theater director, Steven Kent, and I had not expected to be working together again on a creative project related to dreams at this time in our lives. In advance of producing Dreams Against the State in 1981, he and I had recreated the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece in 1980 for the first time in 1500 […]

What Story Is and How Story Heals: Variations on a Talk. SoulCollage Conference October 2013

A Story is an entire, distinct world.  It has a heart that acts as dynamic center for the sake of revelation and healings. Story is an exact and particular, dynamic emergence, in time, the emergence of a particular configuration of meaning from several or many particular intersections and interactions. It is not a chronological sequence […]

Realities Enter Our Lives: Fukushima and the Future

Every morning when I awaken and see the amber light on the old dying elm and the vigorous eucalyptus, the one that bled crimson sap one season I think, ‘Beauty is still here.’  Relief and gratitude.  Life as I have been living it – shall I call it – life as usual – goes on. […]

JOURNEY TO THE STONES – MEETING THE SHAMAN BARDS

Let me tell you some stories. In Ireland, that would be the voice of the Shaman Bard.  We don’t know if it is the shaman speaking as a poet storyteller or the poet is speaking as a shaman (healer, visionary diviner, historian, myth-teller, peacemaker); they are entirely intertwined and it has been so for thousands […]

ReVisioning Medicine: Imagining a New Medicine and Healing for All Beings

A core group of physicians and healers have been consciously exploring ReVisioning Medicine since 2004. Over time, we have come to understand that ReVisioning Medicine is a council that honors and relies on deep dialogue between medical practitioners and medicine people as peers. It is an emerging contemporary version of the old, old indigenous wisdom […]

THE LANGUAGE OF RELATIONSHIP: ENGAGEMENT WITH ELEPHANTS

“There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of bodies on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dreams, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten the language. We do not even remember that it exists.” Derrick Jensen, A […]

Another Meeting With the Elephants

Friday, September 30, 2011 THE ELEPHANTS. These are the only words I have to speak from the cleft between awe and wonder. Soon, I hope, the Story will be able to be told. i arrived in Africa on September 15th. Many meetings with the elephants occurred over the first days when Krystyna Jurzykowski and I […]

No Soy de Aqui, Ni Soy de Alla

I’m trying to tell you about writing a novel and what it really means when I say that a novel is a little world. It is a life force. It is complete. It emerges out of a single image, sentence or idea, the way the world emerged from a point and all the wonders, that includes all life, materialized from the mystery of light becoming matter but not forgetting itself as light.

WHY WE ARE REVIVING FIRE/WATER CIRCLES TO HEAL WAR – FOR ALL WAR TRAUMATIZED PEOPLE

Our experiences at Daré listening to the war wounded have convinced us that those who know war can, in collaboration with others in community, transform culture so that a true and viable future will emerge for all beings.

THE ELEPHANTS ARE CALLING US AGAIN

It has becomes evident that the elephants and animals are truly calling us again in this time of such danger to the natural world. I take it personally, but I know I am not the only one to be called. Most importantly, I am not the only one to respond. I started writing this to […]

11/11 ELEVENTH HOUR REFLECTIONS

After years of study, this is what I know about war and its consequences. …We are wounded. Our wounds wound. How shall we heal in order to protect others?
A general, who had committed the unspeakable, came to the Topanga Daré to be initiated as a peacebuilder. For years, we have been training as a community to receive those who want to heal from war. A basic premise is that we must know such transformation from within ourselves: We must recognize our own war wounds, how they were afflicted, and what we have done, are doing, to heal our warlike ways. We could receive the general with integrity because we acknowledged our commonality of pain and betrayal.

…There is a great wound, as great as the wound to the EarthSeaMother in the Gulf. We each carry it. It has gone viral, and the wound wounds everyone. Shall we not, each of us, take on the task of healing?

…We are not born with thoughts of inventing ways to destroy people, animals, the earth. All Our Relations is an indigenous understanding that is innate to every newborn and then, as the indigenous people suffer everywhere, it has been and is being conquered.

If we could only listen to the children before they can speak, we would know what a pure soul is and live accordingly.

…Heal yourself and give equal time to offering healing to others. If everyone on the planet would take responsibility for healing oneself and one other person of war ….

Meeting the Deer Mother: A Letter to Laurie Markoff

Dear Laurie Markoff: Your letter, (below,) raises the questions that have to be raised: What difference do consciousness and heart make? What is their pragmatic value to a world that is increasingly mired in brutality? In Liberia, the elephants have been coming to the people in just the ways you describe, asking them to restore […]

WHY AM I WRITING A BLOG?

Spirit says that there are hidden passageways that we can discover to take us toward the restoration of the earth and our real lives.

THE VOICES OF THE ELEPHANTS

The elephants first came to me in 1999. I was so sure I understood what they were saying, I wrote about it and then I acted on it and went to meet them. On Epiphany, in the year 2000, the elephant, we now call The Ambassador, and a small group of us met in Botswana. Then I met the Ambassador again, and then again, and then there were other elephant encounters. I speak of these events repeatedly because they are such extraordinary events that we cannot, even ten years after that first experience, claim to understand within the ordinary reality in which we live day to day.
The advent of the patriarch, the Elephant Ambassador, the circumstances of his arrival, his appearance, again, to my husband and myself in the summer of 2001, were events so compelling, demanding and humbling that a small delegation of the wide ranging everyday gandhis team from North America, Liberia and Southern Africa traveled to Chobe Game Reserve in Botswana in 2006 to document, if we could, the reality of the Ambassador. The Ambassador came again, and introduced us to his family…