Gaia's Call

About Gaia's Call

Taste the sweet nectar of stories and articles that make your spirit soar. Gaia's Call is the whispered secret between the pages, urging you to become an Eco-Guardian for our planet's wonders. 📚✨ Listen to the call of the Earth and take action. wbradfordswift.substack.com (https://wbradfordswift.substack.com/s/gaiacall?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Listen to the call of the Earth and take action.

Category

kids & family · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

26 Dec 2024

Latest episode

22 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

84 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   22 Aug 2026

   A Gaia's Call 2.0 Conversation with Erin Remblance

   GAIA’S CALL 2.0 Reader-Friendly Podcast Transcript Guest: Erin Co-hosts: Brad Swift and Marla Lise Editor’s note: This transcript has been lightly edited for readability while preserving the substance, sequence, and conversational character of the recorded discussion. Timestamps are retained so readers can follow along with the podcast. [00:00:03] Hello, everybody. This is Brad Swift with Gaia’s Call 2.0, and I’m so excited to be here with my co-host today, Marla of the Eco Chapter. And we have a special guest, which we often do, and I’m very excited about that. So excited that I was able, even easily, as it turned out, to get up early in the morning. So you may see It looks kind of like the sun’s coming up. Well, it is kind of coming up here on the North Carolina coast. So, let’s just dive right in, Marla. Introduce our guest, if you would. Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. And yes, we have Erin, and I’ve known Erin for a couple of years and, excited to have her on the show. So, Erin is Sydney-based, and she’s a researcher, writer, wife, and mother to three children. [00:00:51] She began her career in business working in national account management for Nestle, Unilever and L’Oreal. And then she took a break to raise her children. And then she became aware of the ecological crisis and has pivoted her career to raise awareness of these issues and what we can do about them. She’s the co-creator of Beyond Duality, which is an eight week online course, which goes beyond sustainability as usual to see what we can do to create an ecological future and how we can do that. Erin is also passionate about animal rights, whole food, plant-based eating, and is currently working on a course to raise awareness of the harms of industrial animal agriculture. So I’ve been really lucky to do a couple of courses with Erin. I did her Project Tipping Point course a couple of years ago, [00:01:36] and I’ve also done her Healthy Habits Accelerator twice, twice actually. So, so Erin, why don’t you start by Maybe telling us what was the biggest push to get you to pivot from that very corporate career in business to what you’re doing now? Firstly, thanks for having me on the show. I’m really happy to be here with you both. What was the push? I think there was a little bit of emptiness in the work I was doing anyway. So for 10 years I was a bit like, oh, shouldn’t I be doing something more meaningful than selling more Coffee, margarine, tea, fragrance, whatever. Shouldn’t I be doing something more than making... So L’Oreal’s mostly owned by the wealthiest woman in France, like it’s the family. [00:02:25] Shouldn’t I be doing something more than making her wealthier? So there was an emptiness in the work that I was doing already. But I think it takes stepping away from that work. And we often say this, like it takes a period of illness, a parental leave break, A sabbatical, any sort of break from the system to be able to see it a bit more clearly. And when I was home with my children, which is busy work, but not very often very mindful work, I had some mental space to see more clearly what was going on. And I was able to read more and learn more about what was happening in the world. And what I was learning, I was not liking very much. So when you talk about what was the thing, what was the moment that made you want to pivot your career? I remember it very clearly. My youngest, who is eight this year, she was three months old. [00:03:13] No, she was, I think she was five weeks old. And I was walking up and down my hallway just here, like trying to get her to sleep. I was wearing her. And as I was trying to get her to sleep, I was reading an article published by the New York Times Magazine, I think. And it was titled, The UN Says Climate Genocide is Coming. Actually, it’s worse than that. And it was written by David Wallace-Wells, who’s written The Uninhabitable Earth, which is a Difficult read, but probably important read. And it was written just after the IPCC released the special report into 1.5 degrees of warming in 2018. And it was just, just everything that was coming through. I was like, it’s so much worse than I realized. Like I really thought there was the Paris Agreement that had been signed and governments were doing something, but it was, it was, [00:03:59] I was horrified, but I was reading and I was like, you know, like I’d be waiting for the toaster a week later and I’d be like, Like you think about what you did in your head and you’re like, how is everyone just living like normally? Like this is horrifying. And I had another friend who’d passed the article on to me, which instigated me reading it. And she felt the same way. So between us, like we wanted to do something, but we didn’t know what it looked like. And, you know, everyone has these sorts of conversations. How can we be part of the solution? And we never ended up building anything, but it never left me that drive to do something. Sorry, I dabbled in working in carbon offsets, but it didn’t feel meaningful enough. So I’ve just kept trying to find something that ticks that box of this is going to help make a difference. [00:04:45] And, you know, there’s only so much one person can do. I don’t know how, you know, the idea that I can make a real difference is probably... If I get stuck on that, I won’t do anything because there’s probably nothing I can do that will make a significant difference. But still, I think the metric is if lots of people were doing this, would it make a difference? Yes. Then I keep going and I try and bring more people along with me so that eventually we hopefully do make that difference that we all aspire to. That was a long-winded way of telling you how I got here. Sorry. That’s good. I think many of us can relate to that path. Yeah. Yeah. Just that, like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to close my eyes to this. I don’t, I want to continue to look at it face on as terrifying as it is and do something [00:05:35] about it. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems you’ve done a lot already. I mean, you’ve done like university lectures and you’ve also done like all these courses and I guess your, your latest course is called Beyond Duality. Do you want to tell us about that? Yeah, I’d done a couple of courses. I think I’ve been doing maybe for the last three years. I started with Rebiz, which was like more related to how a business could exist in a non-harmful, regenerative, sustainable way. So that was very business orientated. And from there we did Project Tipping Point, which you’ve done with us. We did that for a couple of years. And then I was like, I was hosting Project Tipping Point calls, which is all about social tipping points and how I can contribute to them and how they can I was wanting to talk about other things on the calls for Project Tipping Point, [00:06:23] so I had this desire to talk about imperialism and colonialism and manufactured consent and all of these things that are bigger than the Project Tipping Point course was about. So I had this idea to create the course, like if I was to get hit by a bus tomorrow, Beyond Duality is the course that passes on the knowledge that I’ve acquired in eight years since I read that David Wallace Wells article. So it’s just, it’s the culmination of everything that I’ve learnt and would, you know, if I, those eight years ago, if I could have taken this eight week course, I would have saved myself a lot of work because it’s just, it’s all there in one place and it just takes you on the journey of A lot of stuff. I remember starting my climate journey going, all right, carbon dioxide, let’s go. [00:07:12] And then you go, oh, there’s eight other planetary boundaries, damn it. And like we’re transgressing six of them and it’s the seventh being climate. So we’re transgressing seven, but one of them I already knew of. So, oh, no, it’s worse than I thought. It’s not just climate change, it’s biodiversity loss and it’s So then you start to go like it’s bigger and bigger and bigger. And, it’s sort of helping people cut out years and years worth of learning and just get straight to the heart of the problem. Yeah. Yeah. And how have people been reacting to this so far? It sounds like it would terrify quite a lot of people, right? Yeah. So we’ve had like genuinely a couple of hundred people sign up and, far it’s all been very positive, [00:07:58] but there is a stage after about the second week where people go, literally people go, does it get more positive? I feel so anxious. Like I really like the course and the resources, but it’s making me feel a bit unsettled. It’s like totally, it gets better from us. So, like there is like a necessarily you have to take people through the world as it is today and how we got here and what that looks like. And then we do it does it gets better. We take people on a journey that is hopefully more positive and more action orientated and solutions based than just highlighting the problem. But I do very carefully never word people’s experiences having enjoyed the course because I don’t think it’s something you enjoy. I think it’s something that might resonate with you or you might find powerful or compelling. [00:08:47] But I don’t think it’s something you necessarily enjoy because the subject matter is not an easy one. It’s an important one, but it’s not, you know, it’s not. Oh, has anyone ever used the word? I’m so happy that you’ve got a new hobby or like that sort of tone with you about like being active in this space. No, I’m passionate. I’m so glad you found something you’re passionate about. Like if this is not something you do because it’s like fun and cool, like it’s not playing the guitar, it tends to be a moral imperative that we feel like we have to help because we’re in a state of crisis and chaos. So, this is not playing the guitar as such. This is just something people feel like they want to be a part of the solution and putting themselves forward for. Yeah. [00:09:32] I mean, me and Brad both work in this space, so it’s not fun. I mean, you’re definitely doing it, not for s***s and giggles. I’m so glad you found something you’re passionate about. Why aren’t you passionate about it? You should be too. Yeah, exactly. Come and join me. Yeah, I mean, it’s a difficult conversation to have with most people and most people just don’t want to have those difficult conversations and that’s the part that we have to keep pushing for it because otherwise who’s going to have any of these conversations? Sorry, just one thing before you step into Brad. Roger Hallam, you guys know who he is? Founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil and that sort of thing. He cited some research that said like it’s never been a majority of the population [00:10:17] that have been changemakers. It’s always a small percent. And it was learning that was like, oh, okay. Like it’s never, everyone’s never going to step up. It’s a certain type of personality that wants to. To do this stuff. And it’s so, you know, that’s just who we are, I guess, those personality types. Sorry, Brad. And I guess that’s also a good thing because, you know, in the social tipping point, they said, what, 25%? That was the University of Pennsylvania, I think, that did this study. And, it’s like, if there’s three of us here right now, we just need one more person. And, you know, like that would become a normal behavior and 25% would be one of us. Yeah. So it kind of makes the big problem kind of small because if you could just talk to three people and that would be, That would be your responsibility. You know, it wouldn’t have to be like you had to change the world. [00:11:02] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think for myself, the part that’s kind of the counterpoint to the confrontational aspect of this is to balance that with a vision for what you see is possible and how to kind of hone that vision in your current reality to some small degree. You know, one of the things that keeps me inspired and relatively sane in the midst of all this is focusing on [00:11:48] My two grandkids who just this past weekend moved right up there. They start waking up any moment, might start hearing some sounds from them. But, you know, Logan’s five and Piper’s three. And all the whatever it takes to give them some hope and future is what keeps me excited about it. And like I said, kind of counterbalance that. You know, the massive confrontation that it can be when we really see how asleep we as a society have been. So I think vision is an important counterbalance to it. Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to mention while I got the podium here. [00:12:35] Yeah. My family has been in a massive amount of breakdown since the move. And, much so that we finally looked up the old saying, Mercury is in retrograde if things aren’t going right. And actually, Mercury is in retrograde right now. So I don’t know where you guys are in, but my end, we’re getting some, and that’s not our, I’ll blame it on Mercury. Just wanted to put that in. So I guess with both of you, well, Brad’s grandkids and Erin, you have three kids, right? So I guess, [00:13:21] how do we talk to people with parents and educators and carers of the youth and children? A lot of people are now not having children because they say that the world is becoming too scary of a place. So with both of you, how do you I guess with Erin, how do you talk to people who have kids and yourself? How do you navigate this conversation also with you? Yeah. I don’t always do that, actually. I find that People don’t want to know. So I don’t necessarily have conversations with people that are in my life face to face. [00:14:07] So I would use a platform like LinkedIn or not so much X anymore, but like that’s where I try and use my voice because it seems to be more received. And, that’s, yeah. And there’d be people that I know in my day to day life that follow me there, but I do find that Like it goes, it’s a real spectrum of, yeah, it’s a big problem, but it’s just not on my radar to, yeah, is it even real? Oh my God, yes, it’s real. You know, like people are obviously taking in different media to me and the bridge to, is that, am I saying it right? The bridge, the gap to bridge, sorry, is too big. It’s so enormous that I can’t bridge it. [00:14:55] I think it’s important that you, like I still, so I’m thinking specifically of people I see in my day-to-day life. I still have to have relationships with these people. I can’t exist in, none of us is an island, I can’t exist in isolation. So sometimes you just, you don’t have anyone around you who’s climate focused. I do have climate focused social groups and friends. But, for me, I write articles, which I have on, Substack and I use LinkedIn to try and reach more people because otherwise I would actually feel like I’m banging my head against a brick wall. I think I would have stopped a long time ago if I had to rely on the people in my circle. Yeah. So what I would say to people is if you don’t have anyone around you, try and find your crew. [00:15:45] And it could just be like a WhatsApp group. Like I had a WhatsApp group or typing signal or something for a number of years, which was such a savior. Like it was, oh, these people get it. Oh, these people care. And they were sharing information and I was learning from them. And otherwise, so there’s a real in the sociology of or like the research into social tipping points, they say that if you’re not insulated from the dominant culture somehow by a group of like minded people, It would be very easy and often does happen that people fall back into that dominant culture because you don’t have anyone helping you maintain these new values and behaviours and things. So that’s what that signal group did to me for a long time to help me stay in this space. So for other people who don’t have people also interested in keeping [00:16:33] the planet habitable around them, see if you can find some because it will make your life easier. Yeah. Well, if you’re looking for communities to join, all three of us have our own communities. We all write articles. I post them on LinkedIn as well. And we just formed a community in Sri Lanka and we have one in Singapore. And Brad has his eco stories and his community in North Carolina as well. So if you guys are looking for Sydney, Singapore, Sri Lanka, North Carolina, we’re all here. Well, most of the world covered. Yeah, exactly. Between us. We’ve got, we’re uncovering an important missing is like, [00:17:22] how do you introduce the crisis, even just one segment of it, like, you know, climate change, way that people that So I don’t know if either you have a social gathering where that doesn’t feel threatened to that gathering itself. We’re losing you a little bit, Brad, but I think I can take this one. So in Singapore, I mean, for me, it’s been really hard. [00:18:16] Like Erin said, like, you know, banging your head against the wall. That’s definitely been, you know, what I’ve been facing. And actually, when I did the project tipping course that Erin designed a couple of years ago, I was like, oh, my God, this is my tribe. You know, I’m still really good friends with so many people in that space. And that really helped me through that first year in corporate sustainability in Singapore, which I hated. But then I also set up the community because I felt like I needed it. So it’s been one and a half years that we’ve been doing these monthly meetups very informally at an alfresco bar in Singapore. And it’s really based around questions with the poly crisis. So introducing every week, every month, a new topic where people come together in an informal setting, [00:19:04] outside of the suit, outside of the like, what do you do? Here’s my name card, business card. Have a drink together, sit down, talk about family and friends, and then talk about, hey, how does creativity solve the polycrisis? Or how does a post-colonial world look like? And just really getting people to share those stories and taking that business corporate suit out of the conversation and really kind of focusing on needs and that this is affecting everybody and building that community around that. Yeah. I’m not sure if that answers your question, Brad. I didn’t really hear you very well. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, going back to like the sustainability conversation, [00:19:50] like when, when I was working as a sustainability manager in 2023, like for me, that was quite strange because I come from a conservation background and, you know, Erin, you talk about this sustainability as usual business as usual. Yeah, sustainability as usual is things we can do that make sure the current system just continues. So, it’s a lot of what we call sustainability, but it really, it doesn’t change anything. So it makes people feel good, like we’re doing something. But actually we’re not doing very much. And, we can continue to do all of the industrial activity that was going [00:20:38] to happen anyway, essentially. And as you talk about corporate sustainability, like a lot of corporate sustainability is enabling some of the most harmful activities to continue because there’s a sustainability department, they must be doing something about it. But actually, you know, a lot of the work that they’re doing is ESG reporting and things like that. And ESG reporting is It’s trying to determine the impact of the external environment on the company, not the impact of the company on the external environment. And if you care about the environment, that’s a pretty key difference. Like it’s single materiality. How is the environment affecting The company’s like outlook, financial outlook, risk, all of those things. So, you know, [00:21:24] it’s not designed to stop a company from harming the environment or social outcomes or anything like that. It’s literally not designed for that purpose. And there’s a whole heap of other things that would fall under sustainability as usual. It’s like trying to value nature is another way to continue this financialization of everything, commodification of things, putting things like to be able to put... So the financialization of nature is when I heard about this through a book I read called The Value of a Whale and they literally Trying to think about which institution did it. The World Bank, I think. They valued humpback whales at two million US dollars each. [00:22:13] And the reason they did that is because when that whale dies, Two reasons, the tourism that the whales can generate from people I presume going to look at them and then when the whale dies they drop to the bottom of the ocean floor and they take a whole heap of carbon with them so now they’re sequestering carbon and you can value the whale because of that. And it’s like, that’s mad. Like, are you joking that’s what we’re doing to these beautiful animals who to them, their life is invaluable? Of course, like our lives are invaluable to us. And like just this idea that we could just put, so someone just pays $2 million and now we can kill the whale? I don’t know. It’s just crazy. So, you know, valuing nature is another one of them. [00:22:59] This idea of circular economy, like I’m not saying circular economy is not part of the solution. Obviously, we should be reusing as much as we can, but you can’t do that in a growth-based system. You can’t do that where your energy can’t be recycled. You know, if you’re burning coal, how is that becoming circular? Or if your solar panels have a 25-year lifespan on them. There’s so many elements of the economy that exist today that can’t be circular. Food. How do you make food properly circular? It’s a part of the solution, but it’s not the entire solution. It has to be incorporated into something like degrowth or something like that where it’s working with other elements of the economy to scale back our activity rather than just be thrown in there. [00:23:46] And let the growth economy keep going, because that’s what ultimately most businesses want to do, to keep growing. Yeah. I mean, the sad thing is that all the sustainability policies are based on financial models and accounting, which doesn’t work in a natural world. And, you know, they’re just putting band-aids on. And I write a lot about that in my Substack as well. You know, the idea that sustainability is a hoax and ultimately was designed by the financial industry where you’re looking at very linear, infinite growth in a finite planet of finite resources. Yeah. And the sad thing as well is that people in the sustainability industry are also not conservationists and not environmentalists. They’re probably from PR, sales, marketing, a very financial accounting background. And then you’re using these financial human-made models in a natural system where [00:24:34] that doesn’t work. And also looking at things very fragmented and very siloed rather than systems thinking and holistic design. You know, cradle to cradle or the cradle to the grave and things like that. I mean, these are things that really, really need to completely be overhauled in order to properly make change. Yeah, yeah. And something I love to remember and remind people of is that there’s no such thing as a sustainable business in an unsustainable system. So it really has to be systemic change. It’s not going to happen at an organizational level. It has to, like, we have to enable people to live good lives without Everyone having to have a corporate job because everyone needing to work in corporate is creating all this activity and production that we don’t need just [00:25:20] so everyone can to work. The whole system needs an overhaul and it’s not going to happen just by corporations adopting sustainability metrics. It’s just, it’s not enough. Yeah. And it’s also getting people to start to think of what a better future narrative would look like, right? Like decoupled from monetary gain and financial wealth and stuff and self-consuming. And, I mean, the nice thing was like, Erin actually wrote the endorsement for our book, Dreams of Unwritten Futures, where we’re really trying to get that out into the world that, you know, reciprocity, community, living together in sufficiency and, you know, those kinds of values are still what people want ultimately at the end of the day when you scrape off that suit and the money and the You know, constant rat race. People just want to have, like, you know, nice times to do hobbies, [00:26:06] you know, to be passionate about things, to spend time with your kids and your family and read a book under a tree, you know, go to the beach, you know, and stuff like that. There’s this book written by a palliative care nurse and it’s called The Five Regrets of the Dying. And like literally regret number one, might be two, I could be wrong, is that people wish they didn’t work so much because they get on their deathbed. They are on their deathbed. I don’t know how they got there. And they just look back and think, what was I doing? You know, I should have used my time to do something different. I should have spent it with my loved ones. I should have learned guitar. I should have helped make a better future for my grandkids. Any of those things, but they were working because at the time, I guess that’s what they felt like they should be doing. [00:26:49] But with the benefit of hindsight, they don’t always feel that way. Yeah. I mean, that’s good that you’ve done Beyond Duality because you said, wait, now you can die in peace. Yeah, if I get hit by a bus, it’s all out there guys. If I get hit by a bus, something’s sus though, right? Touching wood, touch wood. There’s not even any buses around here. There should be more buses around here though. So in the conscious of time, yeah, I guess because our, most of our audience is like, you know, educators and parents and youth and People associated with the next generation, like what kind of advice would you leave our listeners? [00:27:36] Oh, good question. I think more people should be curious. I reckon if more people were curious, then they would like delve into more topics and that would make them dive into another topic and then they’d be learning and asking questions and I learned this fact that I just find fascinating is that between 1970 and like 1996, people from the U.S. gained six hours of more free time each week. Do you know what people did with that six hours of more free time each week? They used it to watch TV. You know like there’s a lot there’s just so much of our time goes to Netflix and Amazon Prime and I don’t know like just watching TV and YouTube Shorts [00:28:24] and I think if we could take that time and read a book or have a conversation or read the news I just think we could learn more and who knows where that might take you then you know like you I just feel like I’m not saying never watch TV and, you know, have some time out from busy schedules and all that sort of thing, but do it as well as taking the time out to read and learn and converse and, that would be my advice. Right. Yeah. And if you guys are looking for things to read, I mean, author yourself. We’re all kind of addicted to learning and we’re constantly learning new things and putting new stuff out there and trying to rephrase stuff and make it [00:29:11] a little bit easier for anyone. So Brad, anything you want to end with? Yeah, I’m just saying to keep on the idea of curiosity, get more curious. About what’s your relationship to the web of life? And, you know, we talk about it as nature, but, you know, I’ve started thinking of it more as the web of life, which includes all this greenery we’re seeing behind here. Get curious about that. Take a walk out in nature and see if you can’t discover something you have not discovered. Yeah. [00:29:57] Absolutely. And what can you learn about it? And even just watching it fills you with awe and wonder, like, you know, and that fills you with reverence and wanting to be a part of bigger things. So that’s wonderful advice. There’s a really good book by David Haskell and it’s called The Forest Unseen. He literally draws like a quadrant in the backyard of his house and calls it a mandala and he watches it for a year. And it’s amazing. He managed to write a whole book about this thick, about just this quadrant in the backyard of his house. So the amount of things that went on there, the changing of seasons, the different animals, all the different animals that also came to visit, the different flora and fauna. It’s so amazing. So that’s a really good book to start if you don’t know where to start. [00:30:43] Yeah, sounds incredible. Well, thank you very much, Erin, for your time. It was really nice to hear, you know, what you’re doing and to catch up with you again. It’s been a few months. Yeah. And for anyone who wants to join Erin’s course, Beyond Duality, we’ll put the link in the post. Yeah. And I think you have a new season coming up in September, right? Yes. Summer of September is the next one. So, yeah. That’d be a good one to join for anyone who’s keen to learn more. Or I think it’s beyondduality.org. If you want to see the syllabus or brochure or anything like that. Thank you for having me. I’m on LinkedIn. Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn as well. It’s been really fun. Enjoy your day Brad. You’ve got a full day ahead of you now. Thank you. [00:31:28] Now you’re up nice and early so you have the whole day. Thank you. Bye guys. Thanks so much. See you later. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wbradfordswift.substack.com/subscribe (https://wbradfordswift.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   3 Jul 2026

   Independence Day… or Interdependence Day?

   Tomorrow, the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence. Two hundred and fifty years is no small thing. By any measure, it is a remarkable milestone in the life of a nation, especially one born from a bold and imperfect experiment in freedom. And yet, as I sit here listening to the pounding upstairs from the Loving Homestead renovations the day before this historic July 4th, I find myself strangely unable to simply join the celebration. Not because I don’t love this country but because I do so very much. I’m so grateful that the forces of life allowed me to be born in Weymouth, MA a little over seventy-seven years ago. I do not take that bit of kismet for granted. That distinction matters to me. This is not intended as a political article, even though politics is the language many of us have been trained to use when we talk about the state of our nation. Politics matters, of course. Policies matter. Elections matter. Leadership matters. But beneath the politics, there is something deeper: the stories we live inside, the assumptions we rarely question, the values we embody, and the future we are either consciously creating or unconsciously drifting toward. Lately, as part of my morning One Cause vow (https://wbradfordswift.substack.com/p/the-four-great-truths-a-sacred-blueprint-bde?utm_source=publication-search), I’ve begun asking a simple question: What is the web of life asking from me today? This morning, that question did not lead me to an answer so much as a deeper inquiry. What does it mean to honor Independence Day when so much in our national life (and consequently our world) feels fractured, fearful, and off course? What does it mean to love a country without pretending it is well? What does it mean to grieve the direction we seem to be heading while still refusing to surrender the possibility of something better? I don’t feel at home in either of the easy camps. I cannot celebrate blindly, waving a flag as though all is well. But neither do I want to become one more voice shouting into the great national storm, convinced that outrage alone is a contribution. I know people who seem to think patriotism means defending everything America does. I know others who seem to think honesty requires condemning everything America has been. Neither feels whole to me. A nation, like a family, can be deeply loved and deeply troubled at the same time. Two hundred and fifty years ago, courageous and complicated people declared independence from a distant king. That declaration was visionary and incomplete, inspiring and flawed, liberating for some while excluding many others. It’s been a work-in-progress ever since. The American story has always carried both promise and contradiction. Perhaps every human story does. What matters now, at least to me, is not whether we can polish the past until it shines or condemn it until nothing remains. What matters is whether we can tell the truth about where we are and still choose who we are becoming. Let me rephrase that as a question: Can we tell the truth about where we are and still choose who we are becoming? And that brings me to the possibility that maybe this particular Independence Day is inviting us into a new kind of declaration—not independence from another nation, but independence from the assumptions that have brought us to this moment. For starters, let me suggest a few. * How about independence from the belief that we are separate from one another and from the living Earth. * Independence from the story that more is always better. * Independence from the illusion that Earth’s resources are endless and ours to consume without consequence. * Independence from the hope that technology alone will save us from the deeper transformation we are avoiding. In the language of One Cause, maybe this is a moment to begin freeing ourselves from the Four Great Untruths and recommitting ourselves to the Four Great Truths: Interconnectedness, Sufficiency, Reciprocity, and Stewardship. Not as political slogans. Not as ideology. Not as something to argue about online. But as ways of being we practice in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, and our relationship with the living world. When I look at Logan and Piper, this all becomes much less abstract. They don’t wake up asking whether the world is red or blue. They notice worms, flowers, birds, puddles, berries, bugs, and whether the adults around them feel safe and loving. They are learning, every day, what kind of world this is by watching how we live inside it. And I find myself wondering: What version of “normal” are we handing them? Perhaps a new patriotism is being asked of us now. Not the patriotism of certainty or superiority, but the patriotism of stewardship. The kind that loves a country enough to help it mature. The kind that tells the truth without bitterness. The kind that plants trees, repairs relationships, protects children, tends soil, welcomes neighbors, and asks what freedom is actually for. Because freedom is not only freedom from. It is freedom for. Freedom for compassion. Freedom for responsibility. Freedom for service. Freedom for the long, humble work of becoming better humans, parents, and ancestors. Freedom to participate in the healing of a world that is not separate from us, and never has been. So tomorrow, I may still watch fireworks though probably just listen to them from the distance as I try to calm my two canine companions. I may still feel gratitude for the many blessings this country has made possible in my own life. And I may also feel sadness, concern, and grief for how far we still have to go. Both can be true. Maybe that is what maturity asks of us—to hold love and grief in the same heart without collapsing into denial or despair. This Independence Day, I’m not sure I can celebrate in the old way. But I can recommit. I can recommit to living as though the web of life is real, sacred, and asking something of me. I can recommit to my family, my community, and this small patch of Earth we call the Loving Homestead. I can recommit to the future Logan and Piper deserve. And perhaps that is celebration enough. This weekend, maybe the question is not simply, “What are we free from?” Maybe the deeper question is, “What are we free to become?” If this exploration of freedom and independence calls to you I invite you to become a free or paid subscriber. Let’s continue to explore these topics together This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wbradfordswift.substack.com/subscribe (https://wbradfordswift.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   26 Jun 2026

   The Stories We Live By — Part 1: The Sea of Meaning

   Check out Nate's interview of Rob Hopkins at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lspKl7pjUtz3WQDy9To8qp4-gRBpOTsJ/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lspKl7pjUtz3WQDy9To8qp4-gRBpOTsJ/view?usp=sharing) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wbradfordswift.substack.com/subscribe (https://wbradfordswift.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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