What a year we're having.

Here in California, some of the worst wildfires in a century have been raging for weeks, destroying homes and forests, choking the air with smoke for hundreds of miles.

Across the land, the fires of racial injustice and civil unrest are ablaze in Kenosha and Portland.

Meanwhile, the smoldering of greed and ignorance continues to heat the planet, altering the very ecosystems that support life.

Things seem pretty dismal. Where do we go from here?

One thing is clear: the heart can meet suffering and hardship with compassion. When we encounter pain, if we're not drowning in fear, despair or anger, the spirit quivers with empathy. We can reach out to help.

There’s endless work to repair what is broken in our society. Our capacity to step up and participate in the healing of our world is directly related to our ability to attend to the hurt and conflict within — the pain and sorrow, the rage, fear, overwhelm, or numbness.

We don’t need to finish our inner work to strive for a better world, but the two do go hand in hand. Spiritual transformation without compassionate action can reinforce self-centeredness, while social transformation without spirituality can burn us out and wither our motivation.

If you'd like to explore the relationship between inner and outer transformation, join me this Tuesday, September 1^st for a public talk online, Ending the War Within: The Spiritual Foundation of Nonviolent Communication, sponsored by the East Point Peace Academy.

The talk is a gift. Donations are welcome to support East Point Peace Academy, an organization dedicated to teaching Nonviolence.

In kindness,

Oren

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