<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><div class=""><div class="page" title="Page 7"><div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(162, 215, 45);"></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 8"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 35pt; font-family: AvenirNext; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(141, 206, 0); vertical-align: -14pt;">W</span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">e are living in turbulent times on this beautiful planet. All pretense of immunity is collapsing as we realize how com- pletely entangled our lives are with one another—with kelp beds </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">and calving glaciers, with wildfires and rising sea levels, with ref</span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">- ugees and the anxious dreams of young people everywhere. The disequilibrium shaking the world feels like a continual tremor along the fault lines of our psychic lives.</span></p><p class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">Very few things feel stable. It is like a fever dream. Maybe we have reached the initiatory threshold required to wake us up. Whatever is happening, much will be asked of us if we are to make it through the whitewater of this narrow passage. We do not know what lies ahead, but one thing is sure: </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic;">This is a time for bold gestures</span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">. It is time to wake up and humbly take our place on this stunning planet. The future is speaking ruthlessly through us.</span></p><p class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">James Hillman, the brilliant archetypal psychologist, wrote, “The world and the gods are dead or alive according to the condition of our souls.”</span><span class="" style="font-size: 7pt; font-family: Georgia; vertical-align: 4pt;">1 </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">In other words, the vitality of the animate, sensu- ous world and our encounter with the sacred depend on our souls being fully alive! A soul that is awake is entangled with the living world—its beauty, allure, and wonder, its sorrows, rips, and tears. Given the state of the world and our soulful lives, we must pause and ask, “</span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic;">What is the condition of our souls</span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">?” From all observable accounts, the prevailing condition is desperate, empty, ravenous, impoverished, and grief-stricken. In the language of some tradi- tional cultures, we would diagnose our times as one of </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic;">soul loss. </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">To lose soul is to feel emptied of wonder, joy, and passion. It is to feel </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">cut off from the vitalizing relationships with the living world, leav</span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">- ing one stranded in a deadened world. The long-standing intimacy with the multiple folds of the Earth—her myriad of creatures, the stunning profusion of color and fragrance—would be forgotten. In place of this, we substitute a frenzied striving for power and material gain. This is the dominant reality for much of white, tech- </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">nological, late-capitalistic culture. Soul loss leaves us flattened and </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">empty, always wanting more—more power, more things, more </span><span class="" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Georgia;">wealth, more control. We forget what truly satisfies the soul. </span></p><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>