Narrative Atonement: Co-Constructing Social Worlds Through Transformative Story Practices

Reflections from the Co-Creating Social Worlds Conference (Mercy University & Taos Institute)

At the recent Co-Creating Social Worlds Conference, co-hosted by Mercy University in New York City and the Taos Institute, scholar-practitioners gathered around a shared concern: how do we co-construct social worlds that are more just, compassionate, and life-affirming in a time of ecological crisis, social fragmentation, and deep personal disorientation?

My presentation--Co-Creating Social Worlds: Narrative Transformation as a Pathway to Integral Human Development and Wayfinding—offered one response to this question through the lens of autoethnography and a concept I call narrative atonement. In this blog post, I want to pause, step out of conference cadence, and more clearly define this concept—and why it matters across fields such as narrative mediation, conflict resolution, narrative medicine, and narrative therapy.

What Is Narrative Atonement?

Narrative atonement names a transformational process through which the fragmented, often conflicting story threads of a life are gathered, honored, and raised into a more coherent and life-giving narrative whole.

The hyphen in at-one-ment is intentional. Narrative atonement is not about moral repayment or absolution in a punitive sense. Rather, it refers to a movement toward at-one-ness—a reconciling of inner divisions and external ruptures through narrative integration. It is a process by which personal, relational, cultural, spiritual, and ecological storylines are brought into dialogue, allowing meaning to emerge where dissonance once prevailed.

In narrative atonement, stories are not merely told or analyzed; they are mediated. The act of storytelling becomes a form of narrative mediation—a space where tensions are held with care, contradictions are explored rather than erased, and suffering is neither denied nor allowed to define the future.

Narrative Atonement Within a Continuum of Narrative Resolution Practices

Across disciplines, narrative practices already play a crucial role in healing and transformation:
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• Narrative mediation works with conflicted stories between parties.
• Narrative conflict resolution reframes entrenched positions and identities.
• Narrative medicine restores voice and dignity to illness experiences.
• Narrative therapy helps individuals re-author lives shaped by problem-saturated stories.

What unites these approaches is an understanding that stories shape realities—and that changing the story can change how we live together.

What is often less visible, however, is the intrapersonal layer of this work: the unresolved inner conflicts, silenced experiences, and unexamined narratives that quietly shape how we show up in relationships, institutions, and social worlds. This is where autoethnography, when expanded beyond its traditional methodological frame, makes a unique contribution.

Why Autoethnography Must Be Expanded

Autoethnography is often understood as a qualitative research method that connects personal experience with cultural analysis. While this remains important, it is no longer sufficient.

In an age of polycrisis, autoethnography must also be recognized as a transformational practice—one that supports intra-personal conflict resolution, moral imagination, and ethical wayfinding. Expanded autoethnography does not stop at reflection; it invites self-experimentation, ritualized writing, aesthetic integration, and ecological and spiritual reflexivity.

Within this expanded frame, autoethnography becomes a foundational practice in the continuum of narrative resolution. It works at the level where many conflicts originate: within the Self. By engaging inner fractures—identity wounds, unresolved grief, moral injury, illness narratives—autoethnography prepares the ground for more effective interpersonal and collective mediation.

In other words, we cannot sustainably mediate the world if we are at war within ourselves.

Narrative Atonement as Culmination, Not Technique

Narrative atonement is not a single technique or intervention. It is the culmination of a narrative journey.

Through iterative practices—writing, dialogue, creative expression, ecological attunement, and contemplative listening—story threads begin to reorganize. What once appeared as failure, illness, conflict, or dislocation can be re-storied as sources of insight, compassion, and guidance. The overall reflective process increases narrative coherency.

In my work with the Transformagram Learning Model and the use of story mandalas, narrative atonement is often marked by a felt shift: a sense that one’s life story, while still complex and unfinished, has become inhabitable. The story no longer fragments the Self; it becomes a compass. Writing becomes the tool for homing in and activating the inner compass and leading to homecoming.

This process has profound implications not only for individual well-being, but for how scholar-practitioners engage in teaching, research, mediation, and peacebuilding. When narrative atonement is present, people show up differently—in classrooms, communities, and institutions—as storyship emerges: a shared narrative space, akin to fellowship, where stories are held in common, meaning is co-constructed, and relational responsibility deepens.

Co-Constructing Social Worlds Through Story

At the Co-Creating Social Worlds Conference, Kenneth Gergen’s invitation to future-forming research resonated deeply. Narrative atonement aligns with this call by positioning storytelling as an act of world-making rather than mere representation.

When autoethnography is expanded and woven into the continuum of narrative resolution practices, it becomes a collective resource—a way of cultivating relationally attuned, ethically grounded, and ecologically conscious lifeworlds.
Narrative atonement does not erase conflict. It transforms our relationship to it. It allows us to carry complexity without becoming immobilized by it, and to turn suffering into a source of wisdom rather than division.

An Invitation

This work is ultimately invitational. Narrative atonement cannot be imposed; it must be entered into freely, with care and accompaniment. My hope is that fellow scholar-practitioners—mediators, educators, therapists, healers, and researchers—will explore how expanded autoethnography can support this deeper layer of narrative work.
In a time of disconnection, may our stories become acts of reweaving.
In a time of uncertainty, may they become instruments of wayfinding.

Writing in the Dark: A Final Reflection

The practice of narrative atonement also calls for humility. Writing does not always illuminate the path ahead; often it begins in uncertainty. The writer enters the terrain of lived experience without knowing exactly what meaning will emerge.

Henry James captured this creative paradox in his short story The Middle Years. Reflecting on the vocation of the artist, he writes:
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“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
(James, 1893/Project Gutenberg).

James’s words speak directly to the spirit of autoethnographic practice. When we write our lives, we rarely begin with clarity or resolution. Instead, we begin in the darkness of experience—attentive to fragments, tensions, and unresolved questions. Through the patient work of narrative reflection, these fragments can gradually gather into coherence. Through narrative atonement, our storying itself is raised up—lifted from isolated moments into a more meaningful and inhabitable narrative whole.

In this sense, writing becomes both compass and lantern: a practice through which we learn to navigate complexity, transform suffering into meaning, and orient ourselves—together—toward more compassionate ways of inhabiting the worlds we co-create.

Perhaps this is where narrative atonement ultimately leads: not to perfect stories, but to the courage to keep writing them—together—even when we must begin in the dark.

The Ascona Charter, Transformagrams, and Future-Forming Social Science

In a time marked by ecological collapse, widening social inequalities, institutional fragility, and what many describe as a polycrisis, anthropology is being called to re-examine not only its objects of study, but its purpose, orientation, and responsibility toward the future. The Ascona Charter for Transformative Anthropology emerges as a powerful collective response to this call. Rather than treating anthropology as a detached observer of crisis, the Charter positions the discipline as an engaged, ethical, and future-forming practice.
My own work in Transformative Anthropology, and the development of the Transformagram Learning Model and Transformagram Approach to Integral Human Development and Wayfinding, offers a concrete example of how the Charter’s values and commitments can be operationalized in research, teaching, and pedagogical design. Together, they illustrate how anthropology can function not only as critique, but as orientation.

Transformative Anthropology: From Analysis to Orientation

Transformative Anthropology, as articulated in the Ascona Charter, moves beyond documenting social worlds toward actively engaging with transformation—within communities, institutions, and the discipline itself. It recognizes that anthropology is never neutral: our methods, questions, and teaching practices shape futures, whether intentionally or not.
The Charter calls for the reappropriation of values that have been hollowed out by neoliberal academic regimes—care, respect, reciprocity, integrity, and non-extractivism—and for their reintegration into how we work, teach, and relate. This is not a moral add-on, but an epistemological shift. Knowledge is no longer something extracted and evaluated solely through metrics; it is relational, situated, and consequential.
In this sense, Transformative Anthropology is inherently future-forming. It asks:

• What kinds of futures do our research practices enable or foreclose?
• How do our teaching methods cultivate agency, responsibility, and hope?
• How can anthropology offer direction without imposing domination?

The Transformagram Learning Model: Teaching as Transformative Practice

The Transformagram Learning Model responds directly to these questions. Grounded in ethnographic methods—particularly autoethnography, reflexivity, narrative inquiry, and multimodal knowledge production—the model treats learning as a process of orientation, not simply content acquisition.
In alignment with the Charter’s internally oriented values (care, respect, collaboration, freedom of expression, diversity), the Transformagram classroom is designed as a relational space where students are accompanied rather than evaluated from above. Learning becomes a shared journey in which lived experience, positionality, and critical reflection are recognized as legitimate sources of anthropological insight.
Students are not trained merely to analyze crises “out there,” but to understand how they are implicated within them, and how knowledge can be mobilized ethically and creatively. This approach embodies the Charter’s insistence on slow science, academic freedom, and the nurturing of reflective spaces in an increasingly precarious academic landscape.

Non-Extractivist Epistemologies and Transformagram Wayfinding

At the level of work processual values, the Ascona Charter emphasizes integrity, non-extractivism, critical reflexivity, multiplicity, and polyphony. The Transformagram Approach operationalizes these principles through what I describe as wayfinding.
Wayfinding, drawn from anthropological, Indigenous, and navigational traditions, refers to orientation through uncertainty without relying on rigid maps. In Transformative Anthropology, wayfinding becomes a methodological stance:

• We do not impose predetermined outcomes.
• We attend to signals, relationships, and emergent meanings.
• We navigate complexity through reflexive attunement rather than control.

Autoethnography plays a key role here—not as self-indulgence, but as a non-extractive method that foregrounds accountability, relational ethics, and epistemic humility. By situating the researcher within the field of inquiry, Transformative Anthropology resists the illusion of objectivity while cultivating integrity and reciprocity.

Integral Human Development and the Anthropologist as Wayfinder

The Transformagram Approach to Integral Human Development expands anthropology’s scope from social analysis to human flourishing across personal, relational, institutional, and planetary dimensions. This resonates strongly with the Charter’s societal commitments: addressing structural inequalities, engaging with alternative visions and practices, confronting power asymmetries, and sustaining hope as a collective duty.
In times of polycrisis, people do not only need explanations—they need orientation. Transformative anthropologists, in this sense, act as wayfinders:

• Holding space for complexity without paralysis
• Translating lived experience into shared meaning
• Connecting micro-level narratives with macro-level structures
• Supporting communities in imagining and inhabiting alternative futures

Through teaching, community-based anthropology, narrative mediation, and participatory research, transformative anthropologists help cultivate directionality—not by prescribing solutions, but by strengthening capacities for ethical navigation.

Hope as Duty: Anthropology for Future-Forming Worlds
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The Ascona Charter’s insistence on hope as a duty is perhaps its most radical proposition. Hope here is not optimism or denial; it is a practice of responsibility. It requires us to design pedagogies, research methods, and institutional cultures that do not reproduce extraction, precarity, or despair.
The Transformagram Learning Model offers one pathway for doing so—by integrating ethnographic rigor with transformative pedagogy, and by treating anthropology as a lifeway rather than a discipline confined to critique.
In this convergence between the Ascona Charter and Transformative Anthropology, we see a vision of the social sciences not as spectators of collapse, but as future-forming companions in uncertain times. Anthropology becomes a practice of wayfinding—attentive, ethical, plural, and oriented toward the collective task of navigating toward more just, livable, and meaningful futures.

Crafting Peace Through Autoethnography: Reflexive Pedagogies for Navigating Difficult Times articulates the Transformagram Pedagogy I have developed and implemented in courses in medical anthropology and conflict resolution at Creighton University. This pedagogical approach demonstrates how autoethnography, reflexivity, and narrative mediation can be mobilized not only as research methods, but as practices of care, orientation, and ethical engagement in contexts of illness, conflict, and institutional uncertainty. As such, it constitutes my contribution to Transformative Anthropology within the Interface Commission of the Swiss Anthropology Association, offering a concrete example of how teaching can function as a future-forming intervention—cultivating wayfinding capacities, relational responsibility, and hope in times of polycisis.

In A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari introduce a vocabulary that feels less like theory and more like a map for navigating life’s intensities: lignes de fuite (lines of flight), devenir (becoming), and agencements(assemblages). These concepts were not written for mediators or narrative practitioners. And yet—precisely because they describe how life transforms itself—they hold profound relevance for our work.
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Sara Cobb, in her influential narrative mediation model, draws on Deleuze and Guattari when she speaks of “lines of flight” as openings for new stories. These lines of flight are not escapes from reality but pathways of transformation—moments when a narrative system begins to move, fracture, or reconfigure itself toward new possibilities.

Today, I want to explore how lignes de fuite can help us reimagine narrative mediation and conflict transformation. What happens when we treat stories not as fixed texts but as living assemblages—dynamic, layered, and capable of becoming otherwise?
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How do lines of flight activate the hidden potential within an assemblage?

And how can mediators cultivate the conditions for these narrative flyways to emerge?

1. The Assemblage: Where Stories Take Shape

For Deleuze & Guattari, an assemblage is a constellation of forces—material, affective, social, symbolic—that temporarily holds together. An identity is an assemblage. A family is an assemblage. A conflict is an assemblage.

Narratives, too, are assemblages.

In mediation, we encounter narrative assemblages every day:
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• the story of injury and blame
• the story of being right or being wronged
• the story of who we are allowed to be within a system

These stories stabilize patterns of meaning—but they also stabilize certain “territories” of identity. A conflict narrative is territorial: it marks boundaries, determines who can speak, and defines what counts as truth.

Deleuze and Guattari insist that every assemblage contains virtual potentialities—alternative ways of being that are not yet realized. Transformation occurs not by fixing an assemblage, but by activating these potentialities.

This is where lines of flight enter.

2. Lines of Flight: Breaking Open the Territory

A ligne de fuite is often mistranslated as “escape route,” but in French the term also means a vanishing line, like the horizon in a painting. It is a line that pulls the assemblage toward something new—an opening, a destabilization, a movement toward becoming.

Sara Cobb uses the metaphor of lines of flight to describe the micro-ruptures in dominant conflict narratives—moments where something unexpected breaks pattern:

• a contradiction
• a forgotten detail
• a flash of humor or vulnerability
• a shift in affect
• an unexpected metaphor

These small anomalies can serve as flyways: routes along which stories begin to change direction. Cobb’s theory helps us notice how narrative systems can be nudged out of polarization. But Deleuze and Guattari remind us that lines of flight also carry risk: they can lead to creativity or collapse, to transformation or escape into chaos.

This is why mediation matters: it provides the container within which lines of flight can be held, explored, and cultivated toward generative becomings.

3. Narrative Practices as Generators of Lines of Flight

In narrative mediation, we invite participants to externalize their stories, re-member forgotten voices, and examine the organizing metaphors that structure their identities. These practices actually produce conditions of deterritorialization—the Deleuzian term for unmooring the assemblage from its fixed forms.

Here are some ways narrative practices activate lines of flight:

a. Externalization as Deterritorialization

When a problem becomes external (“the conflict is something we are facing together”) rather than internal (“you are the problem”), the narrative assemblage shifts. The identity-territory becomes mobile, less defended.

b. Re-authoring as a Line of Flight

When participants are invited to articulate unspoken hopes, values, or dreams, they create micro-openings—lines of flight that pull the story beyond its previous limits.

c. Metaphor as a Flyway

Metaphors destabilize fixed meaning and allow new relational possibilities to arise. They create hybrid spaces—half-fiction, half-reality—where imagination can do its transformative work.

d. Witnessing as Reassemblage

As parties hear their alternative stories reflected by the mediator or by each other, new configurations of meaning take shape. The assemblage reterritorializes on a different plane.

In Deleuze & Guattari’s terms:

Narrative practices change the very topology of the assemblage.

4. What Transforming an Assemblage Looks Like

When a line of flight becomes viable—when it carries the assemblage toward new potentialities—we see transformation at multiple levels:

Level 1: Affective assemblage

Emotional intensities shift. Fear loosens; curiosity arises. What was rigid becomes supple.

Level 2: Discursive assemblage

The story changes: new words appear, new metaphors, new temporalities. The narrative ceases to orbit around accusation and begins to orbit around desire.

Level 3: Relational assemblage

Interactions change. Pauses emerge. Listening deepens. The assemblage of “us versus them” begins to break apart.

Level 4: Social and systemic assemblages

As identities shift, roles shift. New possibilities arise for agreements, collaboration, renewed kinship, or shared projects.

Lines of flight ripple outward through all these layers; they are not linear but systemic.

5. Toward a Practice of Flyways: Cultivating Transformative Potential

Deleuze & Guattari urge us to consider how a system becomes capable of becoming. In mediation, this means asking:

• What conditions allow a narrative to move?
• What intensities must be softened?
• What rigidities must be shaken?
• What unspoken desires must be brought forward?

Lines of flight do not appear spontaneously; they emerge when a mediator creates a field of relational safety, when listening is deep enough for contradiction to surface, when complexity is welcomed rather than flattened.

A line of flight is a kind of narrative grace: a moment when a system breathes and becomes capable of imagining itself differently. This happens through narrative accompaniment.

6. Autoethnographers as Cartographers of Narrative Flyways

These same principles—lines of flight, assemblages, and narrative openings—also illuminate the work of autoethnographers, who trace the shifting contours of their own lived narratives at the intra-level. Autoethnography, at its heart, is an act of mapping: of noticing where one’s stories harden or crystallize, where contradictions reveal themselves, and where new potentials begin to emerge. When read through Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) vision of lignes de fuite, autoethnographic writing becomes a practice of sensing the lines along which the self-deterritorializes, moves, or transforms. These narrative movements often reveal moments of rupture—emotional flashes, symbolic images, dreams, metaphors, or affective intensities—that open pathways toward becoming otherwise. In this sense, the autoethnographer is not only documenting a life but tracing the flyways that carry that life toward new relational, spiritual, or ecological orientations.

This understanding resonates with Hinton and Kirmayer’s (2017) work on the flexibility hypothesis and the concept of the transformagram, which illustrate how healing emerges when individuals increase their capacity to shift narrative, emotional, and perceptual frames. Their clinical ethnography provides a framework for comprehending the shifting process. The Transformagram Approach builds on these insights by offering autoethnographers guided methods for identifying where their narrative assemblages become rigid and where new potentialities reside. Through structured exercises—such as mapping identity territories, tracing metaphoric lineages and timelines, or articulating emergent desires—autoethnographers learn to recognize the subtle lines of flight within their own stories. These practices allow them to cultivate narrative flexibility not only for personal transformation but also for relational and ecological expansion, integrating spiritual insight, embodied awareness, and regenerative worldviews.

By incorporating flyways into autoethnographic practice, we begin to see how transformation unfolds across multiple layers of the self: affective, symbolic, ancestral, systemic, and ecological. Autoethnographers thus become—much like narrative mediators—cartographers of becoming, charting where they have been, mapping where meaning is shifting, and tracing the pathways that lead toward more expansive, compassionate, and connected versions of self and world. Autoethnography, when understood through the lens of lines of flight, becomes not merely a method of self-inquiry but a practice of guiding the self through its own transformative flyways.
 
Conclusion: Narrative Mediators as Cartographers of Becoming

In A Thousand Plateaus, lines of flight are not merely pathways of escape—they are the engines of creativity and evolution. They allow assemblages to shift, identities to become porous, and systems to reorganize around new forms of life.

Narrative mediators are, in a sense, cartographers of these flyways.

We help map the vanishing lines that pull conflict toward transformation.

We cultivate the conditions in which stories can break open.

We accompany people as they navigate the uncertain, generative terrain of becoming otherwise.

We generate mediatorship and the conflict wisdom that arises from increased interconnectivity.
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In doing so, we participate in the ongoing work that Deleuze & Guattari describe so vividly: the work of shaping new assemblages—ones that sustain deeper connection, shared meaning, and desirable potentialities for the future. Through this work, we enact a mediatorship that activates conflict wisdom—an emergent property of heightened interconnectivity within the narrative assemblage.

This month, I had the joy of sharing my book Crafting Peace Through Autoethnography: Reflexive Pedagogies for Navigating Difficult Times in two presentations—first at Creighton University on October 7, 2025, and then with the Taos Institute online on October 24, 2025.
Both sessions offer a window into my journey of developing the Transformagram Learning Model, a pedagogical framework that integrates autoethnography, peace education, and narrative transformation.

From Personal Story to Pedagogical Framework

The process began years ago with Homing In: An Adopted Child’s Story Mandala of Connecting, Reunion, and Belonging—an autoethnographic inquiry into identity, relationship, and reconciliation. That personal narrative became a teaching story, a living curriculum for exploring how reflective storytelling can nurture peace within and beyond the classroom.

Through this evolution, life-o-grams—the narrative patterns of lived experience—became transformagrams: dynamic, reflexive processes that invite students to engage their own conflict or illness narratives through a stepwise Transformagram Portfolio. This portfolio guides them to see their stories not as static accounts but as pathways for transformation and relational repair.

The Mandala of Narrative Peacebuilding

In my presentations, I share a theoretical mandala that grounds this approach in both narrative conflict resolution theory and experiential learning practice. The mandala represents how self-storying becomes a practice of crafting peace: weaving together emotion, reflection, and relational awareness into a holistic understanding of Self and world.

Through these layered perspectives, Crafting Peace proposes a form of peace education rooted in reflexivity, creativity, and interconnectedness—where the classroom becomes a microcosm of the world in transformation.

An Invitation to the Glovircal Landscape

I invite you to explore this glovircal landscape—where the global and the local meet through virtual spaces and homescapes. Here, we learn to navigate our shared humanity through relational approaches that foster integral human development and wayfinding.

Watch the two presentation videos to experience how Crafting Peace Through Autoethnography unfolds in theory, story, and practice. Join me in exploring how our lived narratives—when written, shared, and transformed—become acts of peacebuilding.
 
Taos Institute links:

• Watch and/or share the recording. Available in the Event Replays library of the Taos Institute Commons (free) and on YouTube: https://youtu.be/17VjZ4Mc7y8.

Share your reflections. How did this webinar inspire you? What will you do differently in your own work? Click here to post a comment in the Commons. We would love to hear from you! 

To those who cherish letters, landscapes, and legacies—
 
It is from the gentle heights of Grignan, nestled in the Provençal hills and touched by golden light, that I write this reflection—part travelogue, part meditation, and wholly infused with the spirit of a woman whose pen has crossed centuries: Madame de Sévigné.

We came to Grignan for a wedding, and yet I left with something far deeper than I expected. There are places where time seems to thrum beneath the stones, where memory gathers like lavender in bloom, and where the past leans in, not as a shadow but as an ancestral voice. Grignan is one such place.
 
It was here that Madame de Sévigné’s daughter lived, far from Paris, in the grand château that still stands like a sentinel over the plains of Drôme Provençale. And it was here that the famous correspondence between mother and daughter was born—letters rich with love, wit, and maternal longing. Mme de Sévigné wrote not only with the elegance of a courtly lady, but with the fire of a mother, and it is perhaps this emotional clarity that continues to speak to us today.
 
What moved me most is that this legacy of correspondence was no isolated phenomenon. Madame de Sévigné came from a lineage of formidable women. Her grandmother was none other than Saint Jane de Chantal, who, alongside Francis de Sales, co-founded the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary. I have long read their spiritual letters—profound exchanges on love, humility, discernment. It is no coincidence that such a granddaughter would write with a voice at once intimate and transcendent. What passed between Jane and Francis as spiritual counsel, Sévigné would later translate into maternal devotion.
 
The château itself bears another trace of feminine resilience: it was lovingly restored in the late 19th century by Marie Fontaine, a woman of vision who used her inheritance not for vanity, but to rebuild the castle as a monument to memory—a memory that includes architectural heritage, literary legacy, and the very bones of correspondence between women across time and space.

What strength it must have taken to bring such stones back to life.
During our stay, I purchased a small edition of Madame de Sévigné’s letters, published in their full, unabridged beauty and freely available now through the Project Gutenberg website. Her words have followed me since. And so, in the spirit of that tradition, I write to you as she once wrote to her daughter—not to inform, but to connect.
 
We also traveled to Le Puy-en-Velay, a town of ancient pilgrimage and holy beginnings. From here, pilgrims set out for Santiago de Compostela, their steps echoing those of countless souls who have walked for healing, for purpose, for hope. In the sanctuary, I lit a candle before the Black Madonna, and I wrote a prayer on a slip of paper.The words were simple:
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“My prayer is for justicepeace.” Not peace without justice, nor justice without peace—but both, bound together, as John Paul Lederach, the peacebuilder I so often quote, once envisioned it. This prayer was placed in a pilgrim’s pouch to be carried across borders and landscapes I may never see. And yet, I no longer carry it alone.
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As we drove through the volcanic hills of the Monts d'Ardèche UNESCO Global Geopark, winding toward our next destination, I thought of how history is not made only in palaces or treaties—but in letters, prayers, and the silent choices of women who rebuild, who remember, who write.
 
So if anyone ever tells you, as they once told me, that Americans have no history, smile quietly. And know that history is not only in names and monuments, but in bloodlines, in memory, and in the stories we dare to keep telling. From Édimbourg, where one of my ancestors, John Mossman, served as royal goldsmith to James VI and recast the Scottish crown… to the castle of Grignan… to the paths of pilgrims winding westward—our history is not absent. It is layered. Migratory. Resilient.
And it lives on—in letters like this.
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With all my tenderness,
—From Grignan, with love

Link to the Chateau de Grignan website:
https://www.chateaux-ladrome.fr/en/the-chateau-of-grignan/the-marchioness-of-sevigne ​

Henry David Thoreau, one of the central voices of American transcendentalism, undertook a radical experiment in simplicity when he withdrew from society to live for two years by the side of Walden Pond. More than an act of retreat, his sojourn was a quest for essence: to strip life down to its elemental truths and to attune himself to the rhythms of nature’s universal laws.
 
Breaking from European traditions of philosophy, Thoreau—along with Emerson and other transcendentalists—sought not only to describe the American landscape but to reveal it as a sacred text, alive with spirit and meaning. Walden; or, Life in the Woods is at once a ledger of seeds and shingles, an ode to birdsong and shifting seasons, and a spiritual testament to the possibility of living freely, deliberately, and in harmony with the eternal. His reflections on civil disobedience only reinforce his insistence that the inner law of conscience and the higher law of nature surpass the conventions of society.
 
Thoreau’s choice was not escapism but confrontation. By leaving behind the comforts of conformity, he aimed to live closer to the marrow of being. In his own words, he sought “to front only the essential facts of life.” To live simply was, for him, to live deeply; to embrace the Spartan discipline of clarity so as to perceive truth without the veil of excess. His was an act of faith that beneath the noise of civilization lay the quiet music of eternity.
Thoreau also recounts the books that shaped his thought, seeing literature itself as a dwelling place of the spirit, akin to a cabin or a cave. In a luminous passage, he recalls humanity’s primal shelters:
 
“We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold... It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies... Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.”
 
Here Thoreau unites memory, instinct, and cosmic orientation. The “hollow in a rock” is not merely an evolutionary stage, but a reminder that the wisdom of our ancestors lingers within us. Each of us carries the imprint of that first yearning for shelter and communion with the open sky. To dwell in nature is not regression but return—to an inner knowledge that has always guided human survival and flourishing.
 
Yet Thoreau warns of the danger in forgetting this knowledge: the loss of intimacy with the elements, the estrangement from sky and soil. Our modern lives, increasingly domestic and enclosed, conceal from us the stars, the flowing water, the elemental truths of wind and fire. In contrast, he calls us back to a more essential way of being, one that renews rather than depletes the world around us.
 
His most famous words capture this vision of radical simplicity and deliberate living:
 
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life... to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it... or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
 
Thoreau’s experiment at Walden was not only about surviving on beans and timber; it was about testing the spirit against the infinite. In stripping away all but the essential, he discovered life as a mirror of the cosmos—at once humble and sublime.
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His invitation endures: to question our lifestyles, to seek a deeper harmony, and to rediscover communion with the essence of being. In places like Walden Pond, or in the quiet woods nearest us, we too may listen for that eternal conversation between Self and universe.
For your own reflection, Thoreau’s Walden remains freely accessible here:
👉 Walden; or, Life in the Woods – Project Gutenberg
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​Living in the Alps offers more than breathtaking views—it's a daily immersion in nature's restorative power. Surrounded by towering peaks and pristine landscapes, the Alpine environment renews and heals both body and spirit. From the calming effects of forest bathing to the therapeutic properties of medicinal plants, the mountains provide a unique space for wellbeing.
One of the gems of this region is the Flore-Alpe Botanical Garden in Champex-Lac, a haven for plant lovers and hikers alike. Nestled in a spectacular mountain setting, the garden showcases over 4,000 species of plants, many of which are native to Alpine regions. Champex’s lake and surrounding wetlands support a delicate ecosystem where rare medicinal plants thrive. You can read more about the garden here: Flore-Alpe Botanical Garden.

​Located near the historic Great Saint Bernard Pass, Champex is a charming village that draws visitors from around the world. Over the years, I’ve come to know and respect the healing gifts of this landscape. The meadows around our chalet bloom with wild herbs and flowers—offering, quite literally, a pharmacy at your fingertips.
Learning to identify these plants, understanding how to harvest and preserve them, and knowing their medicinal uses is both an art and a practice rooted in tradition. Take Edelweiss, for example—this iconic Alpine flower is more than just a symbol of the mountains. It has been used for generations to soothe bronchitis and sore throats. You can explore more about its healing properties here: The Power of Alpine Herbs.

Beyond herbs and flowers, the simple act of walking in an Alpine Forest can also be profoundly healing. Known as forest bathing (or Shinrin-yoku in Japanese), this practice invites us to slow down, breathe deeply, and connect with the natural world. Scientific research continues to affirm its benefits for reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, and enhancing mental clarity. Here's a fascinating study on the health benefits of forest bathing: National Library of Medicine Article.

In the Alps, nature is not just scenery—it’s teacher, healer, and companion. Whether you're hiking through fragrant pine forests or sipping tea made from hand-picked mountain herbs, the gifts of this landscape are all around. The more we learn to recognize and respect them, the more they offer in return.

In June 2025, I attended the Interface Writing Retreat on Activism and Advocacy at the serene Cross Cultural Centre in Ascona, Switzerland. Activists, researchers, and scholars gathered there to explore the intersections of narrative, justice, and transformative action.
One moment stood out with particular poignancy: Katrin Hattenhauer’s presentation, Voices of Courage. https://www.voices-of-courage.com

​A German artist and human rights activist, Katrin played a vital role in the peaceful revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. For her activism in Eastern Germany, she was imprisoned—an experience that deepened, rather than diminished, her commitment to nonviolent resistance and truth-telling.

During her talk, Katrin shared with us a tiny, hand-written book: a miniature copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. This version had been carefully copied by another activist, so that if Katrin were caught, she could truthfully say the handwriting wasn’t hers—perhaps sparing her further punishment. The book, carried close to her heart, was a hidden manuscript of hope.  

However, it wasn’t only activists who copied books by hand. Often it was done by people who didn’t have the courage to resist the regime openly or join the protests publicly. Katrin wasn’t acting alone, she had discreet helpers. For example, on the street where Katrin lived back in 1988 in Leipzig, she explained that her neighbours knew her, and quite a number of them would quietly support her. Some warned her when the Stasi had raided her flat, others placed ladders in their backyards when she needed to escape over the rooftops and find a different courtyard. Though they never dared to join the protests themselves, she was always very grateful to them and their supportive actions.

This story deeply moved me—not only for its quiet heroism, but because Jonathan Livingston Seagull was also a source of inspiration in my own youth. When I returned home, I unearthed my well-worn copy. As I turned its pages, I was reminded of the longing I once felt to fly higher, to seek a truth beyond the surface, just like Jonathan. The book had been a call to inner freedom then. It still is.
​
May the ideas in this small, courageous book help carry us forward—to discover future flyways for activism, advocacy, and love.

​Here are pictures of the precious book that Katrin carried in her pocket:

​The Interface Commission and the participants who presented their research for the Anthropologies of Activism and Advocacy writing workshop in Ascona:

“We do not tell our stories alone; the stars, the Earth, and the unseen weave their patterns through our words.”

I am excited to share with you a new frontier in narrative practice: Autocosmology — a genre where writing becomes an expression of consciousness itself, and storying is an exploration of the universe  through human experience.

Autocosmology is the natural evolution of autoethnography. Where autoethnography grounds itself in lived experience and connects personal narrative to cultural and societal systems, autocosmology lifts these stories into cosmic entanglement — weaving them into the larger evolutionary arc of the universe.

From Inner Compass to Cosmic Dialogue
In this new form, writing is not only reflective — it is generative, relational, and transcendent. It becomes a way of listening to the universe speaking through us. Our story mandalas evolve into sacred texts of becoming, where each thread of narrative entwines life history with cosmogenesis — the unfolding of the cosmos through the self.

Here, writing is consciousness. And when we write from this expanded awareness, we are not simply documenting — we are mediating. The act of writing becomes mediatorship: a sacred responsibility to bridge the personal with the planetary, the fragmented with the whole, the temporal with the eternal.

Story as Medicine, the Self as Universe
Autocosmology is more than a genre — it is a way of being. In this approach, the story is no longer just ours — it is of the stars, of the Earth, of the sacred circuits that guide life forward. Our narratives become medicine, restoring coherence where pain and separation once lived.

In moments of silence, synchronicity, or deep creative flow, we may feel that something larger is writing through us. This is the voice of autocosmology — the living wisdom of the universe echoing through human experience.

Introducing: Starborne – The Journal of Autocosmology
To honor this new space of emergence, I am thrilled to share the launch of a new publication that embodies this vision:

This journal is a constellation of writings that explore the intersections of consciousness, creativity, and cosmogenesis. It is a home for those who write not only to tell their story, but to participate in the unfolding story of the universe.

Your Invitation to Storyship
Whether you are a writer, healer, seeker, or visionary, I invite you to consider:

• What happens when your writing becomes a form of cosmological participation?
• What if the story you are telling is part of the universe remembering itself?

Autocosmology offers a place for those who feel the pulse of a larger rhythm and long to write in tune with it. It is a space for storyship — for entering the narrative field with reverence, curiosity, and a sense of planetary belonging.

Let us write with the stars.
Let us become the voice of the cosmos.

With awe and storylight,
Dr. Susan Mossman Riva
www.susanmossmanrivawrites.com

🕊️ Listen to the haunting beauty of The Road Home sung in Southern Harmony:
The Road Home – Choir Performance

🎼 Follow along with the score, and let the music carry you:
📖 The Road Home – Sheet Music (PDF)

Let this song hold you as it held me—in reverence, in reflection, and in the rhythm of returning.
​
Let’s go home. 

Nicholas Black Elk was a holy man whose spiritual journey began in childhood. From a young age, he experienced profound visions that shaped his life and calling. Among these visions, he saw the Tree of Life and the Sacred Hoop, powerful symbols of unity and interconnectedness. Through these sacred experiences, Black Elk received gifts of power and guidance, setting him on a lifelong path as a healer and spiritual leader.

In one of his most significant visions, he encountered the Son of God alongside a flowering tree. This profound moment led to his recognition as both a holy man and a medicine man within his Lakota community. After traveling the United States and Europe as part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, Black Elk returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where his spiritual journey continued.

It was there that Black Elk met the Jesuit priest who baptized him, giving him the name Nicholas Black Elk. The Jesuits, who believed that we can find God in all things, recognized his deep spiritual wisdom and connection to nature. Black Elk, in turn, integrated their teachings into his own spiritual practices, creating a bridge between his Lakota heritage and Christianity. For Black Elk, walking the Good Red Road was a way to teach catechism—a path that allowed him to reconcile his Lakota traditions with the Christian faith.

The Good Red Road became a vital part of Black Elk's spiritual identity. By embracing both Lakota spirituality and Christianity, he was able to survive and thrive during a time of cultural upheaval. This path was not one of simple compromise but of deep spiritual seeking. He found a way to shape his spirituality in a way that honored both traditions. As a seeker, Black Elk used the "Two Roads Map" to teach others about the way to eternal life, showing how his own journey mirrored the historical shift from pre-Christian to Christian traditions in his lifetime.

Throughout his life, Black Elk was devoted to his people. He worked alongside the Jesuits at the reservation, sharing his teachings and serving as a missionary. His community saw him as a man with the power of all four directions, a spiritual guide who could navigate the complexities of life and faith. His daughter, Lucy, remembered her father often quoting scriptures: “What does it mean to gain the whole world and lose your soul?” or recalling the words, “We must be like little children to find God.”

Before his passing, Black Elk told his relatives that a sign would appear in the sky to mark his arrival in the afterlife. After his wake, a rare and beautiful display of Northern Lights illuminated the sky, confirming his prophecy. On the day of his funeral, as his family trudged through rain and thick gumbo mud, the sun broke through the clouds in a dramatic display, marking his burial as a miraculous event—a sign from God, confirming his journey had come to its fulfillment.

Nicholas Black Elk's ability to blend Lakota spirituality with Christianity remains a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Holding his rosary in one hand and his sacred pipe in the other, Black Elk embodied the balance between two spiritual paths. His story, beautifully captured in the documentary film that I have included in this blog, offers a powerful narrative of a seeker on the path to sainthood. Chief Black Elk became Nicholas Black Elk, dedicating himself to his people and searching for a way to give them hope. Ultimately, he found that hope on the “Good Red Road,” a path of spiritual wholeness and harmony. This beautiful painting offers a representation of his lifeway as a seeker.

“Walking the Good Red Road: Nicholas Black Elk’s Journey to Sainthood”
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Black Elk Documentary.
https://www.rapidcitydiocese.org/docmentary-nbe/?av_sc_blog_page=4
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Explanation of the Painting:
https://www.gorettifineart.com/blog/making-of-a-painting-iv-nicholas-black-elk-1-of-2

Article:
https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/walking-good-red-road-takes-intriguing-look-nicholas-black-elk

My work researching transformative and spiritual autoethnography has expanded to investigating ways to incorporate ecological autoethnography for social transformation. Conflict resolution is central in ecological challenges that polarize communities, creating barriers to effective problem-solving. This method can be used as a tool for environmental research.
 
As we work collaboratively in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects, it is important to use methods that reinforce reflexivity and enhance collaborative practices. The complex situations that environmental research encounters in the field have been shown to benefit from ecological autoethnography. Employing autoethnographic practice to integrate the qualitative aspects of projects that address personal experience in the context of challenging societal issues that encompass social, economic, and political considerations can advance best practices. Ecological autoethnography is a valuable tool in a researcher’s toolkit. Using autoethnography to investigate and explore the human dimensions and imagine problem-solving approaches in ecology and environmental research, reinforces holistic approaches in polarizing contexts.
 
Narrative approaches to conflict resolution that incorporate ecological autoethnography can enhance understanding and communication throughout the different phases of research. Applied ecological autoethnography can also allow researchers to better anticipate challenges as in human-wildlife conflicts. Autoethnographic case studies allow researchers to identify patterns that emerge, anticipating problems that may arise in future projects, and establishing objective lessons from subjective experiences. It is also a method that allows researchers to report critical issues encountered in the field that can help future work. Applied ecological autoethnography captures the full context of the research incorporating the human problems that ecologists encounter. These insights can help researchers work in more holistic ways that can also better inform policymakers that are often challenged to implement policies that have been known to create political polarization.
 
Storying ecological contexts can also help bridge academic research with community planning and government decision-making. Learning in interdisciplinary fields and reflecting upon holistic approaches to ecological problem-solving can improve research collaborations. In this way, applied ecological autoethnography is a translational research method that links academic knowledgeability to community needs. This approach can transform past mistakes into future opportunities. Autoethnographic practice highlights the human interactions but can also allow us to better understand human and nonhuman relationships. Anthropology recognizes the merits of this ethnographic method. Applying ecological autoethnography for environmental research is a promising future forming approach. Here is an article that explains applied autoethnography in environmental research:
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.14252

Robin Wall Kimmerer, an indigenous scientist and author, wrote an essay about the Serviceberry that provides us with a model for interdependence and coevolution that are at the heart of the ecological economy. The Serviceberry teaches us another way to understand relationships and exchange. The gift economy can be understood through the lens of Indigenous People and their traditional foodways and lifeways. The Serviceberry provides us with a model of reciprocity rather than accumulation. The gift economy gives value to relationships that inspire belonging, purpose and beauty.
 
The traditional ‘giveaway’ ceremonies were designed to reinforce relationships through gift giving. I have included original pictures from Father Don Doll who gave these unpublished photos to me for my blog chapter-The Giveaway Girl. My story of adoption and reunion is connected to the lessons of the Indigenous People and the wisdom held within the giveaway ceremony.
 
The following link takes you to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay. It is a beautiful story that connects us to the prosperity of sharing through the commons. She explains how both incremental change and creative disruption give rise to renewal and diversity.
 
How can we engage in expanding networks where the principles of the gift economy foster mutual flourishing? How can we experience a deeper sense of belonging through the ‘giveaway’ ritual? Becoming consciously aware of these alternative forms of exchange opens space for mutual flourishing in/on Earthship. Through the ‘giveaway’ we can experience sacred reciprocity. The natural world inspires us to embody reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. Let the Serviceberry teach you how to belong in more meaningful ways through the gift economy.

https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/the-serviceberry/

The Sacred Feminine: Birthing New Beginnings
In a dream I heard words and saw images that inspired me to investigate the meaning of the ark after awaking. Throughout the last year, I looked for clues for what this might mean. I searched for information from Biblical texts that allowed me to understand the importance of the ark, the Vesica, and sacred form-enigmas that were asking to be deciphered. This ancient wisdom came together for me in a showing at my goddaughter, Shekinah’s confirmation in the St. Maurice Basilica in Valais, Switzerland in 2023. I was able to make sense of the showings that were guiding me to my search for deeper meaning. My dream left a strong impression, and I felt compelled to understand the insights that were progressively being unveiled.
 
As we were waiting in the entry of the Basilica for the ceremony to begin, I looked up and saw the stained-glass window. This ‘showing’ revealed the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus in a modern artistic portrayal that can be traced to previous representations in the Chartres Cathedral in France. Standing at a distance, the golden yellow crown on Mary’s head manifests itself as delight, or the light and joy that streams forth when we behold the sacredness hidden within the symbolic image.
 
Further investigation allowed me to discover that Mary is known as the Ark of the New Covenant. This knowledge relates to the Old Testament teachings that speak of the Ark of the Covenant that carries the Ten Commandments and shekinah, or divine presence, as described in the Jewish religious tradition. The allegories in the Old Testament are linked to the allegories of the New Testament. The Virgin Mary who appears in the New Testament is portrayed as the Ark of the New Covenant, interconnecting the stories that can only be understood through each other.
 
For example, the scriptures depict Martha as the older mother, linked to the women of the Old Testament. Martha gives birth to John the Baptist, her son who paves the way for Jesus Christ. Mary, the receptacle and conduit bridging the earthly and divine, represents the divine feminine in the New Testament. The Old Covenant and the Ark of the Old Testament shapeshift into a new symbol-Mary the Ark of the New Covenant. The story threads of the New Testament are woven into the Old Testament’s threads. Mary’s tapestry can only be fully understood through these interlaced story strands. When interconnected, they trace the arkway through time. Each new year begins under the sign of the Virgin Mary, the symbol of new beginnings.
 
The questing process allowed me to better understand how the Virgin Mary represents the sacredness of the transformational passageway. She births in the new, connecting the divine with the earthly by giving birth to Jesus Christ, the son of God. She is a vessel of life carrying the Christ Child. She is portrayed within the shape of the Vesica’s sacred form.
 
We learn in the Old Testament that Noah’s Ark saved life on Earth from the floods. The ark in this Biblical story symbolizes a vessel, safeguarding life. It is a lifeboat. The Ark of the Covenant provided the Ten Commandments for living the good life, the universal laws that must be respected. They are the rules that guide our relationships and society, protecting us from evil. Live in reversed spelling is evil. These commandments are a guiding light providing humanity with a moral compass.
 
The divine presence that accompanied the Jewish people who carried the Ark of the Covenant with them throughout the centuries is transposed in the teachings of the New Testament. Mary becomes the Ark, the vessel, birthing Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus Christ is the divine incarnate coming to use through a transformational passageway. Mary is the bridge.
 
Through spiritual autoethnography, I gained insights that inspired my quest. Writing about the questing process reinforced my ability to follow the guidance that was providing directionality. Following my inner compass, I was shown how the Arkway is a sacred passageway through time that has been recollected in Christian scriptures. Earthship, our emerald planet, is also a sacred vessel, holding us together. On yet another cosmic level, Earthship is part of the Milky Way.
 
Behold this stained-glass window. Can you perceive the symbolic metaphor in the artistic representation? Can you envision the opening of the transformational passageway that goes through Mary? When I behold the stained-glass window, she appears to symbolize the divine feminine that gives birth to new beginnings.  
 
To better comprehend this Marian tapestry, I have included a link to an article.

Here is information about Paul Monnier, the artist who created the stained-glass window.
In the St. Maurice Cathedral-La Vierge au Buisson Ardent, Paul Monnier, 1961:
https://www.paul-monnier.ch/oeuvres#4

In October 2024, I visited the Charlie Chaplin Museum, Chaplin’s World, and toured his family home in Vevey, Switzerland. Not only can you learn about his many films, but it is possible to see handwritten pages of his autobiography in his study. His work is especially significant in view of the current political context. Chaplin had to leave the U.S. during the McCarthy period that carried out witch hunts, expelling artists and actors that were suspected of being linked to communism during the “Red Scare.”
 
Charlie Chaplin’s lifework spanned from films to his autobiography that describes his difficult childhood. Growing up as a young boy with his brother, and mother who was ill, he was forced to use his acting abilities on vaudeville stages to survive. His stage experience started him on a path that would take him from London, to L.A., and finally to Switzerland.
 
His satire about Hitler in The Great Dictator provides an example of artistic engagement in times of rising authoritarianism. Chaplin’s words appear in a Vanity Faire article: What Charlie Chaplin Got Right About Satirizing Hitler

(Chaplin’s) speech makes a case for humanity in the face of grave evil. "We think too much and feel too little," Chaplin says. "More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness." You’ll recognize this theme—"more than machinery we need humanity"—throughout Chaplin’s work, and it rings especially true here. Chaplin emerges, fully human, as himself, breaking free of the film’s satirical trappings, to deliver one from the heart.
 
Chaplin’s life history reminds us of the powerful role of satire. His autobiography testifies to his incredible ability to rise above the poverty of his childhood, express his genius as an actor and filmmaker, and ultimately find happiness in family life surrounded by his wife and many children. Seeing through the eyes of his camera allows us to perceive the power of satire to reveal the dictator’s villainy that is bound up with his immaturity. Chaplin believed that Hitler should be laughed at.
 
Can Chaplin’s style of satire be used to poke at the fragile egos of male world leaders today? Who will find the courage to make a film that pokes at the performance of rising autocratic power on the world stage? What would Chaplin make of today’s machinery and AI? Today more than ever we need humanity. “Laugh,” Chaplin says, laughing opens our hearts and eyes.

Here is an excerpt of The Great Dictator to get you laughing.

Here is a BBC article-The Great Dictator: The film that dared to laugh at Hitler

Here is the link to Chaplin’s World, that shows his home overlooking the lake and exhibits about his films and filmmaking career in the museum.

Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist’s Way, developed a guidebook for developing creativity. She suggests that daily writing in morning pages and intentional artist dates can be employed to foster creativity. She explains that we can connect to the Creator and tap into a wellspring of creative potentiality. Her lifework inspires creative encounters.
 
I use the terms mediatorship and living wisdom to express the increased connectivity and meaningful insights that I sense and receive while writing. There is a creative force that guides us through our resolution processes when we write to transform our relations. We can strengthen our connection to creative energy and life-giving insights by writing. Writing opens a conduit, eliciting creative flow. We can Write to Transform!
 
Here is an interview with Julia Cameron about her books and creative writing practices. Her lifework has inspired many people to write and live a creative life.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJ8dr32Za8
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The Sisters of Earth (SOE) recently published a “Shamanic Journey into Earth’s Wisdom-Reflections on the Cosmovision of Thomas Berry” edited by Sister Gail Worcelo with New Perennials publishing. This edited book shares chapters from the Sisters of Earth community with reflections inspired from a conference on shamanic journey. Each chapter presents an approach that fosters spontaneity, awaking the shamanic personality that Thomas Berry referred to in his teachings. Sister Gail co-founded the Green Mountain Monastery in Vermont and is keeping Thomas Berry’s teachings alive. This book continues Berry’s work, by sharing women’s perceptions of shamanic journey.
 
The book illustrates how wisdom can be cultivated through various practices like sacred art and activism. But we need guidance to tap into the mystical dimensions of life. Reconnecting to Earth-centered approaches to education is an essential part of the Great Work that Thomas Berry advocated for throughout his lifetime. Berry also underscored the important work of women who are revealing the disaster of androcentrism to our society. The prioritization of male perspectives, experiences, and values over those of women has contributed to the current ecological crisis.
 
“Shamanic Journey into Earth’s Wisdom,” amplifies the voices of women who share their practices and engagement. Their different approaches allow us to better understand the emerging areas of service that the Sisters of Earth are developing. Through their testimonies, we see how the shamanic journey awakens the Earth's dream. Together, the authors present a multifaceted vision of Earth’s wisdom.
 
Autoethnography is akin to spiritual journey. I am convinced that autoethnographic practice is a form of shamanic journey. Autoethnography can foster conflict wisdom, providing a pathway for transformation. Autoethnography is a method that develops directionality by activating the inner compass. We can use storytelling as a tool for future forming. The autoethnographic method allows us to go inward, reconnecting with our waking dreams. Our dreams help us to envision a new story. They provide quest orientation.
 
New Perennials publishes books that sow the seeds of change. Their publications can be downloaded without cost. They believe that thoughts matter. Both our thoughts and narrative matters are future forming. I have provided links to both the New Perennials website and to their publications so that you can learn about their community.

The Turning of the Child
 
Here is an excerpt from The Book of the Omaha (pp.9-12) that explains the ritual of The Turning of the Child. It involves presenting a child and having them take their first steps with moccasins that symbolize the importance of walking on the earth. In the ceremony the priest says the words, “Here the truth has been spoken to you. Because of this truth you shall stand.” We are called to stand in the strength of truth. Truth is the way.
 
The Book of the Omaha contains many stories that teach Omaha tribal wisdom and ways.

When I walk through the Alpine meadows, I feel connected to the beauty of the creation. This beauty has inspired and accompanied me throughout my adulthood. In summer, the abundant Alpine flowers provide colorful pathways dotted by pink rhododendrons, blue gentians, lupins, and a rare form of fuchsia Alpine orchids. They appear to live in colorful plant communities, attracting our gaze with their loveliness. I imagine what the mountain looked like during the Celtic period. The Helvetii were a Celtic tribe or tribal confederation occupying most of the Swiss plateau at the time of their contact with the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC.
 
The Celtic wisdom traditions teach us how to listen to our souls. John Phillip Newell traces the history of the Celtic people and their unique way of seeing and understanding. In his book, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul, published in 2021. He tells the story of Celtic saints and mystics and how they fashioned a spiritual approach that revers the natural world. His books and retreats provide a framework for spiritual questing. 
https://www.earthandsoul.org/john-philip-newell

John Muir, an American Celt, drew from this Celtic approach to the natural world and influenced the creation of the National Parks in the United States. He was able to listen to the heartbeat of God and recognize the essence of God in nature. He believed that hope lies in God’s wildness. He proclaimed the sacredness of earth and condemned the sacrilege of earth” (Newell, 2021, p. 168). Muir built a cabin on Yosemite Creek and wrote in his journal of a conversion experience that was engendered by his intense encounter with the forces of nature. Yosemite National Park was modeled after Yellowstone National Park. As a nature writer he sought to tell the story of nature in an accessible account that all readers could understand. His writing was a form of prophecy that sought to change our vision of nature. He saw the wild country and Sierra Nevada Mountains as his home.
 
Celtic wisdom allows us to experience revelatory encounters with the Creation. The pioneering Scottish mountaineer and poet, Nan Shepherd, offered a poetic account of her own encounter with the living mountain that was first published in 1977. Shepherd gleaned abiding wisdom for the art of living through her relationship with the Scottish mountains that she shared in her book, The Living Mountain.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/03/19/the-living-mountain-nan-shepherd/

Her woman’s gaze allows her to perceive what male authors before her hadn’t expressed in the same way. She braids together memoir, field notes, and philosophical inquiry that bring her mountain to life. She explains how her encounter with the mountain alters her understanding of the interconnectivity inherent in the natural world. Through a form of radical presence, she can listen deeply to the wisdom imparted to her by the living mountain.
Like Shepherd, I have gained wisdom from my Alpine mountains. Being rooted in the mountainscape has allowed me to tap into the Celtic wisdom found in the Alpine regions.
Shepherd writes so beautifully about her desire to be with the mountain that was like visiting a friend:

Ecological challenges are on the forefront of our concerns. Scientific writers are writing in more easily understandable ways that respect their readers. They are working on making science accessible to a wider public. Two examples are Hope Jahren and Zoe Schlanger who have both gotten wide recognition for their award-winning books.
 
Zoe Schlanger, an award-winning science writer who wrote The Light Eater’s explains the current discussions in biology that are arising from new evidence that sheds light on plant consciousness and intelligence. Her poetic descriptions share the discoveries that are changing current scientific paradigms. She shares research findings that reveal how plant communication works suggesting a form of plant behavior. Plant sensing has also been observed with the ability to hear, possibly see, and even morph.
 
She presents controversial finding that are investigating how plants are able to shape themselves and the possibility that they have vision to see or chemical transmissions that allow a rare form of morphing that previously weren’t known about. Plants also register touch, sensing attacks and creating defense responses. There is a widening circle of recognition that believes that living creatures have consciousness and different forms of intelligence including memory. She opens our minds to how plant communities’ wellbeing and our wellbeing are entangled by describing life’s intertwined connections.
 
Biology studies evolutionary processes that create solutions to the challenges different life forms face. These resolution processes have patterned human resolution processes. Recent research is investigating plant agency. Plants, microbes, and parasites have been found to influence our human behavior. Epigenetics allows us to understand how our environments shape us. Her book raises the question of our moral responsibility to plants and the natural world and our participation in ceaseless creativity. She reminds us that a sense of awe gives rise to mutualism and an increased desire to care. Here is a link to an interview with Schlanger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp_c-vchgSE

Hope Jahren is an award-winning geobiologist, professor, and writer who explains the links between our consumption habits and our endangered earth. Her first book Lab Girl is an autobiography. Her second book, The Story of More How we got to climate change and where to go from here, shares her insights on climate change. Professor Jahren explains how we can use less and share more, engaging in conscious lifestyle transformations. Here book grew from a class that she taught at the university. She explains how an increase in population has led to a massive increase in production and waste. She points to the distribution problem we are currently facing, underscoring that our ability to share food could solve the problem of undernourishment.  
 
Her goal is to inform and not scare her students and readership. She shares tools for change and trusts her readership to make appropriate changes, explaining how we got to this point in time. She invites us to reflexively look at our lifestyles and make doable changes, not waiting for policy changes but acting upon our own ability to initiate constructive ecological change. She explains how we can take stock of our small purchases and become conscious of what we are watering with our money. She question, “Are we watering viable ways of living?” Here is a Harvard University Book Talks and Research:

​These women have followed Muir’s example by studying nature and writing books that are easily accessible to readers. Their shared love of nature has enkindled a desire to search for hidden truths that have the potential of changing our scientific paradigms. As we increasingly understand our interconnectedness, we are being called to enact what Pope Francis refers to as an ‘ecological conversion’.
 
Here are picture of rhododendrons, Alpine orchids, gentians, and lupins.

https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/uram.34.1-2.95
​

https://www.cgjunghaus.ch/en/visit/exhibitions/special-exhibition/
​

My visit to Jung’s house, that became a museum in 2018, allowed me to view illustrations and carvings that were made by Jung while he was working on the Red Book. The Jung’s family home is situated on the Lake of Zurich in Küsnacht. When my daughter Jessica was playing in the women’s soccer playoffs for the super league in nearby Wil, I decided that we could take the Swiss Goldcoast, which is a road running along the lower eastern shore of the Lake of Zurich, to get to her soccer match. I was happy to find an itinerary that finally allowed me to visit the C. J. Jung Museum.
 
The house has a large front garden that separates the property from the main road. The beauty of the lake can be seen through many windows facing the lake, as well as the large veranda. There is a boat house and a small cabin on the water with a desk that must have lent itself well for inspirational writing and contemplation.
 
Jung’s library and his consultation room are upstairs. I followed the museum guide up the staircase, where she led us to his study. Jung’s books line the shelves of his extensive library, showing the topics of research that he was interested in. I noticed that a large shelf is devoted to the journal The Quest that he had bound together in sperate books over the years. I also saw many volumes on Egyptian history and symbols.
 
Jung’s quest for understanding led him to embark on self-experimentation that allowed him to write about his inner dialogues and dreams that are recorded in the Red Book. The key terms and concepts that emerged from this work are the foundation of his Analytical Psychology. His transformational approach to psychology is akin to alchemy.
 
When I signed the guest book before leaving, I wrote Susie Riva, Isis Rises, from Life-o-grams to Transformagrams. Isis Rises emerges from my name by re-organizing the letters in my signature. After visiting the Jung Museum, I realized that the symbol of Isis, and the feminine principal was not only the Goddess Isis who is presented as nurturing feminine energy but also the weaver. The exhibit in the C.J. Jung Museum explains how Jung saw Isis as the connector, connecting together the different parts of Osiris, after his brother Seth cut him into 14 pieces. Isis magically healed Osiris, by bringing the fragments of his body back together.
 
I have defined mediation as “faire le lien” or linkedness. This definition has guided my work in mediation and brought me to the understanding of mediatorship “The function and position of the mediator, and a vessel of connectivity that contains an integrated framework of mediation practices” (Riva, 2022, p. 257). When I returned home, I read the Special Exhibition 2023 book, C.G. Jung-Journey into the Unconscious that offered even more insights into Jung’s journey into the unconscious. The exhibit book provides an overarching view of Jung’s self-experimentation and his writing process that led to his conceptual framework.
 
Autoethnography allows us to engage in a form of psychological development that engenders completeness.

Peaceful mountain meadows and pathways can be found in the central region of Switzerland.  Pilgrimage pathways took me to sites that allowed me to find heartfelt peace. “Make me an instrument of your peace” is a powerful part of Saint Francis of Assisi’s prayer. Pilgrimages can enkindle a sense of inner peacefulness that helps us to craft peace in our families and communities.
 
In the heart of Switzerland, the Einsiedeln Abbey in the Canton of Schwyz attracts 800,000 pilgrims a year to visit The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln. The abbey is an important baroque monastic site for Benedictine monks. The Einsiedeln Chapel of Grace was consecrated in 948.
 
Arriving to attend the daily vespers, I first kneeled before the Black Madonna. Light streamed out from the icon, revealing divine presence. I remained in front of the Black Madonna until it was time for vespers that are sung daily at 4:30 p.m. I was able to have my amber rosary that I got in Warsaw Poland blessed before attending vespers. It is a keepsake from a medical anthropology conference. The grace that I experienced before the Black Madonna confirmed the sacredness of the pilgrimage site. The mysterious wonder-workings of Marian pilgrimages continue to attract the faithful and transform lives.
 
The vesper “Salve Regina” can be visioned via this link: https://www.youtube.com/user/KlosterEinsiedeln/live
​

The pilgrimage to The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln is associated with pre-Christian practices dating back to Isis the Egyptian Goddess. The beautiful location was probably a sanctified Celtic place of worship that provides a spiritual foundation for the abbey. The natural site’s rare beauty enhances the spiritual pilgrimage, eliciting awe and wonder. The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln like other Black Virgins brings to the forefront the collective conscious of sexuality and religion associated with the Divine Feminine and the archetypes representing creative manifestation.
 
Another Swiss pilgrimage to St. Nicholas of Flüe in Ranft brought me to the patron saint of Switzerland in the Canton of Obwald. Nicholas of Flüe left his family to become a hermit. He and his wife Dorothea had ten children. His life as a hermit in the 1400’s has become a story that even inspired Pope John Paul II to visit family home and chapels that welcome visitors and pilgrims from around the world. I stayed in the Paxmontana Hotel in Flüeli-Ranft with my husband to hike through the region and visit the chapel and home of Nicholas of Flüe, a pilgrimage site that is on the Way of St. James. Nicholas of Flüe was also known as Brother Klaus and his counsel helped prevent a war between the Swiss cantons. He is known for being a peacemaker.
 
St. Nicholas of Flüe had a vision of a mystical wheel. His mystical vision was expressed by medallions that represented visiting the sick as mercy, providing hospitality to strangers, feeding the hungry and quenching the thirsty, caring for the incarcerated, clothing the naked, and burying the dead. These acts were reminders of the Holy Face.
 
Both pilgrimage sites are located in the heart of Switzerland. Going to these beautiful places brought me closer to the Swiss spiritual heritage. The Paxmontana Hotel overlooks the Ranft gorges where the chapel and hermit dwelling are situated. To access the hotel, visitors traverse through a flowering pergola which was constructed in the late 1800’s near Nicholas of Flüe’s family home.
 
These pilgrimages allowed me to home in to the sacred heart of Switzerland. My travels to these sacred pilgrimage sites and my prayers brought me closer to the Swiss traditions. My life has been graced by the wonder-workings of these sacred pilgrimage sites.

My website presents each chapter offering a video, a resumé of the themes, as well as pictures, articles, and films that allow readers to explore the concepts that are developed. The “Give-Away Girl’s Give-Away Book” can be downloaded and used as a blueprint for activating the autoethnographic writing process.

https://mailchi.mp/b4c5e643ba32/april2024

I just returned from a cultural visit to Venice where I discovered the Venetian blueprint for Justice. I toured The Doge Palace and learned about their conception of governance represented in an architectural design. Each room is decorated with beautiful paintings that portray the ideals associated with justice. The Venetian Republic created a unique form of government including a judicial system. The paintings in the compass room for administering justice depict a compass for finding justice. When the guilty are condemned, they walk from the official room across a bridge to the prisons that are connected by the ‘Bridge of Sighs’. The Doge Palace is made up of a maze of rooms describing how the Venetian leaders dealt with frequent complots seeking to overthrow the powers in place.
 
The Doge Palace represents the physical configuration of the Venetian Republic and laws in architecture. The rituals associated with justice, as well as the myths depicting symbolic images can be seen in the magnificent artwork exhibited throughout the The Doge Palace. This allows visitors to contemplate the meaning of justice and how it should be administered for the greater good.
 
It is also interesting that the Republic was overtaken by Napoleon and that the Napoleonic Code became the dominate reference in European legal architecture, following the battles that toppled the Venetian Republic. The Venetian Republic controlled shipping during a long period until Napoleon conquered Venice, causing a loss in economic power. Within the walls of the palace are exhibits showing ancient world cartographies, in the form of maps that depict the understanding of the world in ancient times.
 
The Doge Palace is an architectural representation of justice on one end of the spectrum while DAOs, which are virtual entities of the blockchain, are on the opposite end of the spectrum. We are developing new cartographies to represent these technical revolutions. Our representations of the face of the Earth and our understanding of justice continue to evolve, especially in virtual realities where the blockchain is transforming central bank policies, currencies, and trade.
 
Being Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, DAOs are an example of the emerging opportunities stemming from technological advancements, as well as the emergence of a legal framework that will provide a new form of secure space for transactions. As DAOs and the decentralized environment of the blockchain are gaining in importance, the World Economic Forum is exploring the legal and regulatory challenges that have emerged through this technology, as well as the immense opportunities that it could offer in shaping a fairer and more equally distributed global economy for future generations.
 
Here is the link to the World Economic Forum’s article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/everything-you-need-to-know-daos/

Here is the link to information on The Doge Palace: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2273/doges-palace-in-venice

​As adjunct faculty at Creighton University, I had the compelling assignment to dive into “The Ministry for the Future,” a powerful narrative aimed at awakening to the pressing environmental crises that loom over our present. Kim Stanley Robinson uses hard science fiction to present an unfolding polycrisis inspired by scientific findings that are announcing horrific heatwaves, the melting of glaciers and the rise of sea levels, as well as the dangers inherent in the continuous use of fossil fuels that increase carbon dioxide levels. He describes the increasing extinction of lifeforms on Earth as well as increasing inequality, with 1 percent of the global population owning the vast majority of the world’s wealth. The novel takes place in Zurich, where the author has intimate knowledge of the city, after living there in the 1980’s. His characters even travel to Valais, climbing over mountain passes and flying in helicopters over damns in the region where I live.
 
In his novel, Robinson uses the phrase, ‘let us beat swords into ploughshares’ in reference to a statue given to the United Nations from Russia in 1959. Beating swords into ploughshares comes from a Bible verse in Isaiah. The statue symbolizes man’s desire to put an end to war and transform tools of destruction into tools to benefit mankind. In keeping with this intention, Robinson’s characters find solutions, turning the Central Banks and other international organizations into tools that benefit humankind. A thought-provoking example is the creation of a carbon coin dedicated to carbon dioxide removal.
 
Robinson begins his novel with a heatwave in India where a wet-bulb weather event, with extreme heat and humidity, kills millions. The realization that humans cannot adapt to wet-bulb weather events becomes a catalyst for change. The wet-bulb event in India becomes a shifting point that allows for the creation of The Ministry for the Future under The Paris Agreement. The heads of the ministry work to make systemic changes like reconfiguring capitalism as well as the international monetary systems, using carbon coins that orient future investments towards sustainability, by rewarding activities that work to increase carbon sequestration.
 
Envisioning ways to shapeshift the dysfunctional systems that are waging against humanity’s survival and the well-being of future generations, the book uses heteroglossia, or dialogic imagination as conceptualized by Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian literary theorist, to question power structures. The book’s characters like Mary, an Irish woman that heads the ministry, provide us with dialogues that give voice to a framework for planetary transformation. These conversations, rich with cultural insights and futuristic ideals, weave a narrative that challenges our perceptions of governance, sustainability, and human connectivity in the face of global change.
 
The author suggests that a very rapid, stepwise, legal reformist revolution is the best option for eliciting change. His novel describes how everything humans do at scale has planetary effects and could be called geoengineering. He suggests that even maximizing women’s education and political power worldwide could be considered a form of geoengineering. Giving more power to women, by providing higher education and leadership positions for women, would have an effect on birthrates. Policies that favor women’s rights have been shown to slow population growth. This insight exemplifies how even gender issues influence important sustainability outcomes. Empowering women has a measurable effect on the biosphere. Throughout the novel, Robinson describes how we can counteract the effects of global warming. Scientific studies, inventions, and even new technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence, provide ways to bring forth a sustainable future. His storyline develops these themes to show how we as a species can consciously transform our systems to avoid extinction.
 
The novel provides an imaginary plot for harnessing transformational forces for systemic planetary change. Robinson’s work contributes to the growing consciousness about climate change and the Anthropocene, or 6th phase of extinction. Even Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the Noosphere or planetary mind, understood to be a kind of superorganism, is woven into the storyline. Robinson uses science fiction to awaken us to the reality of our current dilemma. But he also provides a vision for transformation, including ideas related to the global commons, land regeneration projects, rewilding, and a response to the suffering of millions of refugees with the creation of a global citizenship.
 
While reading his novel, we grasp the devastating extent of the destructive forces that have been waged upon our ecosystems, and the need for repair. As a reader, participating in the novel’s dialogical process, I asked myself, “How can we actively engage in the great work that will create a flourishing future?” Robinson uses science fiction to envision a hopeful future while reminding his readership of the urgent need for constructive social change as well as our power to make the future. “The Ministry for the Future” highlights new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, as crucial tools for working towards the common good, underscoring their potential to catalyze positive and sustainable social transformations.

ETH Zurich Global Lecture Series: 
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF7j7J84Tdk

Wet-bulb temperatures: 
​https://theconversation.com/as-heat-records-fall-how-hot-is-too-hot-for-the-human-body-210088​

David Beardsley explains that the central metaphor in the Odyssey is nostos, the return home, in “The Journey Back to Where You Are: Homer’s Odyssey as Spiritual Quest.” The wisdom that is revealed in Homer’s work is a story strand passed on through generations. Finding the path to wholeness is illustrated through allegoric story threads that encapsulate wisdom. It contains a perennial philosophy for visualizing the Good on a pathway that reunites the pathfinder with Self. The stories in Homer’s Odyssey carry kernels of wisdom over a story bridge through time and generations. This journey is not for the feet, but a walkthrough that is an inner transformation. The hero’s journey advances through a turning wheel of perceptions on a journey that takes you back to where you are.
This can be understood as a systematic process of “dis-illusionment” that takes one beyond the war-like forces playing out in our lives. Beauty, truth, goodness, and justice shine through in moments when humans “possess their soul.” This soul-searching takes us on what can be understood as an odyssey.
In Homer, we see that home is encoded in the author’s name. Homer, is possibly a key that opens to a deeper understanding of the journey. The odyssey traces the homing in process, as voyagers find their way back to the homeland through the experience of homecoming. This homeward journey is guided by the memory of the Good. It is a voyage on the sea of life that takes us through trials and tribulations in order to develop discrimination, the perception of difference with unusual intelligence.
 
By reading the Odyssey, we learn to sing the song that the gods arranged for us. By transposing the wisdom written within the lines into our own life hi-story, we subsequently influence the trajectory of our own lives. Our life’s song is an original composition that provides musical notations and symbols that map the oeuvre, indicating how the piece should be played. Much like a sheet of music that guides the pianist, the Odyssey contains the fundamental elements that indicate the various partitions that delineate a spiritual quest. The pages guide the reader through the different arrangements, much like a composition of lyrics and melody on sheet music. The ancient text provides a transformational template for spiritual heroes.
“The fact that the gods may have arranged it, however, does not let us off the hook.
We still need to play our part in the song, while simultaneously becoming aware of the song and learning to sing it ourselves. So for the spiritual hero, there is an extra dimension to the quest: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine. This quest has been expressed by many different people in many different traditions over many centuries, but those who wish to can see the common thread: from Strife to Love (Empedocles), from becoming to Being (Parmenides), from the shadows to the sunlight (Plato), from the many to the One (Plotinus). It is, as we shall see, a nostos—”a return from darkness and death to light and life,” and although it is often portrayed as a journey, as Plotinus says, “It is not a journey for the feet.” It is an inner transformation, a return to a Self that is always there and does not change; a “journey back to where you are.” 
 
https://chs.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/The-Journey-Back-To-Where-You-Are.pdf