Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee on Remembering Earth

Emergence Magazine is an online publication with annual print edition exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of species, and a loss of sacred connection to the Earth, we look to emerging stories. Our podcast features exclusive interviews, narrated essays, stories and more.

We have forgotten the covenant of primordial love and reciprocal care with the Earth that existed from the beginning in favor of a story that casts humans as the center of the cosmos. As the fallout of this narrative culminates in the unprecedented transformation of our outer landscapes, our inner landscapes are also shifting in ways that demand our attention.

Given at St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London in November 2023, this talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee speaks to the possibility of profound inner transformation amid the great changes engulfing the Earth. Exploring the need to step away from a humancentric paradigm and towards a remembrance of the Earth as a divine being, Emmanuel asks: As so much falls away, what can we offer to the Earth? How can we place Earth back at the center of the story? What opens when love once again becomes present between us?

Read the transcript.

Image credit: Millennium Images / Gallery Stock.

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Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is an Emmy- and Peabody Award–nominated filmmaker and a Sufi teacher. His films include: Earthrise, Sanctuaries of Silence, The Atomic Tree, Counter Mapping, Marie’s Dictionary, and Elemental. His films have been screened at New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and Hot Docs, exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum, and featured on PBS POV, National Geographic, and New York Times Op-Docs. He is the founder and executive editor of Emergence Magazine.