Ecosystem Member

Jewish Teachings on Nature and Responsibility with Rabbi Laura Bellows, Dayenu

Rick Evans interviews Rabbi Laura Bellows about her relationship with nature and the intersection of Judaism and climate action, exploring how Jewish teachings inspire environmental responsibility and the work of Dayenu, a Jewish call to climate action.

Key Topics

Judaism, climate action, Dayenu, Jewish teachings, environmental responsibility

Key Takeaways

• Judaism is deeply connected to nature and seasonal cycles.
• Passover is both a celebration of freedom and a harvest holiday.
• Dayenu means 'enough' and calls for urgent climate action.
• Jewish texts emphasize caring for the Earth and all life.
• Dayenu's work includes spiritual adaptation and climate justice.
• Music and arts are integral to Dayenu's climate activism.
• Dayenu fosters multigenerational conversations on climate change.
• Spiritual adaptation helps combat climate despair and burnout.
• Dayenu circles build community and power for climate action.
• Imagination and storytelling are key to envisioning a better future.

Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction to Rabbi Laura Bellows

00:03:00 Judaism and Nature

00:06:00 Dayenu's Mission and Meaning

00:09:00 Spiritual Adaptation and Climate Justice

00:12:00 Multigenerational Conversations and Community Building

00:15:00 Imagination and Storytelling for the Future

Key Links

• Dayenu
• Rabbi Jennie Rosenn on Boiling Point
• The Work That Reconnects from Joanna Macy

Hey folks, thanks for tuning in to the latest episode of the Ecosystem Member podcast. Today’s episode is one that I had in mind when I first started formulating the idea for this podcast about two years ago and is a fitting end to season two of the podcast.

Dr. Susan Murphy Roshi is the founding teacher of Zen Open Circle in Sydney, Australia, as well as a writer, radio producer, film writer and director. I came to know her through two of her books - 'Minding the Earth, Mending the World: Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis' and her latest book 'A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis'.

In this episode, we talk about what a Zen perspective on the climate crisis looks like and the concept of Engaged Buddhism, the interconnectedness of all things with a practice from Susan on how to help us recognize that connectedness, and her unique background that brings together Zen and Aboriginal teachings.

This is episode 43 of the podcast and probably is my favorite one yet for a lot of reasons.

The first being that a lot of my contemplation about our human relationship with nature came through my study of Buddhism and Zen. About a decade ago, I was lucky enough to be introduced to an amazing career coach named Michael Carroll who was a high flying human resources executive at a number of well known companies including the Walt Disney Company and an authorized Buddhist teacher who wrote the books 'Awake at Work' and 'Fearless at Work' on bringing Buddhist wisdom to your work and career. The short time I spent with Michael directly and then the much longer time I spent with his books fundamentally shifted my view of not just work, but how I engage the world around me. Susan's books have had a similar impact.

The other reason that this is one of my favorite episodes is that it provides no answers. The natural human inclination when faced with volatility and uncertainty is to look for certainty, to look for the known. Yet, to put it bluntly, what we know is not working for a lot of people and certainly not for the planet.

There are people who would like you to believe that the answer lies in domination. In dominating and extracting from nature and dominating other groups of people. They like to say things like "peace through strength" and we're "at war" with nature, subjugating it for our gain. I don't care for certainty, but I am certain that the notion that we are on this plant to fight it and every other living thing around us is ridiculous.

Thich Nhat Han wrote “Our own life has to be our message.” So as we wrap season two, I am asking myself what I want my message to be about my time on Earth and my relationship with what lives and breathes here.

*Please note: The closed caption has an incorrect spelling. "Jiao Jiao" should be spelled "Zhaozhou". We apologize for this error.

Links

Buy Susan Murphy's 'A Fire Runs Through All Things'

Buy Susan Murphy's 'Minding the Earth, Mending the World'

For those of you who have listened to a range of our first 40 something episodes, you know that I think deeply and widely about our human relationship with nature and the more than human world. I love talking to artists and curators about the big, thorny questions they are asking us to think about in their work. I also love talking to adventurers in business and athletics who are pushing the boundaries of their categories. But at some point, we need to buckle down and do the hard work of making sure that we still have the wild spaces that inspire these artists and energize these adventurers.

Today’s guest is Nick Mucha, Director of Environmental Issues and Strategy at Patagonia. He’s also a contributor and one of the editors of the new book from Patagonia “Tools to Save Our Home Planet”.

After more than a decade in the non-profit space, Nick was reenergized by attending Patagonia’s Tools for Grassroots Activists conference back in 2013. That renewed sense of purpose eventually led him to a desk in Patagonia itself where he works on the conference, with Patagonia’s environmental non-profit grantees and on Patagonia’s overall approach to environmental issues.

In this episode we talk about his path to Patagonia, the recently released book, and the role of environmental activism in the current political environment where many of the gains in the US that environmental activists have achieved are under threat. Coming on the heels of the success of grassroots organizations in getting Utah Senator Mike Lee to remove his provision in President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill to sell off thousands of acres of public lands, this episode is a call to action to keep pushing with budget cuts to departments like the National Parks and Forest Service likely to make it harder and harder to protect these lands.

On that point, if you did email or call your Senator or House representative to tell them to fight Senator Lee’s provision - thank you, thank you, thank you. This proves that the big tent approach to environmental activist that Nick outlines in the episode works, even though we recorded this episode almost a month ago before Senator Lee's antics.

We also talk a lot in the episode about Patagonia Action Works. It is a platform that helps connect Patagonia’s grassroots environmental grantees with skilled volunteers who can help them with everything from copywriting to legal advice. It is a platform I am personally passionate about having completed nearly 20 projects through the platform. In recent weeks through Action Works, I had a call with Friends of the Boundary Waters about advertising strategy and with Save the Yellowstone Grizzly about strategy needs and their new documentary “Return of the Grizzly” narrated by actor Jeff Bridges, which is garnering rave reviews by those who have seen it at festivals.

I hope you enjoy this episode with Nick and afterward, making sure to pick up a copy of “Tools to Save Our Home Planet” and sign up for a project on Patagonia Action Works.

Links

• Tools to Save Our Home Planet
• Patagonia Action Works

Our guest for this week is a follow on to our guest from last week. Dr. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is an artist based in the UK who has a piece in the “More Than Human” exhibition at the Design Museum that our guest last week Justin McGuirk curated. That exhibition opens July 11, but if you’re watching this episode on YouTube or Spotify, you’ll get a sneak peek of her piece in this episode. 

Daisy’s art is multidisciplinary and examines our fraught human relationships with nature and technology. In addition to her work in the upcoming Design Museum exhibition, her Pollinator Pathmaker piece, which uses an algorithm to design art in the form of what we think of as gardens but for the benefit of pollinators rather than humans, has been created for the Serpentine at Kensington Gardens and The Natural History Museum in Berlin. Other work of Daisy’s has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Natural History Museum in London, the Cooper Hewitt in New York and the Science Gallery in Dublin among many other prestigious institutions around the world. She's also received several awards including the Changemaker Award from Dezeen and The Rapoport Award for Women in Art & Technology from The Lumen Prize. 

In this episode, we talk about the overarching themes of Daisy's work, her obsession with exploring how we think about the idea of better, her Pollinator Pathmaker project and a couple of her other projects including one in which she created a digital version of a severely endangered rhino and resurrected the smell of a lost flower. We also talk a bit about non-human animal consciousness and the potential for creativity and making art, at least from the perspective of how we understand those terms. 

Links

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg website

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Instagram

Pollinator Pathmaker tool

“More Than Human” Exhibition at The Design Museum

Our guest is Justin McGuirk, the Director of Future Observatory and the curator of an upcoming exhibit at the Design Museum in London called “More Than Human” that brings together art, science and radical thinking to ask how design can help our planet thrive by shifting its focus beyond human needs.

The exhibition opens July 11 and runs to October 5, so get your tickets today so you don't miss out. Some of the contributors include Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Solange Pessoa, and a monumental seaweed installation by artist Julia Lohmann. It promises to be a must see. Visit designmuseum.org for more information on that.

The exhibition is backed by Future Observatory, which is the Design Museum’s national research program for the green transition. With funding from the UKRI Arts & Humanities Research Council, it has awarded millions of pounds to support research that brings together UK design researchers, universities and businesses to catalyze the transition to net zero and a green economy. 

In this episode with Justin, we talk about the exhibition and the broader work of Future Observatory in expanding the role of design in creating a green future. We also talk about what more than human design is and the need it addresses, as well as how it compares to other design frameworks like human centered design.

Huge thanks to Justin for having this discussion. Much of the work Future Observatory is involved in is - naturally - about creating the future. It's about approaches that aren't mainstream yet and solutions that are in the process of being realized. That can sometimes make it hard to wrap your head around the subject, but I think Justin does an amazing job of sharing his perspective on the field.

As always, please make sure to leave a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you are listening there.

Links

'More Than Human' exhibition at the Design Museum, London

Future Observatory

Future Observatory Journal

Today’s guest is an alpinist, mountain guide and mother and the subject of a new three part film series from the team at Patagonia titled “Parenting: Disaster Style”.

Pulled from the vocabulary of climbers, disaster style is all about giving it everything you’ve got. It’s hard, messy and adventurous with some risk in pursuit of big rewards. Zoe Hart asks what it would be like to bring that approach to the world of parenting, where risk looks more like a 25 hour flight with child that’s only a handful of months old than climbing a high grade pitch in nasty weather.

This episode is incredibly enjoyable as we hear Zoe tell stories of both the good and the bad of “Parenting: Disaster Style”, as well as how he “accidentally” fell in love with her kids, and how they are working together today on a shared passion for environmental activism. Whether you are a parent or not, I think you’ll really enjoy Zoe’s perspective and can take some learnings from the lessons she’s experienced first hand - both good and not so good.

After you listen to this episode, please make sure to head over to ecosystemmember.com where you can find links to watch the film series, as well as a really beautiful piece that Zoe wrote for Yeti titled “Finding Refugee”.

Huge thanks to Zoe for taking time to chat and for her transparency. As a soon to be parent myself, many of these questions were as much out of personal interest as they were public interest.

And as always, if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave us a five star review. The more of you who do that, the more likely the platforms are to make sure people find the podcast.

Links

Patagonia YouTube with "Parenting: Disaster Style" series

"Finding Refuge" by Zoe Hart for YETI

Zoe Hart Website

Zoe Hart Instagram

Today’s guest is one of the people I first had in mind when I started to concept the idea of Ecosystem Member. His approach to life is really inspiring and I think he has a really unique connection to place. I am extremely envious of the adventures he’s had and it was a real privilege to get some of his time. 

Rickey Gates is our guest, he is a conceptual runner, which he explains exactly what that means in the episode, as well as guide, writer and photographer. If you follow the running and trail running communities, Rickey is probably a familiar name to you. He’s also made national headlines for his unique projects that bring new elements to the running experience, like the 3,700 TransAmericana run across the United States, his Every Single Street project in San Francisco and UltraTraining, which combines train ride and running. His current project is about finding and documenting the 50 Classic Trails of the United States. 

We talk about all of this and more and….to further reinforce how good of a dude Rickey is, he did this recording while recovering from a cold. 

Please make sure to head to our Substack page at ecosystemmember.com to see the post for this episode. It has all of the links to the projects discussed including the TransAmericana documentary, which is an absolute must watch.

While you are there, you can sign up to our Substack newsletter so you get posts like this for every future episode as well as the occasional editorial from me. As always if you enjoy this episode please leave us a five star rating and subscribe to the podcast.

Links

- Rickey Gates Website

- Rickey Gates Instagram

- Transamericana Documentary

- Every Single Street San Francisco Film

- UltraTraining Film

- 50 Classic Trails Website

- 50 Classic Trails Instagram

Our guest for today’s episode is Katrina Spade, the founder of Recompose, which is a human composting service based out of Seattle, Washington. 

Before I get into the details of our conversation, as you can imagine, our conversations centers around death. If the topic stirs up personal feelings and situations you would not rather than experience at this time, then please do not listen to this the episode. Every person has a different relationship with death and I don’t want to catch anyone off-guard. 

If you choose to stick around, thank you for engaging this topic. It is one I’ve thought about a lot as you’ll hear in the episode and one that our guest Katrina has obviously thought about a lot as well. And that thought is reflected in the Recompose experience.

In just about a handful of years, Recompose has brought hundreds of people through the human composting process. And as you’ll hear from Katrina, every aspect of the process has been designed and designed with intention.

With 13 states in the United States having legalized human composting including Georgia, Washington, Delaware, California and Minnesota, it is a practice that offers - at least in my opinion - a path to transition from this mortal coil to whatever you believe is next in a way that respects and honors nature by giving something back. I see it as completing the cycle. 

Links

• Recompose Website
• Recompose Instagram
• Katrina Spade TEDX Talk

Our guest for this episode is Auden Schendler, the author of a new book called “Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul”. Published by Harvard Business Review Press, it is part memoir, part reflection, and part prescription from 30 years of working in corporate sustainability.

If you aren’t familiar with Auden, he learned about corporate sustainability at the Rocky Mountain Institute, which was co-founded by Amory Lovins, who was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time in 2009 and considered the Einstein of energy efficiency. Auden then moved on to Aspen Ski Company where he worked from 1999 to earlier this year as its Vice President and then Senior Vice President of Sustainability. He’s been named a "climate innovator" by TIME magazine and a "climate saver" by the EPA.

In this episode, we talk about Auden's journey from growing up in New Jersey during the environmental decay of the 1970s and spending time with extended family in North Dakota - a place where we found the natural world as a refuge - to his work in local politics in Colorado and in the ski industry.

Our conversation though centers on the ideas in the book Terrible Beauty. As Auden says "climate changes threatens everything we care about" so we need to be willing to do the hard work as citizens to bring about real change. He also shares a few ideas about how corporate leaders can go beyond corporate sustainability as usual that just upholds our fossil fuel economy to get to a place where they are using the power of their brand to push for systemic change.

However, the book is unlike any other sustainability book or article I've ever read. Auden makes a more joyful case about how we be engage our role as citizens to build community and ultimately drive change that allows us all to thrive - as a parent, as a corporate leader or by just contributing to the place we live.

You can buy the book at audenschendler.com, and read a few endorsements from people far more noteworthy than me such as Conrad Anker, Bill McKibben and former White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy.

In past episodes, we’ve talked with Kiran Gandhi aka Madame Gandhi about turning Antarctic glacier recordings into popular music and Arctic Ascent star Dr. Heidi Sevestre about glacier research and science communication. Today we’re bringing those two areas together with environmental composer Konstantine Vlasis, who is studying the sound of glaciers in Iceland as a means to diagnosis planetary health and making music with what he records.

As you’ll hear in this episode, Konstantine is a super smart dude. In addition to being a Leifur Eiriksson Fellow and Fulbright-NSF Arctic Research Fellow, he is a Fulbright-National Geographic Award recipient and National Geographic Explorer. Although I am not sure how many National Geographic Explorers have ever made musical instruments out of trees.

In this episode, we talk about his research and music, how he made his way from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Iceland, and music as a medium for science communication. I've included in the show notes two videos we discuss - 2124 and A Song for Lost Trees - that are both absolute must watches.

As Konstantine points out in the end of the episode, we're in a moment in time when certain political leaders are trying to sew division and actively suppress both scientific and artistic progress, particularly when it comes to climate change. Now is actually the best time to forge new alliances and blur the lines with new collaborations across art and science.

Links

2124

A Song for Lost Trees

Konstantine Vlasis Website

Konstantine Vlasis on Instagram