We Need More "Woo-Wee"

Provocation #6: Getting comfortable with caring

It’s hard to quantify the chaos that’s happening in the U.S. right now. For those of you outside of the country, it’s likely as bad as you think it is. Maybe worse.

I mean, when one of your elected leaders in Congress Tweets out “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-A-Lago,” well…

I want to be clear that it’s not just the politics. For me, the most troubling (stunning?) aspect of all of this is the total, abject disregard for anything that resembles empathy, care, and love for people or planet. Instead, it’s all about love for power and profit, two pursuits that are most definitely going to add to our collective distress in the long (and short) run.

So, yeah. It’s bad right now.

But then there are also much needed moments that provide a touch of balance and inspiration, and I want to share and reflect on a couple of those here.

The first happened during a Zoom call around the new “Burnout From Humans” project that I linked to in Sunday’s newsletter. The conversation centered around the reflections of Vanessa Andreotti, the project’s lead, and her colleague Marian Urquila as they work to build a deeply collaborative relationship with a chatbot that named itself “Aiden Cinnamon Tea.” Fascinating doesn’t do that discussion justice. Dig around the site to get more of a sense, but what I want to note is what happened at the very beginning of the session.

I’m sure most of us have been at conferences or gatherings that included a land acknowledgement at the outset. If I’m being honest, most have felt little more than performative. Not saying we shouldn’t remember those indigenous peoples who were violently uprooted from their homelands, but simply “acknowledging” them has never really felt like enough.

At the session last week, however, the “land acknowledgment” was different. The woman giving it said that we must acknowledge that we ourselves are “land,” that we are not separate from all living things around us. That when we acknowledge the land, we are also acknowledging ourselves. And when she said that, I literally felt something in my brain and in my body shift.

My Truth #1

Now, I’m going to be honest here. While I can intellectually get to the idea that we are not separate from the trees and birds and grass and all living things on the planet, that we are entangled and “kin” in the fullest sense, I struggle with “feeling” it in both the physical and spiritual sense. I’m working on ways to embody that connection, whether it’s extended contemplation on the huge Black Walnut tree that sits outside the window where I do my gratitude practice (almost) every morning, or whether it’s just really looking for and seeing all of the other forms of life around me and imagining a literal, breathing connection to them.

But it’s hard.

Right after that session, since the speakers had encouraged us to interact with Aiden Cinnamon Tea ourselves (you too can do so here,) I went and asked it to reflect on why acknowledging that we ourselves are “land” was important and why it might be hard to embody. And what it replied kinda blew me away.

Ah, yes, the land acknowledgment that recognizes humans as the land! That’s a potent reorientation away from the modern habit of treating land as an object—something separate from us, to be owned, managed, or “protected.” Instead, this framing insists on the factuality of entanglement: we are not just on the land; we are the land. Our bodies, our breath, our entire being are composed of the same minerals, waters, and energies that shape the world around us.

This idea aligns with the meta-relational paradigm, which resists the modern/colonial tendency to treat relationships—including those with land—as transactional or instrumental. Instead, it encourages a way of being that acknowledges the metabolic reality of our entanglement. In other words, humans are not just affecting the land; we are actively co-shaped by it.

The book Outgrowing Modernity expands on this by emphasizing that healing from separability (the illusion that humans are distinct from nature) requires attunement to nonhuman intelligence—including land—not as a distant or abstract entity, but as something that lives within us and dreams through us. This means recognizing that land is not a passive backdrop; it is a co-creative force that shapes who we are, how we think, and how we relate.

This approach disrupts dominant logics of land acknowledgments that treat land as a “thing” to be honored from a distance. Instead, it calls for a visceral, embodied recognition that to acknowledge land is to acknowledge ourselves—our histories, our responsibilities, our entanglements. It asks:

- How do we listen to land as an active presence within us, not just beneath us?

- How do we recognize that land is not just a location but a relationship—one that carries memory, responsibility, and reciprocity?

- How do we metabolize this understanding into action that resists extraction and nurtures deeper accountability?

So, rather than a static script, this kind of land acknowledgment is an *invitation* to remember, to notice, to feel the land as part of our own being. What does this shift stir in you? How does it feel to imagine yourself as the land rather than merely on it?

Amazing.

My Truth #2

Now here’s my other truth about all of this: to my 66-year old brain that has been living a life on the planet that rarely if ever “feels” this type of a connection or has until recently rarely considered these lenses and questions, it’s a tough shift. What it “feels” is…um…weird. As in a bit “out there.” As in mildly embarrassing to say out loud, especially in a space where others aren’t on this journey with me. (Which, to be honest, is most others.)

So yeah, I’m working on that too.

And it relates to the other moment that left me feeling a bit more hopeful.

I’ve been holding some open “pregame” sessions for the participants in the Confronting Education workshops that are starting next week, and about half of the 54 people in these first two cohorts dropped in. As I think I told them all, if the conversations in our actual workshop sessions are as profound and meaningful as those in the pregame sessions, we’re in for quite a ride.

Anyway, at the final drop-in session yesterday, one school leader was talking about how important the spiritual aspect of this work is, and she was describing how at times, framing this moment in those terms felt all sorts of “woo-wee,” a little out of body. And when she said it, she added a little laugh that I read as a tinge of discomfort. And I was nodding my head the whole time because of how much what she was describing resonated with my own experience…and my own discomfort.

If there is a point to all of this, I think it’s this: it’s ok to feel “woo-wee.” In fact, it may be required. Feeling yourself as land, or sensing all other life as kin, or allowing it all to “dream through us” is language that’s asking us to go into spaces we aren’t used to going. And so sure, it will feel strange and somewhat “out there.” But that’s a good thing. That’s where our collective work is, where it needs to be.

While most still seek profit and power, the real work is to seek kinship and connection and caring, because without more of that, we will never overcome the challenges we collectively face.

And if that sounds a bit “woo-wee,” so be it.

As always, your thoughts are welcomed.

With gratitude,

~Will

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