Join CPA-NA's bi-monthly drop-in conversation called “Linking Conversations.” We will think and talk together about what’s happening in the world–such as extreme weather, political moments, and cultural flashpoints–and about linking thought and action, being and doing, the internal and external worlds. Through these conversations, we hope create links that will help us bear the weight of climate change and find spaciousness from which to act.
This Month's Suggested Topic:
“What Becomes Possible If We Change Our Minds?”
In many Indigenous traditions, Creation isn't just something that happened long ago...it’s something ongoing. It's an intelligence that breathes through land, kin, water, and wind.
What if “Mind” isn’t something locked in our skulls, but something we share with the world around us? Something braided through tree roots, sunlight, and ancestral memory. A Creation-centered view of “Mind” invites us to loosen our grip on the isolated self and listen for the ways thought, feeling, and awareness ripple through Relationship.
The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address reminds us that gratitude is not simply a feeling, but a way of orienting ourselves in the web of life, returning us to “One Mind” by naming each being we are in relationship with and recognizing the responsibilities those relationships carry.
In this view, healing becomes less about individual mastery and more about returning to reciprocal participation in the web of life.
How might our sense of ethics shift if “Mind” itself is understood as a sacred inheritance shared with land, ancestors, and more-than-human kin? And what becomes possible in our personal and professional practices when we no longer see healing as a human-centered task, but as an act of remembering our place within Creation’s intelligence?
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The conversations are founded on the idea that to build an empathic and justice oriented response to the climate crisis, we need to support and honor those parts of being human that “link” - to our own inner lives, to the subjective experiences of others, to the collective lived experience of our communities, and to the environment in which we live and upon which we depend. In a culture that persistently attacks and disavows these links, we aim to recognize and support them.
FREE with suggested $5 donation (we are an all volunteer organization and welcome donations to defray costs. No one turned away for inability to make a donation.
REFUND POLICY
We understand that things come up and can’t always be anticipated. We will grant refunds requested 48 hours ahead of the event. We will not honor refunds after the event has started.