Blog
Welcome to the new Yale Forum Blog!
We will be sharing a variety of original content including interviews, reviews, reports from the field, new and enhanced resources on the Forum website, content from our new video podcast series, FORE Spotlights, and much more.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new content.
Today we'd like to share some thoughts from the poet May Sarton on despair–what many see as the shadow side of Hope, our theme for this year.
In addition to her poems and novels, she penned and published a number of reflective journals throughout her lifetime. At the age of 60, she released Journal of a Solitude, in which she explores despair and aloneness–the challenges of them, yes, but even more so, the gifts to be found in them. And therein lies a great portion of the remedy...
This episode of Spotlights features Matthew Segall, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Matt discusses a recent conference celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Center for Process Studies, which is a research center at the Claremont School of Theology at Claremont University, focusing particularly on the relevance of Alfred North Whitehead's process-relational philosophy. Whitehead has been a profound influence on...
In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day on March 8th, the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology recognizes the vital role of women who have led and continue to shape many of today’s most important conversations about ecology, justice, and peace.
This month, we highlight some of the many women’s voices featured in our free...
Starting today, February 23, Earth Charter International will be hosting a monthly masterclass program. Thought leaders from around the globe will share about leadership, sustainability, and education through an ethical and systems approach. Our own Mary Evelyn Tucker will be presenting in September on “The Integration of Ecojustice and Ecospirituality for Sustainability Education.”
Here is the full schedule of presenters:
23 February – Ethical Leadership for Societal...
This episode of Spotlights features Larry Rasmussen, PhD, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, emeritus, at Union Theological Seminary. He discusses his new book, The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty's a Sure Thing. The book is composed of a series of letters that he wrote for his grandchildren. The letters talk about the uncertain future that his grandchildren will live through, including the myriad challenges facing the Earth community during the Anthropocene, not least of which is the ongoing task of understanding the...
Often in discussions about Hope, a counter argument will be presented (such as this one in Orion Magazine by Derek Jensen), which states that Hope is a bad thing that brings us down, something that keeps us striving and desperate, but never reaching those goals and aspirations—always grasping.
Though I can hear some of these arguments and see the danger they're trying to highlight, it has never resonated—anything can be misused by humanity, including Hope, but that doesn...
As Valentines Day approaches, with so many reminders in the media and surrounding culture, my thoughts naturally, organically turn to love. And when I hold the energy of love in my heart, one name sings out: Thich Nhat Hanh. Almost everything he wrote encompassed and integrated the idea and energy of love. But he had no less than seven titles specifically on the topic, including the 2013 volume, Love Letter to the Earth.
Our Valentine to you is an...
This episode of Spotlights features Amber X. Chen, a freelance journalist from Southern California whose work focuses on environmental justice. She contributed to several publications, including the climate and culture magazine Atmos, where she recently wrote a piece about the relationship between psychedelics, climate change, and environmental justice, “Tripping for the Planet: Psychedelics and Climate Change.” She discusses the problems and promises that psychedelics hold for the climate action toolkit, noting the particular importance of...
The Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University has just released a new podcast series titled Inner Nature. Each episode will be a rich conversation between two figures in the environmental field, focusing on inner work and practices that will help us hope, strength, energy, and spiritual fortitude for the work ahead.
From their site:
The Inner Nature podcast series is a collection of conversations between thought-leaders exploring the intersection of...
For those located in the colder areas of the Northern Hemisphere, this stretch of time—after the new year and before the return of the green and growth—can be one of the hardest in which to find a glimmer of hope. Here in Vermont, the skiers revel, but the remainder of us are more than ready for tiny green shoots and the cacophony of peepers as living full-color proof that death leads to life–regeneration is all around us. We crawl up out of the safe, warm mud where we've hidden...