Eleanor Robins writes in service of imagination. Her work has been featured in publications such as the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post, and the LA Times. Her Substack, How to Go Home, is a newsletter devoted to essays, reflections, and conversations about imagination and the imaginal realm.

A steward of dreams and stories, Eleanor studies the phenomena of the imaginal realm and how it shapes us and our relationship with reality. Following in the tradition of thinkers and mystics such as Henry Corbin and Cynthia Bourgeault, Eleanor and Andy’s conversation explores the imaginal realm as a real place apart from the physical, one with its own mode of perception separate from our ordinary waking consciousness; the space between the spiritual and the material; the dreamtime of the gods.

"I Am Like a Leaf" by Yone Noguchi The silence is broken: into the nature My soul sails out, Carrying the song of life on his brow, To meet the flowers and birds. When my heart returns in the solitude, She is very sad, Looking back on the dead passions Lying on Love’s ruin. I am like a leaf Hanging over hope and despair, Which trembles and joins The world’s imagination and ghost.

Show Notes:

* How to Go Home - Eleanor Robins on Substack

* https://www.eleanorrobins.com

* Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm by Cynthia Bourgeault

Connect with Andy:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

* Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

Cecily Sommers is a futurist, business consultant, and author of Think Like a Futurist. Cecily defines her practice as a futurist in terms of someone who studies the principles and mechanisms of change by looking at history, biology, and the universe in order to understand how societies transform over time. As a business futurist, Cecily’s zone of genius is as a consultant to some of the world’s biggest brands in the disciplines of strategy, innovation, and leadership development, helping organizations recognize and strategize around the forces of change impacting business and society.

This week on The Wonder Dome, Cecily shares the significance of developing what she calls change literacy; an ability to cultivate an inner stability in tandem with an understanding of how the cycles of change function so that we can readily meet the future as it approaches. In an ever-changing geopolitical landscape, Cecily’s work is a balm that soothes uncertainty by helping us develop, “the other AI: an Anticipatory Intelligence that tells us not just what to follow, but how to leverage change for growth.”

"The Future" by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin The future: time's excuse to frighten us; too vast a project, too large a morsel for the heart's mouth. Future, who won't wait for you? Everyone is going there. It suffices you to deepen the absence that we are.

Show Notes:

* www.cecilysommers.com

* Cecily Sommers on LinkedIn

* Think Like a Futurist by Cecily Sommers

Connect with Andy:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

* Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

Mieke Jacobs (poet, coach, thought leader and systemic teacher) returns to the Dome to share from her book Poet Assassin; a fittingly-titled collection of “dense and ethereal” poems that excavate the collective psyche. It’s a fitting title for a body of work that flows through the mind and heart and yet is also sharp like an edge that cuts through the noise and speaks truth in a way that can be deeply felt in the body.

With profound insight and honesty, Mieke reads from Poet Assassin and shares about her inspirations, processes, and meditations on the exploratory question behind the artistry of this book: “What is this strange, beautiful, glorious, and at the same time excruciating life about?

"Grace" by Mieke Jacobs If it be Your will I will stumble and fall Flat on the ground in full surrender I will pray and wait Wait Wait Until the larger movement of life is taking me Once again If it be Your will I will walk towards the River And give myself to it Feeling the river feeling me A graceful witness to my toil When I try to push the river Once again If it be Your will I will walk forever I will walk barefoot I will ride bareback I am willing to stand naked In front of the Truth Once again If it be Your will I will stay I will come into form I will live this life This glorious and excruciating living of life I will come I will be Once again If it be Your will

Show Notes:

* Poet Assassin by Mieke Jacobs

* #44 Systemic Elegance (with Mieke Jacobs and Paul Zonneveld)

* La Garçon - Truus Druyts

Connect with Andy:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

* Instagram: https://instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

Nate Helbach is the founder and CEO of Neutral, a regenerative development company that crafts economically viable and ecologically sustainable built environments. Neutral creates beautiful housing developments that enhance existing neighborhoods, encourage the fostering of human connectivity, and generate profits all while mitigating the harmful effects traditional development tends to inflict on the natural world.

With several projects underway such as a luxury multifamily apartment complex in Madison, Wisconsin and another in Fayetville, Arkansas with numerous communal amenities like a rooftop garden, Neutral is a pioneer of sustainability and design, enriching the lives of residents and promoting a healthier planet for all.

329 S Duncan Ave | Fayetville, AR

Bakers Place | Madison, WI

Show Notes:

* Neutral.us

* #157 EcoResponsive Environments with Soham De and Prachi Rampuria

* EcoResponsive Environments: A Framework for Settlement Design by Ian Bentley, Soham De, Sue McGlynn and Prachi Rampuria

* Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis by by Daniel G. Parolek

* Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life by David Sim

* “How the Auto Industry Carjacked the American Dream” Climate Town on YouTube

* Phius Passive Building

* Thesis Driven with Brad Hargreaves on Substack

Connect with Andy:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

* Instagram: instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

Housing is one of the greatest adaptive challenges we currently face as a species. It’s also a key solution to many other complexities around population, community, civic engagement, and the ecological crisis. Navigating our current global political landscape often feels like patching up a sinking ship, where the tools we use to mend it often reproduce the status quo that created the holes in the first place. In terms of housing, this looks like the expansion of repetitive, car-centric suburban developments that damage the earth and force us to spend more time in our cars commuting than in community.

Prachi Rampuria and Soham De share another vision for what place making can be — one that calls for the building of a new ship to address today’s challenges with tomorrow’s solutions. They are co-founders of EcoResponsive Environments, an award-winning urban design and architectural practice based in London. Their work envisions the development of ecologically stable buildings, neighborhoods and settlements that are responsive to human needs for safe and just spaces to thrive, while also supporting our planet in the long-term.

In this conversation, Andy, Prachi, and Soham imagine a world where through EcoResponsive design, we have the potential to create more sustainable, equitable, and vibrant communities for all.

"Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years From Now" by Matthew Olzmann Most likely, you think we hated the elephant, the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction. It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing but benzene, mercury, the stomachs of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic. You probably doubt that we were capable of joy, but I assure you we were. We still had the night sky back then, and like our ancestors, we admired its illuminated doodles of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles. Absolutely, there were some forests left! Absolutely, we still had some lakes! I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide. There were bees back then, and they pollinated a euphoria of flowers so we might contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask, “Hey guys, what’s transcendence?” And then all the bees were dead.

Show Notes:

* https://www.ecoresponsiveenvironments.com/

* “Ecoresponsive Environments: A Framework for Settlement Design” by Ian Bentley, Sue McGlynn, Soham De & Prachi Rampuria

* #148 It Makes a Village (with Jonathan Smales)

Connect with Andy:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

* Instagram: instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

Return guests Parker Palmer (author, activist, educator, and co-host of The Growing Edge) and Ariel Burger (scholar, musician, rabbi, and author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom) join Andy in sharing music, poetry, and reflections on humanity’s current moment with generous wisdom and insight.

Parker and Ariel speak to what it means to be “awake” to the realities of hardship and suffering experienced by others; to be a witness rather than a spectator; and how through the compassionate creation of “hospitable spaces” we can engage with one another across even the most cavernous of divides.

"A Ritual to Read to Each Other" by William E. Stafford If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Show Notes

* Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Joy [Title Video]

* The Witness Institute

* Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom by Ariel Burger

* The Growing Edge with Carrie Newcomer & Parker J. Palmer

* Martin Buber

* Maurice Stanley Friedman

* Taoism

* Hasidic Judaism

* Sarah and Abraham

Connect with Andy:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

* Instagram: instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

What is your fiercest hope for humanity?

“How can I become a good relative?” is the inquiry that guides Hilary Giovale’s work in writing, teaching, and reparative philanthropy. It’s a concept Hilary first became familiar with while building relationships with Indigenous communities; a goal to strive toward where we operate in support of the collective human community and of the Earth.

In her book, Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair, she shares with warmth, compassion, and vulnerability her journey as a ninth-generation American settler reckoning with the realities of whiteness; the destructive impact its wreaked on Black and Indigenous communities; and walking the path of healing.

This week, Andy and Hilary discuss divesting from whiteness; the humanizing power and spirit of storytelling; the importance of fostering a connection to the land as a foundation of this work; and ways listeners can commit to practicing reparations in our day to day lives.

All proceeds of Becoming a Good Relative go to Jubilee Justice and the Decolonizing Wealth Project.

"A New National Anthem" by Ada Limón The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets red glare” and then there are the bombs. (Always, always, there is war and bombs.) Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw even the tenacious high school band off key. But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call to the field, something to get through before the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps, the truth is, every song of this country has an unsung third stanza, something brutal snaking underneath us as we blindly sing the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the flag, how it undulates in the wind like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled, brought to its knees, clung to by someone who has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon, when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can love it again, until the song in your mouth feels like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains, the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright, that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on, that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit in an endless cave, the song that says my bones are your bones, and your bones are my bones, and isn’t that enough?

Show Notes:

* Becoming A Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair by Hilary Giovale

* Reclaiming Our Indigenous European Roots by Lyla June

* Guide to Making a Personal Reparations Plan

* Decolonizing Wealth Project

* Jubilee Justice

Connect with Andy:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

* Instagram: instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

After several years focused on parenting, podcasting, and leadership development work, I'm excited to release my new song Apocalypse on Christmas.

I wrote it last winter in the wake of a period of depression and an intense bout with Covid that laid me up for over a month. Writing it helped me heal.

It was kicked off by my five-year old daughter's playful attempts to steal my jacket. It turned into a love song for community amidst the fall of civilization :-)

You can listen to the full song here on Substack. It’s also available for download on Bandcamp, along with two other wintery songs to warm the heart.

Merry Christmas

-Andy

p.s. the well-read denizens of Substack might be hip to the fact that the word apocalypse - which in our modern era (circa 1980s) came to mean the “end times” of civilization - is rooted in the Greek apokalyptein which means to "uncover, disclose, or reveal," and evolved into the Middle English to mean “insight, vision; hallucination." The song is written in that spirit.

Apocalypse on Christmas

Let me take your jacket Rest here by the fire Ladle up some cider And tune the radio dial

Until you find the station That's playing deck the halls We can raise our glasses And sing some Christmas songs

God remember how we used to live So high up on that hog Guzzling gas, streaming shows Cinnabuns down at the mall

Now the power grid's collapsed And we're waiting for the fall So let us raise our glasses And toast to all we've lost

We'll sing... Merry Christmas Don't let it get you down We never needed that stuff anyhow So pour another round I'll pour another round

Over at Saint Joseph's They're cooking up a feast The chaplain says her welcomes Volunteers are sorting cutlery And all the wandering souls Well, they have a place to be So let us raise our glasses And sing in harmony

We'll sing... Merry Christmas Don't let it get you down We never needed that stuff anyhow So pour another round Merry Christmas The dark days are here But if we come together Our light can see us clear Yes our light is clear

So let me take your jacket Rest here by the fire No one knows what's coming But it's probably gonna take a while

And I'm really glad you're with me On this merry Christmas Eve The dawn will surely come again We'll see what we can see But for now the yule log's burning We've got everything we need

So let's sing one more time...

Merry Christmas Don't let it get you down We never needed that stuff anyhow So pour another round Merry Christmas The dark days are here But if we come together Our light can see us clear

Yes our light is clear