With it being Labor Day weekend here in the U.S., and with this week’s newsletter being the 156th—that’s three years of Monday morning essays being sent across time and space for your reading pleasure—I wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of the best essays from the past year.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I’m going to draw attention not to my own essays, but to the many individuals who have shared their time and labor to deepen our collective understanding of what it means to be a Gaian living in a time of great change.
On that topic specifically, Krista Hiser’s reflection on “What is Green and What is Gaian?” deserves first billing, as it does an excellent job of spelling out how Gaian practices complement green or sustainable practices. (Trying to summarize this further would not do it justice and I encourage you to read Krista’s excellent essay instead.)
Choosing one to highlight from Bart Everson, who graced your inbox with several essays this past year, wasn’t easy, but his essay on “Can We Talk about Religion?” is a particularly important one. The Gaian Way exists somewhere in the nebulous realm between philosophy and religion—it can be embraced as either or both, but as Bart notes, it’s the coming together to support each other that creates a spiritual community of practice; that upgrades the Gaian Way from a personal life philosophy to a shared religious experience.

Jeremiah Jones’s essay, “To Swim in the Seine,” may be the most beautiful piece of prose of the past year—and makes a powerful case for rewilding our cities and too often channeled rivers—a key role, perhaps, for Gaians of the future.
With the equinox just a few weeks away (wasn’t it just the summer solstice?) Robinne Gray’s reflection on the Wheel of the Year is one worth rereading. The Wheel, as she notes, is a way to celebrate the annual march through time that is open to all; one that is universal and shaped by nature not a specific tradition; that helps us to embrace and even celebrate the loss—and return—of light each year.
Special thanks also to Brannon Andersen, who explored what a transition to a sustainable economy might look like, and to Tom Prugh, who deepened our understanding of deliberative democracy and its relevance to the Gaian community. Essays like theirs help us to better understand what it will take to truly bring about an ecocentric culture, whether now if we can mobilize, or centuries into the future, out of the ashes of our failed consumer civilization that substituted an unhealthy fetishism with growth and stuff for a healthy respect for Gaia and our place in the larger Earth community.
Finally, I want to share this beautiful (albeit difficult) comic illustrated by Jon Schroth, who greatly improved three reflections this past year with his artwork. This comic, unfortunately, will only become more relevant every cycle around the sun, which makes its power and beauty all the more striking.

Thanks to the many members of the Gaian community who contributed this past year and to you, reader, for reading these reflections each week.
Go with Gaia,
Erik
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