Well, it appears 2025 is now nearly over and before it concludes I wanted to share a little recap of all we were up to here at the Gaian Way over the past year. And I have to say, considering we’re almost entirely a volunteer organization, we did a heckuva lot!
First, we published 37 reflections on Gaian Way’s website (including this one), and covered a vast range of topics. Naturally, we wrote many nature observation and connection pieces, as well as essays on diet, popular culture (from horror films to sci-fi stories), a few parables, even a few longer pieces on deep sea conservation and the polycrisis crept into the mix. And of course, we included several on the growing shift to authoritarianism, anti-science, and anti-life that we’re seeing in the United States. Kind of hard to ignore that after all! As exciting as the breadth of topics was the breadth of authors. Just over a third of these essays were written by the broader Gaian community—with perspectives coming from as far as Canada, Spain, the UK, and Australia—which is a tribute to our global reach.
Second, we continued to organize twice monthly events for our community, starting off the year with a bang with our conversation with author Ferris Jabr. These events, a mix between celebrating the wheel of the year, book clubs, and discussions of Gaian practices and the ecological transition we’re living through offer an eclectic mix of offerings to engage folk. Most exciting was our month long Meditation Challenge, getting folks to meditate more outside, even three times a day (Gaian style).
Third, speaking of eclectic, our two projects continued to grow and mature. Bart Everson and Laura Dedelow produced another 52 episodes of the Earth Eclectic Radio Hour (for a total of 89 episodes). That’s 52 additional hours of amazing new ecospiritual music (along with contextualization), reflecting the flourishing of this diverse realm of the musical world. We also added a new radio station to distribution in 2025, an exciting step in spreading the beautiful shows Bart and Laura craft.
Cycles of Gaia also continues to develop. Working with four teachers in 2025, we finalized the curriculum for this ecological calendar, with Cycles of Gaia artist Jon Schroth bringing his keen eye to design four beautiful curriculum packets (for K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12). These are all available free online and the poster remains free to all interested teachers (and for sale for others). Most exciting is what’s around the corner—a new journal version of Cycles of Gaia is coming in 2026!
Nikki Woods, our communications director, also worked tirelessly to convert all this content into hundreds of social media posts and engaging videos to encourage folks online to instead go outside and connect with Gaia, as well as connect with the Gaian community, and join our events.
Beyond online events we continued to organize nature gatherings in Connecticut and New Orleans and participated in several conferences to present our philosophy and projects, including at the Harvard Divinity School, the Popular Culture Association conference, the Connecticut River Valley Environmental Summit, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science annual conference, and others.
Finally, as the EpA unravels and America descends into an ever deeper denial of climate change, we spent some time encouraging our community to take action in defense of Gaia, participating in public meetings, writing comments and so. Not enough, of course, but our niche is to support the ecospiritual with a safe space to deepen their relationship with the living Earth. Though in some cases, when the threat is clear and present, it feels unwise not to act, both as individuals and as a community.
Before closing, I want to offer my deepest thanks to those who have supported this work—whether financially, by leading a program, writing a Gaian Reflection, or running a Gaian project. All of these efforts make up what the Gaian Way is and I’m grateful I’m not doing this alone! That said, I invite you, if you haven’t already made the Gaian Way part of your annual giving, please make a donation before year end. We appreciate all support, no matter the amount.
Leave a Reply