The Donkey And The Bridge

In this fourth episode of the donkey and the bridge, I’m grateful to be joined from Taos, New Mexico by Pat McCabe, also known as Woman Stands Shining. Pat is one of the most inspiring and inspired voices I’ve ever come across, bringing an incredibly compassionate yet critical perspective to issues of indigenous knowledges, gender, colonisation, and the many illusions of separation that divide us. Pat McCabe is a Diné  mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace who draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance. She is devoted to supporting the generations to come, and upholding the honor of being human.

Joining me today is  friend, sex-educator, dancer, writer, kink-advocate, ritualist, and community worker, Zahava Griss. A dancer by training, Zahava has been using embodiment, ritual, and radical love to perform and educate on themes of racial and gender justice, sex and the erotic, and ways of de-colonizing our relations with pleasure, grief, and communal ethics. Enjoy our discussion as we weave through these topics, wondering on how things have come to be as they are, and what support for, and from, our sensual bodies can look like.

Stephen is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. His latest book, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, was released in July 2018. In his landmark provocative style, Stephen Jenkinson makes the case that we must birth a new generation of elders, one poised and willing to be true stewards of the planet and its species. Come of Age does not offer tips on how to be a better senior citizen or how to be kinder to our elders. Rather, with lyrical prose and incisive insight, Stephen Jenkinson explores the great paradox of elderhood in North America: how we are awash in the aged and yet somehow lacking in wisdom; how we relegate senior citizens to the corner of the house while simultaneously heralding them as sage elders simply by virtue of their age.

Working with the Dead as Social Justice Allies Greetings all. Joining me today is Dr. Daniel Foor: Accomplished ritualist, teacher, initiate and practitioner of Ifa/Orisha Animist traditions of Yoruba-speaking West Africa. He's also the author of the brilliant book Ancestral Healing: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. After many years in San Francisco, Daniel, his wife, and their new baby girl have settled in Asheville, North Carolina, from where he has been training apprentices into practical ritual-healing work that centres on ancestors and the dead. In addition to the ongoing apprentice trainings, Daniel is currently launching a unique online Animism course, where students from around the world will gather, practice, and discuss online the teachings that Daniel shares via video on a wide range of topics related to Animism and Animist ethics and protocols regarding the non-human realms of existence.