Ethiopian Church Forests

Ethiopia’s church forests are a real wonder

Last year I got to visit some Tewahido Orthodox Churches in Amhara, Ethiopia and that was extremely meaningful visit.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has somewhere between 36-50 million adherents, which makes it one of the largest Christian denominations. In spite of this, it seems to receive relatively small amounts of attention compared to other branches that have more prevalent congregations in the U.S. and Europe. There are many Christians who are simply unaware of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

On my visit, I got to explore the church forests, as the church has a longstanding tradition of cultivating a forest around the perimeter of each church. As much of Ethiopia has been turned into desert, these church forests have turned into protected spaces of biodiversity and indigenous species.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church places a heavy emphasis on the God-given role humanity has to take care of creation. And the churches are meant to serve as little Gardens of Eden, offering a glimpse of heaven’s flourishing nature. So, across the brown sands of the Ethiopian deserts, you’ll find patches of deep green surrounding the churches.

I’ve wanted to see one in person and I got my chance when visiting Ethiopia. The surface knowledge I had on these churches from National Geographic articles and photos only scratched the surface of what I learned from being invited into the temples and getting to interview a few priests and deacons. I even received a blessing from one of the holy fathers at the end. This is perhaps my favorite video that I’ve made.

I was received very warmly by the priests and deacons of these churches, who offered me blessings with ash and holy water. They also invited me to ask any questions about the faith.

As a Christian, I was appreciative of the way their faith integrates nature alongside devotion. Here are a few ways the visit had an impact on me…

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest standing Christian denominations in the world.

It was second only to Armenia at adopting Christianity as a state religion… over 50 years ahead of the Roman Empire. Outside of Ethiopia and Armenia, I’m only aware of a handful of churches across Palestine, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq that have a more direct tie to the original apostles.

I think we lose a lot when we lose sight of how old and ancient our faith is. We become obsessive over concepts and practices that didn’t exist 100 years ago, let alone 1000. A deeper understanding of how our faith spread globally, especially prior to Rome, has helped deepen my sense of what’s held up over time.

One thing I’ve observed is that without this appreciation for the age of faith, it becomes a lot easier to make it an individualistic endeavor. To overinflate the importance of what we can observe within our lifetimes.

When you understand that your faith is something that’s been inherited and then gets passed on, it makes it easier to see that it isn’t a story about your own prosperity or building your own personal narrative, it helps free it from the individualism that often works its way into Western Christianity, where faith is more a matter of one’s personal beliefs and morals, but distant from community and society.

My visit to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was also a reminder of how diverse and multicultural the Christian faith is.

Almost all depictions of churches in Western media are similar. The priest dresses in full clerical collar, the choir looks Methodist, there’s a Catholic confession, Baptist-ish theology, and the priest calls everyone ‘my child.’

Most of all, these are mostly based on an amalgamation of American churches. Whenever you see something that differs even slightly, like the Korean American Evangelical church in Beef, it’s refreshing.

So many Christians, especially American Christians, don’t have a strong awareness of the global scope of the faith. So many of us are unaware that a church like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church even exists.

It’s also easy to conflate Western values with Christian ones when we stop tracing our church history beyond Europe. We lose sight of where things like an emphasis on nuclear families, industriousness, and nonconformity become conflated with morality. That’s not to say these things can’t be arrived at through Scripture, but the emphasis they are given over broader community, rest, and cooperation are largely American.

Interacting with Ethiopian Orthodox Christians gave me a deeper appreciation for devotion.

Many Ethiopian Orthodox practitioners are extremely devout. Outside of a church, it isn’t uncommon to see people fully bowed forward kissing the gates.

Kissing the sculpted crosses held by the church fathers is another very visible display of devotion.

Within the church, there’s a strong sense of sacred space. The churches are structured like the tabernacles of the Old Testament, in concentric circles. The center space is the most sacred, with access typically being granted to the most senior priest.

In Western culture and faith, reverence is often downplayed. Sometimes, the opposite value, irreverence is more often hailed as a virtue.

Finally, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church helped me want to better integrate nature with spiritual disciplines.

In many Christian traditions, nature is often hailed as “God’s other book,” or another arena through which we can discover the divine.

Watching the deliberate approach the Ethiopian priests took to their church forests was inspiring. Most of the priests could give me an in depth history and explanation of the practical uses of each native tree. The ecological knowledge of each priest was also quite impressive.

The priests and practitioners took seriously their call to be good stewards of creation. “One day, we’ll have to explain to God how we took care of the world we were given,” a number of them told me. “We will be evaluated on how well we took care of the place in front of us.”

A number of them told me that the church should be like a mini Garden of Eden.

Getting to walk through the Ethiopian church grounds and spend time with the priests was a truly memorable life experience I am so thankful I had. I appreciate any reminder that one of the best things about faith is that it’s a posture that says “there’s more to the story.”

It’s important to remember that there’s more to the story of a faith than the way we usually see it expressed.

See Them From the Start

One day these toddler years are gonna feel a long ways in the rear view.

I have no doubt that over the years they’re gonna make so many lives better. Both through directly helping people and through all the other ways they make people’s worlds brighter.

Soon enough there will be too many people to count whose lives they’ve reached.

And I’ll get the treat of knowing I got to see it all from the start.

Mychal Threets

“We all deserve access to books, to literacy. We all should get to experience joy.”
–Mychal Threets

A Mychal appreciation post to kick off National Library Week!

Monday, specifically, celebrates the Right to Read Day, and Tuesday celebrates National Library Workers Day.

Kumartuli

“You should just spend the afternoon walking around Kumartuli.”

“Sure thing. What is that?”

Kumartuli is Kolkata’s pottery district. You step into a relatively quiet part of town where doors are close by each other and open up into long, narrow workshops. You can peer into each one, and when you do you’ll see statues, busts, and sculptures all in different stages of creation.

Some will simply have their structure made of dried reeds exposed. Others will have the clay packed on them, made of mud from the Hooghly River. The ones that have dried might be getting a coat of paint applied.

With a big religious festival along the way, most of the artisans here are working under a crunch to meet the demand for all the Hindu deities and local legends people need sculpted.

The sculptors were kind and welcoming, letting me hop into their workshops and browse the impressive array of statues, even though they had to remain focused on getting the next one made. In a full, busy city, this was a nice calm spot with a lot to be wowed by.

Ethiopian Orthodox Church

One thing I really enjoyed about meeting the monks and priests of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was learning so much about one of the oldest expressions of Christianity that goes way, way back.

Within American Christianity, there are a lot more norms and perspectives that are more influenced by American individualism and industriousness than anything else. But going outside that bubble and remembering that the bigger faith is more global and diverse than that is important.

In Ethiopian Orthodox practice, things like devotion, fasting, and tending to nature are given a much higher priority than I’ve seen in any Christian denomination I grew up around. There’s a whole lot we could be learning from each other.

Soul and Land

Where faith meets sustainability

For the past seven years, I’ve worked with faith-based environmental movements. It’s an interesting spot to be! I’ve interacted with the entirety of the spectrum, from committed environmentalists who have reasons to be suspicious about the religious crowd, to people who are discovering an environmental commitment because their faith led them in that direction.

I’ve also gotten to interact with mixed-faith communities of forest dwellers in Thailand, the forest-keeping Orthodox priests in Ethiopia, and tree-planting pastors in Mexico and Haiti. All while a climate crisis goes on.

I’ve learned a lot from doing all this. My own commitment to a healthy climate is a practice of faith, as a Christian who’s also learned from so many other perspectives. To put it simply, my faith only increases the importance I put on climate action, the wonder I have for nature, and the stakes of our ecological connections. And my time in nature and working to protect it only humbles me and leaves more room for faith.

In the U.S., at least, there’s this tension between religion and environmentalism. It’s not terribly hard to unpack.

Particularly in the United States, being religious has a correlation with being politically conservative. Of course, that flattens a lot of nuance, but those are the stats. Conservative stances generally downplay or even villainize the value of environmental action. (Again, flattening a lot here.)

But one outcome of this dynamic is a political and religious landscape that makes Christian environmentalists feeling isolated. Too hippie for church and too religious for the scientific community.

I’ve seen a few people express how their faith motivates them to be better environmental stewards, only to be told by some environmentalists to leave faith out of it, and to be told by other believers that they’re on a slippery slope towards something new age-y.

But, from Vanessa Nakate to Katherine Hayhoe, some of the most important voices in climate science and advocacy today are speaking from an orientation of faith. I think telling somebody to ‘keep their religion out of it’ when those very beliefs are leading them towards environmental stewardship isn’t a good move.

We’re at a point where we need all hands on deck to take climate action, and 3/4ths of the world is religious to some extent. For so many people, faith would be the most effective driver of sustainable choices.

Thankfully, this tension is a lot more pronounced in the U.S. and the rest of the world has a little more nuance around this perspective. I’ve encountered so many communities in Latin America who sing hymns while restoring a forest, or churches in Africa that plant trees to commemorate holy events like a baptism. 

Really, I wish the synergy between environmental stewardship and spiritual flourishing could be more widely experienced. Here are some of the best parallels I’ve encountered.

1) The physical world of creation has spiritual value.

In many circles of Christianity, there’s a sense of putting a greater value on unseen, spiritual things, at the cost of treating the physical world as unimportant. Sometimes the point gets emphasized over and over that the earth is temporary, and heaven is all that matters. Needless to say, it’s not a perspective that typically leads to a whole lot of environmental care.

The thing is, it’s just one perspective, and a rather young one at that. A more careful reading of scripture and earlier church interpretations place more emphasis on the restoration of earth as part of the ultimate story. From that perspective, not only does nature matter, but its healing is a central part of the story and people are meant to be involved.

The stronger emphasis on the spiritual world over the material one came out of a movement that struggled to accept Jesus’ non-duality as both human and divine. So, they played in favor of the divine, to the point of rejecting physical things as inferior and corrupted, and the non-material as holy. This movement did so to such an excess that it was ultimately deemed heresy. But that perspective still has an influence on many of our perceptions.

If you combine that with our natural uneasiness around death and interest in escapism, it’s easy to see why congregations en masse have more quickly adopted a ‘one day, we’ll leave it all behind’ approach.

But, nature has always had spiritual value. From a Christian perspective, the moral narrative goes from one garden to another. So much so that nature was often referred to as “God’s other book,” another way for God to self-reveal for humanity. From that vantage point, it makes knowledge and relationship with the sacred much more accessible to all people, regardless of location, background, or education.

2) It’s not about perfectionism.

Another helpful parallel between faith and environmentalism to me has been the understanding that it’s not a matter of perfect behaviors at an individual level. Though both are often presented that way at first glance.

So many people are introduced to faith and spirituality through a system of moral codes. Especially when you encounter it young and developing a more clear sense of right and wrong is helpful. Likewise, so many people are introduced to environmental action this way too.

There are certain behaviors that are good for the environment and some that are bad for the environment, and you ultimately want to be on Captain Planet’s team when the reckoning comes.

As you mature, you realize that it’s more sophisticated than that. Our environmental and moral choices are limited by the broader framework of what we’re born into. It’s hard to say our individual choices are morally correct when they take place in an economy and society built off of exploitation. It’s also virtually impossible to live a lifestyle that altogether lacks an environmental footprint.

And ultimately, even if we do get to the point of a really impressive individual report card, what’s the point? If the broad level, systemic stuff is unsolved, people and other living things will still suffer.

I’ve found growth… both spiritual growth and effectiveness as an environmental advocate, to not focus on doing everything picture perfect, but to instead be conscious of how my actions are affecting other people. It’s not an excuse to abandon all efforts to do better at an individual level, but an invitation to make sure that’s connected to a higher level of restoration.

Ultimately, I’ve found that asserting unrealistic standards of perfectionism is detrimental to both people’s spiritual growth and environmental behavior.

3) When we nurture creation, we are also taking care of our own souls.

This is wisdom straight from the mouth of rural farmers.

Our souls share the same source of life as creation. Biologically, they’re composed of the same materials, reassembled and reintegrated over time. To me, that means we have a connection to our natural world that we cannot really ignore. When we neglect it, it’s a bit like denying a part of ourselves.

One thing I advocate for is responding to environmental needs relationally, not transactionally. An example of a transactional response might be something like carbon offsetting, trading a loss in one area for a win in another. While these are capable of some good, they also fall way short of restoring balance to our ecological lives.

4) Our separateness is an illusion.

Finally, for me, the end point is always how we wind up connected. Our connection to each other runs so much deeper than any of us realize. I think even the most integrated, egoless sage has only scratched the surface of this.

As I get older, I get more comfortable saying I don’t know to more and more things… especially as my kids keep asking me bigger questions with no easy answers. However that’s also made me realize the places where I feel an increase in confidence. One of those areas is the belief that we are really, really connected.

I find this sentiment echoed throughout my spiritual life and the whispers of nature. In the end our lives are so intertwined that we can’t move a muscle without altering the course of others. It raises the stakes for just about everything we do, but also turns every moment into an invitation to lean into that unity and togetherness.

I’m a Christian, so I’m sure my spiritual vocabulary for things is most influenced by that, but I wanted to share these thoughts in a way for them to be most widely accessible. Also know, it’s a constant process of discovery, and right now is just one point in time.

Uncertain Progress

I feel like I know so many people who’ve lost the ability to feel any sense of optimism about the world… and I really can’t blame anyone who feels that way. There’s a lot of heartbreaking stuff happening, and I’m not interested in arguing anyone out of their feelings, as if that’s something that can be done.

But I do think imagination is the start of a better world, and regaining the ability to imagine is an important step.

There’s a quote about how people prefer to focus on certain peril, rather than uncertain progress. I think Katherine Boo said it, though trying to track down this quote has been futile. But the dynamic it describes is real.

I think of how when I was born, 36% of the world lived in poverty, and today only 8% do. I can also think of at least half a dozen diseases or conditions that used to be untreatable that have had major breakthroughs in just the past four years, resulting in lifespans being extended by decades.

A few things, at least, have gone really, really right. And they did so real quietly.

Joining the Pehlwani

I’ve never wrestled. No high school wrestling. I didn’t even grow up with siblings to play wrestle. So when Indian mud wrestlers actually invited me to join their practice, naturally, I suited up (or, down, I guess) and entered the mud.

When I saw who I was going up against, I was pretty surprised. Suraj himself. Leader of the Akhara. This is like putting the boss level of the video game immediately when you plug in the cartridge. Like, if Mike Tyson was your first opponent in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

The bell rang. Somehow I lasted about two minutes in the arena… I’ve never wrestled before. I had a hunch that my opponent was just teasing me by letting me hang for that long, though. I crouched low. Low center of gravity, and all that. That was something I knew about. He pushed, and I pushed back. And as long as we did that, I managed to extend the length of a match I never really expected to win.

Eventually, he decided to stop drawing out the inevitable, figured out a move to flip me by the leg in just two seconds. Sheer stubbornness allowed me to put off being pinned down too soon, but it’s not like I had any real shot of flipping the script and pinning him down, so I gave in. But what a match!

A Creative Trim

What haircuts are teaching me about creativity…

First of all, I need haircuts a lot. My hair grows real fast and so to look the way I like to look I typically gotta get to the barber once a month.

Back in the day, I would wait about every 6-7 weeks before going in for a haircut to stretch it out and save a bit of money. But I always felt better and more confident after a cut and decided that was worth a couple extra haircuts over the course of a year.

If I ever hit it big, though, I might just be there twice a month.

Where am I going with this? Find out on the newest Creative Changemaker

Anyways, having creative work is a bit like having my hair. You gotta be ready to trim it back pretty often in order to be on top of your game. If you don’t, it’ll just get out of control on its own.

What do I mean when I talk about a trim for your creative work? I’m talking about that segment of your audience that limits your creativity as you try and cater to their sensibilities. The excessive commitments that tend to accumulate over time. The chaos of what’s around you.

One of the first things I’d trim is about 20% of your output. Are you committed to writing three articles a week? A video every week? A song a month? Is there a way to pull back from about a fifth of this work?

I’m not trying to stop anyone who’s making this stuff from a state of flow. But I am conscious that being driven by quantity ultimately weighs down quality.

Last year, I was doing two short form videos a week and releasing two articles a week. It worked for me then, but I realized I really didn’t need to be doing all that. Trimming it down to one of each a week has allowed me to take my time, which has in turn improved the quality of my videos and left me with more time.

Two things go up as the overall workload goes down. The first is the quality of the work. You no longer feel like you’re just cranking stuff out in order to play catch up or to keep up with a self-imposed quota. You can pour more of your ideas and consideration into each individual effort.

This ultimately makes the process more fun. When you’re simply concerned about creating something the way you envision it, even if the process is really efficient, it’s a good indicator you’re hovering around flow state.

Don’t be afraid to look at your targets, your release calendar, or whatever rhythm you’re into and realize that the bottom 20% of it represents the least fun projects that have the smallest impact on your bigger goals. While there may be some value in getting in your reps, it’s far more common for these to be things that hold you back from your best work.

Another important thing to look out for that you’ll want to trim right away are time sucks.

Tasks that you find yourself doing very frequently that take a lot of time that ultimately aren’t really worth it.

Cut those out right away.

For me, the most common time sucks are habits that I’ve stuck with over time in the area of record-keeping. I tend to obsessively back up all of my creative work. That part is a good and worthwhile thing to do, as any past victim of a hard drive failure is well aware. The problem was the obsessive cataloging that I committed myself to.

By having such a complicated system of folders and sorting all of my photos and video clips, I felt productive, but really I was committing massive amounts of time for an endeavor that provided a really small benefit.

People more commonly tend to use the word ‘time suck’ to describe things like Instagram or Netflix or apps where it’s too easy to commonly get lost scrolling and staring until a whole work day has disappeared while you were distracted.

Of course, if that’s an issue, definitely look for ways to get rid of that. I’ve never exactly used one, but it seems like those app-blocking extensions have been helpful for a lot of people.

There’s one other thing to trim back constantly and it’s perhaps the scariest one for people. But to do your best creative work, you must be willing to regularly lose about 20% of your audience every so often.

I get why that’s scary. You work hard to gain people’s attention and support. Why would you lose them?

Well, I don’t necessarily mean outright dumping your audience. Usually. I have heard from some online creators that they tried to cleanse their follower list by removing the 15% least engaged audience members. A good portion of these were bots or people who weren’t seeing and interacting with their work anyways. Shortly after doing that, their engagement went way up.

So if that’s of interest to you, go for it!

But I think you also need to be willing to grow and evolve as an artist and a human in ways that might not resonate with your audience. You need to understand that when a person decides to follow you, it represents a decision at one point and time, and over time you will drift from that point. Perhaps you’ll drift in the same direction, but this doesn’t always happen.

Artists often work themselves into a place of confusion when they’re trying to appease longtime audience members, newcomers, all while evolving in a natural and organic way. This can sometimes trap people into creating from a position of fear or defensiveness, instead of boldly looking for ways to assert new ideas.

At a certain point, you have to realize that there are a lot of good practices and ideas, but if you try to adopt all of them, you’ll end up with such a full plate that they’re no longer all that helpful.

Brandon Marsh

Baseball’s back! Well, the Phillies are shaking off a good bit of rust in these first two games. But I wanted to celebrate so I drew one of the best at celebrating… Brandon Marsh!

Three 2024 Predictions:
1) Jung Hoo Lee over Yamamoto for Rookie of the Year
2) St. Louis returns to form. Royals surprise peeps and flirt with playoffs.
3) Phils and Braves meet in the playoffs yet again.

Top Tier Failures

One of my favorite questions to ask in order to get to know people is this: what’s the best thing you’ve ever failed at??

People don’t always get the question. Especially if you’re oriented to think that failure isn’t an option.

But I’m talking about those times you try and pursue a dream, it fails, but you develop the most amazing community through the process of trying.

Not only does thinking of your top failures destigmatize failure and reduce the fear of it, you just learn fun things about people you might not have expected.

I don’t know if this is THE answer for me, but it’s up there…

I started out going to film school. I got halfway through all my requirements and realized… I was not having a good time at all. What I was learning was all theoretical. Never got to do any hands-on creative work. That set me on a path of exploring, which then led to this oddball creative career in international development I wound up with. Ironically, my current role has me pretty much making a new video every week!

Maggie Smith

When you and your pal are just a couple of dudes with a deep appreciation for Dame Maggie Smith and her cinematic talents…

Women & Heatwaves in India

When I was in Kolkata, it struck me as one of the most uncomfortable places I’ve visited due to the heat. I had a wonderful time and enjoyed my visit, but the heat was absolutely menacing. I asked my local guides how people dealt with the heatwaves, and he said that if you have access to air-conditioning, you stay in. If you don’t, well… it’s pretty hard to deal.

If it was that insufferable for me, I can only imagine how much harder it is for families in poverty or who face greater disparities. Learning how these heatwaves impact women was even more alarming.

Improv Dates

When I jumped back into improv about a year ago, one of my biggest goals was this: keep playing regularly. Find some people, maybe form a team… just keep having fun. And it looks like that was accomplished! Metal People is an official indie team and all, and we’ve got a bunch of show dates booked over the next few months.

3.29 - Finest City Improv (student recess)
3.31 - Time TBD - Mockingbird Improv
5.10 - 9pm - Finest City Improv (opening for Bankers Kill)
6.1 - 9pm - Finest City Improv (opening for Willis!)

And more dates to come… eventually!

Lessons from Nurture

Nurture: Word of the… month(s)

You know how people have their word of the year that then becomes a theme or area of focus in their life? I always preferred to do that more retroactively… too much happens unplanned over the course of a year that they rarely end the way you thought they were going to.

But I liked the idea of setting an intention beforehand and then leaning into it with your life. So I started trying to do this for seasons… roughly three month intervals.

Going into the winter months, the overarching theme in my life was nurture.

If I’m being honest, I kind of chose the theme because, well, I’m the male parent and my kids are always craving mommy. It’s pretty natural for toddlers to have a preferred parent, and let’s be real, 98% of the time it’s mom, so I’m not exactly offended by my toddlers…

But there are some huge inconveniences. She can’t pass through a room just to go grab something if they’re there without setting off the crying when they realize she’s not there to stay.

As the B-parent, I then get the job of trying to pry them off of her, which you know, probably doesn’t do a whole lot to change the dynamic.

We probably fall into pretty stereotypical roles in our family. She’s the place of safety and nurture. I spark the adventure and discovery and their confidence and ability to do things. Not exclusively, of course, but kids need both and it’s common for these to be split in two parent households.

Anyways, I decided to experiment with developing my more nurturing side. Work out those muscles. I didn’t really know where to begin, other than the idea of physically holding the little ones.

When winter started, my mom took a planned vacation to New Zealand, leaving us a few gaps in childcare throughout the week. Then our nanny had a very sudden family emergency. That left us with huge gaps for me to cover.

If nothing else, I was getting a lot of time to work on this. There were a lot of kids in the background of my Zoom calls that month.

I think on the surface, nothing looked radically different. I spent lots of time with the kids, did my weekly one-on-one adventure with each one, and tried to juggle quality time with the tasks and chores.

But quite a bit, when one of the toddlers would be having a meltdown at the same time I was trying to get something done, the word nature would come to surface in my mind.

That helped me shift gears on the spot and instead of responding reactively, I remembered to respond in ways to help usher their emotions.

Here are a few things about nurture I learned…

First, it’s not encouraged or expected from men very much. But you probably already knew that.

In the past couple weeks I’ve seen a couple of rage-bait videos essentially encouraging men to be bad fathers or they’d lose masculinity points or something. Nothing says secure-about-masculinity than being constantly worried about losing it, I guess.

I know it’s more associated with feminine energies, or whatever, but those conversations about gendered energies are out of my wheelhouse. All I know is nurture us repressed among men.

I’d imagine we’d be in a pretty different world if men weren’t often taught to be scared of being nurturing. Like, the male figure I most associate with nurture is Fred Rogers, so yeah, more of that energy really would do a lot of good in the world.

To chose to be more nurturing, as a man, is to make a countercultural choice, going against the grain of what’s expected. And being nurturing takes nothing away from other traits like strength, protectiveness, and boldness. They’re all compatible.

Nurture also does call for a good deal of strength and resolve. To be in a room of breakdowns, big feelings, and chaos, to absorb it, and turn it into calm and safety is an actual power. You’re transforming energies there.

It is so easy to be reactive, to meet stress with your own stress. I like to think of nurture as a landing pad where that can be absorbed and redirected.

Any associations of nurture with weakness are way misguided.

I’ve been using parenthood as most of my examples of nurture, but you can be nurturing in any setting. I think one place where I’ve done this fairly naturally has been the workplace.

Being nurturing means giving people a safe spot to be loved as they are and to be seen as their very best self. All these are active choices.

While nurture is much more than a physical disposition, there’s a very strong physical element. Sometimes if you’re not even sure how to make a nurturing choice in a moment, just physically do something that you associate with nurture and if nothing else it’ll put you in the right mind frame. Hold your palms open. Kneel to eye level with the kids. Hum like Kid Cudi.

Oh and eye contact. Connect and validate the experience in front of you. From there you can move forward together.

Finally, one phrase I hear a lot in intentional parenting circles is this: they’re not giving you a hard time, they’re having a hard time. That’s a good one. And while you’re not wrong to say, why can’t it be both? From the kid’s POV, it means they’re having a tough time. I’m often reminded that with limited verbal skills and constant exposure to new and novel experiences, those first few years of life are kinda overwhelming.

I’d even go so far as to say… why not think this about challenging encounters in our world at large? The internet gives us easy access to everyone’s outrage. We can see hot takes the world over.

What I’m learning to recognize is the hurt behind the hot take. Even the ones that initially make my skin crawl.

The hurt is there, when you remember to see it. The pain ends up going somewhere, often in the form of outward vitriol. But perhaps we can try something else. Absorbing it and making a new energy. Our world has a need for more nurturers.

San Diego finally feels like home

I’ve lived in San Diego more time overall than I’ve lived anywhere else. Yet it’s taken a really long time for it to feel like a place that felt like home.

It’ll sound funny to most people that I didn’t always love it. For most people, living in San Diego is a luxury. But for the longest time, I had a hard time feeling at home here and wondered if I’d be leaving. Things like the weather (which for me is ~too~ sunny. I know, right?) and relaxed nature added to its price tag, but not so much its value to me.

But the most important thing to me was a place that felt like home. Where my people are.

Only in the past year has it actually started to feel like home. And more importantly, it’s helped me recognize what actually makes a place feel like home. It’s where the most important storylines of your life unfold.

Most of us are well aware that it’s possible to live somewhere, sometimes for a very long time, without really having it feel like the place where you belong.

Recently, I’ve been really starting to value having a place that feels like home. Feeling like I belong to the city and community that I live in.

Which is funny because I spent such a long period of time on the other end of the spectrum. Living nomadically, moving frequently, and feeling defined by the constant change.

My experience was one that’s become increasingly common. I moved around a few times as a kid. Then I moved around a lot as an adult. Finishing schools, starting jobs, starting a family we’re all changes punctuated by a change in ZIP Code.

Not area code, of course. I’ve been rocking the same number since my Nokia Brick.

When I realized the norm of having a place that felt like a permanent home wouldn’t be MY norm, I wound up finding a lot of meaning in the image of being nomadic.

And to be honest, there’s a LOT there.

Pilgrimages.

The Alchemist.

Thrice’s song In Exile.

So spiritually rich.

I especially found a lot of growth, meaning, and soul level nourishment from travel. On some of my earliest trips as an adult, I felt so much connection to others and the world at large along with so much self discovery, that it seemed to really reaffirm my sense of identity as a nomad.

For a short period of time, I even had nomad as my actual job title. It was kind of a well branded internship, but as a nomad for a nonprofit organization, my job was to live in a van and raise awareness of the North Korean refugee crisis while traveling.

There are years on my timeline where I can’t even say where I lived, because I would leave one city after saving up enough to put my few possessions in a storage closet except for those that would go backpacking with me for months.

One of my earliest travel experiences as an adult came as a student, during a semester in Italy. Part of what was awesome about that experience was that I anchored myself in Siena while taking a side trip on weekends to any one of Italy’s other iconic destinations. Venice. Verona. Bologna. Milan. 

I’m glad I did it that way, because Italy has so much to see. And because coming back to Siena, small in size despite its cultural footprint, always felt like a cozy return.

I’d come back from the excitement of a city’s nightclubs or a villa’s wineries and feel a little more relaxed in Siena. I loved having regular visits to the same ordinary supermarket. That helped me feel more like I was actually living there. Faces I saw on my morning walk everyday became familiar. I could navigate without a map. It felt like where I belonged.

It was the smallest sample taste of somewhere feeling like home.

I got a much larger scoop after that semester abroad.

I returned to my actual college town. Santa Barbara.

As I drove into town and saw the familiar coastline… then the familiar shop signs… even the goofy font on all the brown street signs… I felt like I was back in my proper environment.

I couldn’t wait to reconnect with my people and swap stories from that summer.

I realized that Santa Barbara was the place where I would find all the open storylines of my life. The girl I’d been talking to. The friendships that were taking root. New projects I was creating.

The funny thing was, I was literally without a house. I returned from Italy at an awkward time that led to me couch surfing for months.

(Long story very short… I kinda met my wife that way!)

Anyways, Santa Barbara at the time truly felt like home. But it would be the last place I’d feel totally at home for a good while.

School ends. People graduate. And super expensive towns without entry level jobs have a way of ushering you out.

I’d move to Bakersfield, San Diego, Oregon, South Africa, LA, a van, and several hostels, each feeling temporary.

But I began to recognize that feeling of returning to Santa Barbara and being eager to reconnect with my people as a sign that a place feels like home.

When something as basic and goofy as kitschy brown street signs feel electric, that’s how you know you’re going somewhere that has meaning to you.

This is how I’ve come upon my favorite definition of what makes a place a home.

It’s where the active storylines of your life are unfolding.

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When a place starts feeling like home

Finally feeling that way about San Diego

PHILIPPE LAZARO

MAR 15

READ IN APP

What makes somewhere feel like home?

Most of us are well aware that it’s possible to live somewhere, sometimes for a very long time, without really having it feel like the place where you belong.

Recently, I’ve been really starting to value having a place that feels like home. Feeling like I belong to the city and community that I live in.

Which is funny because I spent such a long period of time on the other end of the spectrum. Living nomadically, moving frequently, and feeling defined by the constant change.

Why did San Diego just start to feel like home? Find out on my latest video.

Watch it here

My experience was one that’s become increasingly common. I moved around a few times as a kid. Then I moved around a lot as an adult. Finishing schools, starting jobs, starting a family we’re all changes punctuated by a change in ZIP Code.

Not area code, of course. I’ve been rocking the same number since my Nokia Brick.

When I realized the norm of having a place that felt like a permanent home wouldn’t be MY norm, I wound up finding a lot of meaning in the image of being nomadic.

And to be honest, there’s a LOT there.

Pilgrimages.

The Alchemist.

Thrice’s song In Exile.

So spiritually rich.

I especially found a lot of growth, meaning, and soul level nourishment from travel. On some of my earliest trips as an adult, I felt so much connection to others and the world at large along with so much self discovery, that it seemed to really reaffirm my sense of identity as a nomad.

For a short period of time, I even had nomad as my actual job title. It was kind of a well branded internship, but as a nomad for a nonprofit organization, my job was to live in a van and raise awareness of the North Korean refugee crisis while traveling.

There are years on my timeline where I can’t even say where I lived, because I would leave one city after saving up enough to put my few possessions in a storage closet except for those that would go backpacking with me for months.

One of my earliest travel experiences as an adult came as a student, during a semester in Italy. Part of what was awesome about that experience was that I anchored myself in Siena while taking a side trip on weekends to any one of Italy’s other iconic destinations. Venice. Verona. Bologna. Milan. 

I’m glad I did it that way, because Italy has so much to see. And because coming back to Siena, small in size despite its cultural footprint, always felt like a cozy return.

I’d come back from the excitement of a city’s nightclubs or a villa’s wineries and feel a little more relaxed in Siena. I loved having regular visits to the same ordinary supermarket. That helped me feel more like I was actually living there. Faces I saw on my morning walk everyday became familiar. I could navigate without a map. It felt like where I belonged.

It was the smallest sample taste of somewhere feeling like home.

I got a much larger scoop after that semester abroad.

I returned to my actual college town. Santa Barbara.

As I drove into town and saw the familiar coastline… then the familiar shop signs… even the goofy font on all the brown street signs… I felt like I was back in my proper environment.

I couldn’t wait to reconnect with my people and swap stories from that summer.

I realized that Santa Barbara was the place where I would find all the open storylines of my life. The girl I’d been talking to. The friendships that were taking root. New projects I was creating.

The funny thing was, I was literally without a house. I returned from Italy at an awkward time that led to me couch surfing for months.

(Long story very short… I kinda met my wife that way!)

Anyways, Santa Barbara at the time truly felt like home. But it would be the last place I’d feel totally at home for a good while.

School ends. People graduate. And super expensive towns without entry level jobs have a way of ushering you out.

I’d move to Bakersfield, San Diego, Oregon, South Africa, LA, a van, and several hostels, each feeling temporary.

But I began to recognize that feeling of returning to Santa Barbara and being eager to reconnect with my people as a sign that a place feels like home.

When something as basic and goofy as kitschy brown street signs feel electric, that’s how you know you’re going somewhere that has meaning to you.

This is how I’ve come upon my favorite definition of what makes a place a home.

It’s where the active storylines of your life are unfolding.

This explains why during my seasons in Oregon or Bakersfield I felt excitement around leaving town, but not so much returning. I didn’t have many active storylines in town. And visiting friends in other places and pursuing long awaited trips… those felt like more active storylines.

Anyways, I’ve been living in San Diego for seven years now… my second time living here. And despite the years I put in, it never seemed to contain my active storylines, or my closest community.

Until maybe the last year or two.

Last summer, I spent a weekend in Portland, one of my favorite cities to visit. And while I had a decent time overall, on the flight back, I found myself so excited to return.

The San Diego airport, in spite of its relative plainness was such a welcome sight.

I realized how I had so many new connections, a thriving life at home, and things I was looking forward to right where I lived.

I haven’t been able to say that for a long time.

Will it be permanent? I don’t know what the future holds. It wasn’t that long ago that I was looking elsewhere, seeing the rising cost of living and the fact that with three kids, my life will never be cheap exactly.

But right now, I know I’m good with where I am. There are plenty of spiritual metaphors that come with putting down roots too, and belonging to the land. It’s nothing to take for granted.

Breakout Ballers

I dunno about you, but I’ve found this NBA season to be one of the more fun ones that we’ve had in a while, largely in part due to a bunch of breakout seasons around the league. Torch is being passed from one era to the next.

Had to draw up a set with some of my favorite breakout players from this year.

I Underestimated Bangladesh

Confession: Before visiting Bangladesh, my interest was mild at best. When the things you hear about the most are crowds and smog, those aren’t exactly high selling points, and even people from there made it seem underwhelming.

But if you have the right people to show you around to the right places, there is an absolute wealth of stories and things to explore. The people are warm, welcoming, conservative, and absolutely determined to push forward in order to make a better life for the next generation. Problem-solving is an ubiquitous trait, and seeing that applied to major threats like climate vulnerability was eye opening.

Bangladesh is a country that has a lot to teach its visitors, if given a fair chance.

Living in California

Seven years since I’ve moved back to California.

I’ve always been mixed on California, to be honest. Of course it’s one of the most romanticized places. But it’s costly, and I know a lot of that cost goes to weather… and I actually prefer gray skies! Then you have a lot of nature between the forests and ocean, but the whole lower left quadrant of the state is an urban sprawl.

I’ve also always appreciated places that go overlooked and showing them a lot of love. California does not fit that bill. I find it pesky when Californians treat every other state as bland and generic without having ever been there.

But! It’s home right now, and it makes me want to put forth a good effort to appreciate it.

I love the diversity, both of nature and culture. I love that the church I used to live next to did its services in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Amharic. I love that one mile down the road near my house offers a Filipino, a Vietnamese, a Korean, and an Indian supermarket on four consecutive blocks.

I love the complexity of coastal ecosystems. I love the climate of a high desert. The green of the upper half and gold of the Central Coast.

Cali will always be a mixed bag for me. But it’s home, and you gotta learn to love that.

Bonus points to whoever can recognize all the spots in photos!

What to do if you don't believe you will win

The art of showing up anyways

“I believe that we will win.”

I’m a big fan of the US Women’s National Team’s rallying cry. As much as it gives off the Ted Lasso feel-good-feels, there really is something to seeing victory as something that’s in progress. And I think that’s not just true of sports, but other things we’re fighting for with more significant social impact.

But what do you do when it doesn’t actually look like a win is in the cards?

This is the exact question we ponder on the newest Creative Changemaker!

A month or two ago, I came across an editorial asking why all the major social movements and uprisings of the past few years don’t seem to have gone anywhere… from the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 as far back as Occupy Wall Street in 2010. We’ve seen Arab Springs and Fees Must Falls, and while MeToo might have ended, or at least derailed some careers, what’s missing is a lasting action that prevents the injustices being protested from repeating themselves.

I think it’s easy for many people who had a lot of hope in these moments, who invested a lot of energy in giving them life, to feel a bit disillusioned. And that’s totally air. I find that our world is very stubborn when it comes to changing the status quo, and even when big things, like world-halting pandemics seem to change all order, we also cling pretty tightly to our what we’ve come to recognize as normal.

Sometimes that’s a good thing, but often it’s not. Especially when it leaves unjust systems in tact.

When you push for revolution so intensely but only get symbolic or incremental change, it's easy to wind up frustrated and demoralized. It makes a lot of sense to feel like all of your efforts were for nothing and that if change didn’t come after all that, it probably won’t ever come.

As much as I can empathize with those feelings, having a defeatist attitude can be pretty harmful. If I knew I was playing on a football or baseball team with players who had internalized a sense of defeat like that, I wouldn’t want them on the team. Nothing personal, but there’s not hing you can do with defeatism. But what do you do when progress comes in the form of cookie crumbs?

I think Nelson Mandela would know a few things about that. His push for ending apartheid was initially labeled as terrorism. In fact, he’d be on U.S. terrorism lists all the way until 2008. He had to speak knowing he would be deliberately misinterpreted and misunderstood. And when he got some momentum to his movement, well, he also got a 27 year prison sentence.

Seems like he’d know how to take an L, but the way he put it, he never took one. “I either win or I learn,” he said.

The lessons you earn from incomplete pushes for justice are valuable indeed. And I think a reframe like that can be extremely helpful.

Of course, go into a movement with a clear goal. A change in mind. Be clear about it, and push for that change.

But also realize that progress and wins can take a variety of forms and know how to not miss those along the way.

I recently heard an interview with some of the leaders of Hong Kong’s protests in 2014. In many ways it’s easy to see their uprising as a failure. They were up against some unlikely odds anyways. Trying to push for something against the Chinese government from an ambiguous state of nationhood already puts you behind the 8-ball.

The proposed reforms lost in legislation 28-8. Many student leaders were imprisoned.

But the leaders who shared their reflection said that they didn’t see it as a full loss. Because of their actions, they changed the course of conversation around their issues of concern for years to come. And they gained the sympathy and interest of an international audience

I find Erica Chernoweth’s 3% rule convincing. It states that all it takes is 3% of a population to be wholly committed to a cause for it to be a success. But if the threshold were that low, you’d think we’d see more movements come to fruition, huh?

Sometimes it is a matter of the stars lining up.

You often get to a point where the clear majority of a population wants a certain change to happen, but what’s missing is the political willpower to see it through. Gun legislation in the U.S. is a pretty good example of this. However, moving public pressure forward ultimately has an impact on legislation. We’ve seen that happen in climate advocacy a good deal. And when a law does change, general attitudes around a topic typically move in the direction of the law. This happened over time following the Civil Rights Act.

It’s an interesting dynamic where political will and cultural attitudes are both causes and effects of each other. It’s unfortunate that they don’t always do so in lockstep.

But that’s why I think it’s valuable to keep moving both forward as you are able to. Pushes for a Green New Deal and student climate walkouts happened in the middle of an administrative majority strongly opposed to these things. But the public support grew so that when political tides shifted, enacting much stronger climate laws was a windfall.

It’s also helpful to remember that sometimes backlash is a sign that change is happening after all.

Backlash is real. A lot of the nostalgia for the confederacy in the South only surfaced after the Civil Rights Movement abolished Jim Crow laws. Mass incarceration also scaled up in the years that followed. The Jim Crow laws themselves were a backlash against abolition.

Furthermore, I think a lot of stunts like book banning and anti-immigration rhetoric have emerged as backlash to these social movements as of late.

I think we have yet to really see just how many people have become activated by the social tensions of the past five or six years. It may have been different things to different people. Race, climate, corruption. Whatever it is, a very large portion of the population has recently found a cause they care about passionately. Many have experienced perhaps only one cycle of an uprising and a roadblock.

Still, all those shifts will have an impact as we get further down the road. When you’re focused only on the time horizon of a year or two, it’s easy to mistake backlash as a stalemate. Sometimes it’s an unpleasant sign of progress.

Showing up isn’t about us.

Ultimately, however, I think we all need to recognize that the call to show up and play our part in moving things forward doesn’t have a whole lot to do with us. When we’re part of a cause that’s bigger than ourselves, we can understand that a win for the cause might look a lot different from a personal win.

This is where showing up for a movement is quite different than the athletic examples I referenced earlier. Because sometimes you aren’t showing up just in search of a win.

Oftentimes, showing up is something you do to let the people who are most impacted by an injustice know they aren’t alone. To know that somebody else sees what they’re going through and stands with them.

In a micro-setting, this might look like confronting someone when they express a harmful belief. Not because you think you’ll convince them, but because you want to set a norm in that space of what’s tolerable and what isn’t. That has an impact on other people in that space who may be harmed by the belief.

In a more macro-setting, it looks like comments I’ve gotten from people in Haiti and other place expressing appreciation for hearing and sharing their stories. That knowledge that you aren’t invisible or alone is extremely valuable.

The reality is, we won’t see everything into completion in our lifetime, it’s about showing up anyways.

When I was a little younger, I would frame every cause I was working towards as a change I hope to see in my lifetime.

I want to see a free _____, in my lifetime. Within my lifetime, ______ will no longer have to ______.

Maybe enough time has gone by where “in my lifetime” isn’t the horizon it used to be. But I always realize, I need to be ready to show up for things where this vision isn’t possible.

If I get the privilege to live into my senior years, I hope to still be finding my way to work towards causes, many of which I wouldn’t get to see in the time I have left. It would be more about the generations following me.

I also know that the work is never totally done. You keep moving the needle forward. My children will have their own struggles for justice. There are many ways in which the struggle continues after someone’s life.

As someone who frames a lot of things through the lens of sports, I do think it’s important and valuable to envision a win and to play to win, but you also have find the other things that keep you in the fight.

I show up because it’s what I do. Because people matter. Because I care about the people who are oppressed and I want to stand with them. All of these are things we can do even when we don’t believe that we will win.