September 2025 | The Last Issue for Now

I’m so grateful to the friends who agreed to be interviewed and to the people and organizations I’ve met during these nine years. Thank you! You have all given me so much!

I was happy that the last interview ended on such a sweet note with Sarah Saulsbury in June and July’s issues.

I hope that you might find some of the previous interviews nourishing. They are all posted at Earth Love Newsletter.

In the very first issue of Earth-Love in October 2016, I attempted to answer the question, “What does Earth-Love look like?”
 
Dear friends,
 
I’d like to say a little about how Earth-love looks and feels. Indeed, with your help, it could pass into daily usage, not as some trendy phrase, but as a simple daily practice that we model for each other.
For me, Earth-love starts with the breath. For you, it may begin with a footstep, a bike ride, cooking, washing, gardening, or any number of daily activities that you engage in.
 
At 28, while on holiday, I developed asthma. I didn’t know it was asthma. I only knew that I couldn’t breathe easily. Eventually, it dawned on me that I couldn’t even control a single breath. Much later came the realization of the absolute wonder of each and every inhalation and exhalation given to us so freely by this great Being who supports us every microsecond in so many ways.
 
How can I express my deep gratitude and appreciation to Her trees, sky, water? It may be with a sigh. It may be with a joyful word, meeting a neighbor on a walk. The ways are countless and unique to each of us, and we can expand them!
 
Earth-love doesn’t require us to (necessarily)change what we do, but to simply bring some loving awareness to those moments.
 
Now, I would like to hear your contributions or questions, so that, if you are willing, we can together enrich our response to our Mother, our friend.

Response to Gaza, and US Politics

I’d like to share a little of my recent work, which has arisen in response to the murderous actions of this Israeli government since the start of the Gaza War. 

I devoted seven consecutive issues to Middle East Peace, starting in November 2023. I am still a passionate advocate and supporter of that goal. I mentioned Alliance for Middle Peace (Allmep), an umbrella organization of some 170 Palestinian and Israeli organizations, all dedicated to non-violent action. 

We hear far too little about the hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians working together, and even less about how our Earth is suffering from this terrible destruction and pollution of water and land. 

Allmep has made great progress in campaigning for the vital role of civil society in any peace agreements, and has secured financial backing from the EU. Their proposals have been brought to the UN, and are now endorsed by 17 countries as well as the 22-member Arab League and the 27-member EU. John Lyndon, their Executive Director, commented, “It marks the first time civil society was positioned not just as a stakeholder, but as a cornerstone of a new diplomatic process.” It includes three components for delivering aid, stability, and security.

⇒ First, de-escalation and life-saving aid need local, structured support. That’s because we must not only end the violence but also keep it at bay during the delicate days ahead. Civil society has high-impact tools to do this. Initial trauma and dialogue work, for example, disrupts zero-sum thinking, dehumanization, and trauma-fueled reciprocal violence. It also promotes healing. This work is not just for later. It’s needed now. 

⇒ Second, the civil society recommendations from the conference underscore the importance of building third-party international support and mechanisms to help the parties achieve and maintain de-escalation. Neutral, international bodies must be created and/or strengthened so they can oversee humanitarian access, legal accountability, and reconstruction efforts. With trust between the parties deeply fractured, such third-party mechanisms are critical to ensuring compliance, protecting civilians, and enabling a just and secure transition to greater stability.

⇒ Third, the Israeli and Palestinian civil society leaders we convened proposed a new framework focused on delivering security for both peoples. This war will leave behind 15 million people who question whether they are safe in their own homes. In the months and years ahead, what they will surely seek above all else is security for themselves, their families, and their communities. As a result, both top-down policy and bottom-up action should put at the center a new, holistic view of everyone’s security.

Allmep groups include: Women Wage Peace; Stand Together; Tagheer; Parent Circle – Family Forum; Rabbis for Human Rights; Seeds of Peace; A Land for All; and Combatants for Peace (CfP), among them.
 
On the ground, groups like Combatants for Peace are working on the West Bank with orphans from Gaza, and dealing with the daily mayhem wrought by the Israeli military. Here’s their announcement from August 14^th: CfP Palestinian cofounder, Nour, and CfP activist, Mounir, shared how their families were forcibly driven from their homes. They spoke of thousands of people – an entire refugee camp – left in rubble. And they asked us to do one thing: take action.

It came to me strongly some weeks ago to ask the Interfaith Council of Sonoma County for a Day of Prayer for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. After conversations with someone active on the Council, it became apparent that this was too much to ask for at present because many of the churches, temples, and sanghas have been at full stretch trying to get protections in place for our undocumented neighbors, friends, and workers.

So, I’ve started with one or two local churches. The starvation in Gaza is weighing on many people’s hearts.

I, who could never have imagined it, have been standing at the corner of Main Street and Highway 12 in recent weeks on a Monday, with a sign I painted that reads: Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, compassion, compassion. What would you do if these were your children?

I’m sharing these stories to illustrate what you already know and, no doubt, practice, the value of small, heartfelt actions. Whatever comes to you will be uniquely tailored to your gifts. We need to listen deeply to what’s happening inside, so that we can respond more effectively, rather than react, to the many outer events requiring action. In this regard, I fall back on Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s four-point plan: witnessing, grieving, prayer, and action.

Before Acting

Where has wisdom fled?
She is running along the rows of ripening maize
crying and laughing.

She’s right there, inside
each of our kernels.

Fruit picked too soon yields bitterness—
needs patience, restraint.

You want to scream, rage, do
something—anything.

Slow down, watch the bees at work,
the spider weave her web.

Cook with love.

Turn to the Her
so She may turn to you.

The original title of this piece was “In the Hands of Two Crazy Men.” It came to me after Netanyahu attacked Iran and before Trump did the same. The title changed after feedback from others, and my reactivity had had a chance to cool down.

Turning Away from the Suffering of Others.

I see a direct link between the US continuing to fund this shameful genocide and the events our would-be, rapidly achieving full dictatorship by Trump, is enacting here. When we turn away from the suffering of others, wherever it occurs, it should come as no surprise when it turns up on our doorstep.

What will change the Netanyahu government’s course of deadly action?
I don’t know. Prayer is one essential ingredient. I believe the only thing that will make them stop is when we in the West, South, North, and East, stop sending our arms, technology, and money, preferably coupled with sanctions. Voicing “grave” concern and “strong condemnations” mean nothing to such people.

The other possibility is the Israeli public ousting this government, but, sadly, this still seems some way off. That’s why I urge supporting those groups who are working for peace.

Here is my Gaza poem.

No Appetite

I sit in pain
for the people of Gaza.
It has been so for days—
no appetite while they starve.

A whirring of wings
and there it is! An Anna’s
flitting back and forth
in front of my face, high-pitched, chirping,
You pray for a miracle,
well, here I am!

Can I grasp a hummingbird—
its beauty, its grace,
its flashes of green and red?

Can I fathom this genocide—
its horror, its darkness,
played in slow motion before our eyes?

Or, those I elect
who aid and abet
this holocaust nightmare?
I, a Jew, born in Israel

pray, protest,
howl, and pray,
while the Earth weeps
for her children.

I’d like to end with a poem that helps me to rebalance.

What’s Real?

The light deer glide across evening sky
with dark wings amid darkening cloud
as this summer sunset, highlight of my day,
switches to night.
And the trees breathe,
and I with them. I breathe out the traumas
of this day, clouds of smoke and fire,
the crises spewing all around.

I do not say, like the deer, they will fade away.
No, they grow hotter, nearer,
and grounding in what’s real more urgent,
to remind of Life’s bounty (a harvest of
green beans today), the kindness
of moments like these.

Wishing each of you a continuing journey of richness, beauty, and discovery,

With love,
Raphael

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

Noticeboard Readers

If you’d like to stay in touch and receive poems and photos that accompany my occasional poetry event invitations, please sign up below.

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Kincentric Leadership Breakthrough

Justine Huxley and Anna Kovasna, co-founders of Kincentic Leadership Project, have laid the foundations for organizations to practice the eight principles of Kincentric Leadership in a handbook come toolkit, and they offer additional support to any organization wishing to implement these principles.

This is a huge step forward in grounding their vision for our human interactions to be responsive and responsible to the more-than-human world, and more closely aligned with Earth’s realities.

You can go to: https://www.kincentricleadership.org/resources to see the Handbook, and to: https://www.kincentricleadership.org/what-we-do/consultancy for the “Accompaniment and Mentoring” they offer.

They launched this Toolkit on Zoom on July 16th, and this was the link.

The eight principles, explained in Chapter 2 of the Handbook, are: 1. Sacredness 2. Interdependence 3. Animacy & intelligence 4. Kinship 5. Diversity& cocreation 6. Justice & equity 7. Belonging & place 8. Unraveling.

Do you know, or can you think of, a non-profit or a business that may want to align its goals with this approach?

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Preparing for the Darkness and Holding the Light
by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

A new article in Kosmos Journal at: https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/preparing-for-the-darkness/

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Encountering Trees

Emergence Magazine gives a practice we all can do anytime we wish to connect more deeply with local trees. I find Emergence always interesting. Hopefully, you’re signed up.

Many thanks to Diana Badger for her careful editing and invaluable suggestions over the years, and to Linton Hale for posting this newsletter on my site!