#10 The Second Quest: Befriending the World

#10 The Second Quest: Befriending the World

The place-connecting power of friendship   The great adventure of our time is to “green our deserts” in every sense: to help damaged places come back to life, leave our local ecologies and communities stronger, and journey home together. Give this one a listen to hear what that means…   It’s easy to see the world is wanting to change, and in fact the only constant is change… But it is so natural to resist change, to forego the adventure for the couch and screens. But we were born for this! So how do we feel the stakes enough to be compelled ahead, to enter the adventure and keep going? Beware of overwhelm and heroism, those are exhausting… Quest 2: Befriending the World For this quest, you are going to form one thread. Choose one person, living being, or part of your place that you feel genuinely curious about and would like to know more deeply. It could be: * Someone you often pass but have never met * A tree that stands out to you * A bird whose song you recognize and have been curious about * A creek you love but haven’t spent the time to really get to know * A garden * A trail * An animal * Any part of the living world around you Find a way to befriend that part of the world. If You Choose a Person You might: * Learn their name * Ask what they are doing that day * Ask what they care about or what makes them feel alive * Be curious about them, and try to make them feel “seen” * Remember something they told you and follow up another time The goal is to simply create an opening… If You Choose Another Living Being or Part of Place You might: * Learn its name * Notice its patterns or learn about its lifecycle * Spend time observing until you learn something you couldn’t have expected * Ask someone who knows more about it to teach you something * Find one friendly and respectful way to express your desire to connect A friendly response might be picking up litter nearby, learning how to protect a habitat, creating some symbol of appreciation, or simply returning to visit and observe again. What You Are Looking For Do I feel more connected to the world around me? Do I feel more capable of helping local connection grow? Do I feel any more ready to meet what the adventure of Returning Home may ask of me? If you aren’t sure, go out again to visit what you’re trying to befriend. Ask a new question and try to be earnest, notice something more specific, squint your eyes a bit, wait for a surprise, or choose something else that makes you more curious. Your Artifact The final step of the quest is to create an artifact. This artifact is a symbol of the thread you formed, but even more than that, it is a symbol of your ability to be a Befriender of the World. It is something you can look to and remember: I can create openings. I can form connections. I can help friendship and connection to form in my place. Your artifact should be specific to the connection you made. It might be: * A card with the name of your new connection and perhaps a short description of your quest * A piece of thread or cord that represents the relationship being formed * A sketch or photo * Something pocket-sized so you can keep it with you as you continue on your Returning Home adventure   Share The Story of Your Quest If you go on the quest, share what happened in the comments. You can share the story, a description of your artifact, or simply the name of what you befriended.

#9 The First Quest: Forming Eyes of Place

What if the next great adventure is not in faraway lands, but waiting for you in the place you already live? In this first quest of the Returning Home Adventure Series, we explore Forming Eyes of Place: learning to see in a way that helps us reenter a vibrant, connected, living world. Drop into the sounds, insects, cottonwoods, traffic, and web of life beside Bear Creek where we sit and remember why it's a good thing to do. See why our adventure starts with a great paradox, how addressing the big-scale problems of the world can start by slowing down where we are, and how attention to place can help us get our footing again.   First Quest Instructions: Forming Eyes of Place Go sit in a spot near where you live. It doesn’t have to be wild. It doesn’t have to be pristine. It just has to be somewhere you can get to easily and often, and where you can sit safely for a while. Start for five minutes. See if you want to stay longer or return for more. Notice what’s moving around you. Notice the sounds. Notice what’s moving. Notice what notices you. Then ask yourself: What did I notice that most people miss? Side quest: Interview somebody who has a different way of seeing place - maybe a bird watcher, or a community organizer, or a park ranger. Then ask them: What do you notice about our place that most people miss? See if you can discover a new set of eyes to somehow see place anew. Please share this with anyone who might want to join the adventure.

#8 Flying into the Future

What are the conditions we have to get into to learn how to make our community feel more like home?  Over the last six episodes of Returning Home, I’ve been exploring six simple ways communities can learn about exactly that:  Noticing Place Finding Belonging Listening for Local Story Sensing What's Changing Opening to Possibility Acting and Becoming   This episode is a pause to look back, but mostly to look ahead, toward turning these practices into small, welcoming adventures people can try where they live. I share a surprising lesson from a story I stumbled upon recently. It helped me see Returning Home from a new angle. It’s easy to think the future of our places is mostly in the hands of institutions, organizations, and folks with official titles. But a place is a living field of changing conditions, and too much of our response is divided across separate organizations, categories, and responsibilities. Maybe that means more of us need small ways to get out there, notice what is happening, find each other, connect things up, and practice moving into the future together. Visit awakeninglands.com to learn more or get in touch.

#7 If You Eat, You’re In: The Adventure of Incredible Edible

In Todmorden, an old textile town in northern England, Pam Warhurst and a few friends found something everyone can do, right outside their doors, and paired that with an infectious can-do attitude. For a bit of British English and a quote from Pam: “Why don’t we just start doing stuff for ourselves instead of having a whinge about everybody else not doing stuff.” They got the whole town “unstuck.” And in fact, they really got moving! This is the awesome story of Incredible Edible, which demonstrates how local food became a path for ordinary people to grow food, grow self-belief, strengthen community, support local farmers, and begin responding to planetary problems starting right outside their doors. If you eat, you’re in. In the Returning Home Podcast, we are exploring things small groups and whole communities can do together to deepen their sense of home. That means growing our connection to the places we live, the people around us, and the wider living world, starting right outside our doors. And it means growing a sense of home within ourselves, so we feel more rooted, more connected.  This episode explores: how do we move from caring about the places we call home, and learning more about them, into real action? But the actions we can participate in that actually improve the world can feel out of reach and overwhelming when our focus is on the big, far away stuff. This leads to a lot of people feeling stuck. It’s absolutely essential to know that changing ourselves for the better is very often easiest by removing what holds us back, instead of pushing ourselves harder. Bit of useful psychology there… Please visit awakeninglands.com to learn how we’re exploring things everyone can do to grow the sense of home, wherever you live. Just like Pam and Incredible Edible. Featured Sources Incredible Edible https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/ [https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Incredible Edible Todmorden https://incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/ [https://incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Pam Warhurst TED Talk: How We Can Eat Our Landscapes https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes [https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Do Good Podcast #50: Pam Warhurst on the Power of Small Actions https://www.dogoodpodcast.co.uk/ep-50-pam-warhurst [https://www.dogoodpodcast.co.uk/ep-50-pam-warhurst?utm_source=chatgpt.com] The Guardian: Incredible Edible Yorkshire town’s food growing scheme takes root worldwide https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/09/incredible-edible-yorkshire-towns-food-growing-scheme-takes-root-worldwide [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/09/incredible-edible-yorkshire-towns-food-growing-scheme-takes-root-worldwide?utm_source=chatgpt.com]

#6 Letting Go and Letting Come

How a Food System Can Learn to See Itself.   If we want to live in a healthy relationship with the places we call home, with each other and the rest of life, we have to learn how to sense a better way forward together. To sense what’s possible, we have to get out into the world together. We have to journey out and learn what is actually happening. But to truly change… We have to have a quality of presence to know what we may need to let go of… If we are able to do so, what better future might then be able to come through? In South Africa, the Southern Africa Food Lab brought together people from across the food system to explore creative responses to hunger and malnutrition. Farmers, researchers, civil leaders, funders, and other representatives of the food system entered learning journeys, dialogue, and co-creative spaces to better understand how to fully transform. This episode begins with Norah Mlondobozi, a former teacher and smallholder farmer from Mopani, who once said: “You cannot teach a hungry child.” Through the Southern Africa Food Lab, we explore the practice of Presencing, described by Theory U, which asks the question: What might we need to go out and sense clearly, so we can know what to let go of, and what to let come? This is also one of the community practices we’re learning to host within Returning Home. Visit awakeninglands.com [http://awakeninglands.com] to learn more.   Featured Sources: Southern Africa Food Lab https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/ [https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/] Creating Transformative Spaces for Dialogue and Action: Reflecting on the Experience of the Southern Africa Food Lab https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss3/art2/ [https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss3/art2/] Researchers Convening Dialogue to Address Grand Challenges: Affordances, Tensions, and the Shift to Deep Dialogue https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14761270241279132 [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14761270241279132?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Mopani Learning Journey Reflections https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Mopani-Learning-Journey-Reflections.pdf [https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Mopani-Learning-Journey-Reflections.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Theory U https://www.presencing.org [https://www.presencing.org/aboutus/theory-u]/