Without a doubt the exploding global crisis of climate chaos is disrupting the social, political, and economic structures of global culture. Humanity is poised on a threshold that could be described as a global dark night of the soul. This global crisis is not asking us to simply “make things better” or invent new ways of living. It’s demanding that we surrender to a transformation so radical that we become a new variety of the human species. In this deep dialogue we explore an effective path forward as we take on the challenge for a new humanity to emerge from these turbulent times. Baker says we are being faced now with a predicament in which we are being asked to perceive it as an assignment rather than an affliction. We’re addicted to happy endings so we need a deeper kind of hope such as “Mystical hope” which is, in Carolyn’s words, “[I]nextricably connected with one’s inner world and not external outcome. Mystical hope is a commitment to meeting life as an assignment to be completed, rather than an obstacle to be removed.” She, and her co-author Andrew Harvey, feel it is a time for sacred activism, which is a marriage between spirituality and activism, saying, “Sacred activism incorporates all of our work with spiritual practices that help us not only take care of ourselves, but to be more dynamic, and more empowered as we do our work in the world and for the world.”
