Some Things I Learned This Week

Watching the sunset in Stockholm, hatching plans for America

The plans are coming together for this American tour next month – and booking is now open for the Chicago Retreat on the weekend of September 13-15, as well as a free online event with the EcoGather network on August 31. Read more about both of these below.

Chris Oldfield took this photo of the view from the park where we ate our picnic on Monday evening.

On the north side of Södermalm, Stockholm’s south island, there is a small park which catches the setting sun, this time of year. The children counted the steps we climbed to get there, flights of wooden stairs attached to a cliff face: one hundred and twenty-one, they made it. Even at the end of a long day, it was worth the climb, not only for the sunset, but also for the view across the city, laid out before us like a train set.

An hour earlier, we’d met

Elizabeth Oldfield

and her family off the train from Hamburg and walked them through the old town to a hostel on an old ship that used to sail the Norwegian fjords. Now we brought our picnic up the steps to Ivar Lo’s park, the grown-ups catching the day’s last sunshine as the kids burned off the last of their energy on the playground behind us.

This far north, by the time August comes around, we’re in the territory of late summer, and I find myself straddling timelines: spending as much of the days as I can in the territory of the present, yet allowing a part of my attention to lean on towards the coming journey to America and all the arrangements this entails.

Thank you to everyone who responded to last week’s post announcing the tour.

I should probably explain that, when I started talking with the team at Chelsea Green about an American tour, we thought this would be in November. Some way into our discussions, it was pointed out that the US might have other things on its collective mind in November, so the date for the paperback release was brought forward, and suddenly we were trying to pull together a tour at very short notice just as my family was heading into the summer holidays. Deep gratitude, then, for all those who are helping to make this happen.

I’ve learned a lot in the past week. For example, I learned that the West starts a long way East, and including Chicago under the umbrella of “the northeast” is a rookie error! And I learned that there are many folks further west or south of where I’ll get to on this trip who would love to welcome me to their corners of the US and Canada: may the day come when we make this happen together!

For now, the outline of the tour is in place, the details of events are taking shape, and I’ll send out a full announcement next week. In the meantime, here are two dates that I wanted to share with you all straightaway.

1. The Chicago Retreat (September 13-15)

Booking for this weekend event is now open to everyone. We’ll start on the Friday night with a public talk and signing at Pilsen Community Books, followed by a two-day retreat over Saturday and Sunday on the University of Chicago campus at Hyde Park.

After years of teaching around Europe and across the internet, this is the first time I’ve done anything like this in North America, so I’m excited about the chance to go deep into the territory opened up in At Work in the Ruins and the places this book has taken me, and to learn more about where and how this connects with the experience of American readers.

2. EcoGather: Regrowing a Living Culture (August 31)

This is a free Zoom event in advance of the tour, open to anyone, taking place at 11am Eastern Time on Saturday, August 31, in collaboration with the EcoGather network and Sterling College. We’ve framed this as a conversation about “the work that is called for now”:

In pockets here and there, gathered around kitchen tables or in the in-between spaces of online connection, a patchwork of conversations has been maturing over these past years. They are conversations in which we step back from the rush to action or to answers, where we hold each other in the process of "giving up” on promises that no longer make sense and responses to the crisis that turn out to be themselves a part of the crisis. It’s sobering, this work – from some angles, it can look like a twelve-step program for the winners of modernity. And there are more and more folks arriving at the doors of these meetings.

At the same time, there are questions brewing among those who have already been part of this work for a while:

• How do we tell the story of what is worth doing now?

• What kind of maps are worth making to help each other find paths through an uncertain landscape?

• How do we release resources from the structures of a world that is ending to contribute to the possibility of worlds worth living for in the times to come?

• How might we move together in the space between the crumbling familiar and the worlds we won’t live to see?

• What are the practices that help us leave good ruins, become good ancestors?

Registration for the event is free – and from the event page, you’ll also find a discount code to order hardback or paperback copies of At Work in the Ruins direct from Chelsea Green at a 35% discount on the regular price: