Council on the Uncertain Human Future

In the Council on the Uncertain Human Future
we slow down, come present, and listen deeply.

We share our understandings of the social and political context in which we meet,
the planetary changes underway, and the human behaviors that brought us here…
and stay with the implications for all living beings, including ourselves.

With open hearts and minds,
we acknowledge the conditions and losses underway.

We ask… what matters from here?
Given what we know, how do we live now?
How might we serve, individually and together…
with and for the Earth?

Listening together, collective wisdom may arise
between us, further seeding empathetic, earth-based,
life-affirming ways into the new realities…

These practices of listening, steady presence and reckoning,
and the trust, insight, community and evolutionary visioning
that may grow from them, are path for these times… mycelial and emergent.

Please explore our practice stream, readers and films…
Learn more of our intentions, the ongoing contributions of CUHF members,
and how you might join us.

…and shifting the paradigm.

In the Council on the Uncertain Human Future…we slow down, come present, and listen deeply.

We share our understandings of the social and political context in which we meet, the planetary changes underway, and the human behaviors that brought us here…and stay with the implications for all living beings, including ourselves.

With open hearts and minds, we acknowledge the conditions and losses underway.

We ask… what matters from here? Given what we know, how do we live now? How might we serve, individually and together…with and for the earth?

Listening together, collective wisdom may arise between us, further seeding empathetic, earth-based, life-affirming ways into the new realities…

These practices of listening, steady presence and reckoning,and the trust, insight, community and evolutionary visioning that may grow from them, are path for these times…mycelial and emergent.

Please explore our practice stream, readers and films. Learn more of our intentions, the ongoing contributions of CUHF members, and how you might join us.

…it shifts the paradigm, sustaining us.

REFLECTING AT 10 YEARS

On this community, this practice

Since the beginning, we’ve listened for how CUHF might serve in these unprecedented times. In response, our conversations and practices have been mycelial in nature—deepening and evolving to meet the call. At ten years, the CUHF community and network continues to grow, morph and surprise us in its compassion, tenacity and possibilities.

In this time of profound uncertainty, dissolution and revelation, we asked a group of Council members to speak about how they understand our work, and what it offers for these times. Their voices are gathered in a circle in this special publication, available now through ISSU.

FEATURED EVENTS

A Book Launch at MASSMoCA

Join members of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future at MassMoCA on Thursday, October 19th to celebrate the launch of Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World—a new book by M.R. O’Connor on the history and powerful phenomenon of wildfire. Described as “gutsy, clear-eyed, and surprisingly touching”, Ignition offers a wildly hopeful vision of an alternative environmental future. Joining M.R. O’Connor in conversation are fellow CUHF members and writers Meehan Crist and Emily Raboteau.

For more information on the series, click here.

A Year of Practice & Council with NDF

This year, the Council on the Uncertain Human Future is partnering with Natural Dharma Fellowship to offer an interactive series of monthly gatherings called, Rewilding the Soul. Featuring dharma talks by Lama Willa Blythe Baker and Lama Liz Monson, meditative practice in natural spaces, and dedicated Council Circles, we lean into our oneness with the living planet—combining an embodied practice of meditation with gathering and listening in Council.

For more information on the series, click here.

FEATURED STORIES

April 2023 Council session with Bayo Akomolafe at MassMoCA.

Council with Bayo Akomolafe at MassMoCA

The insights of Bayo Akomolafe as we live into these times upend our patterns of thought and ways of knowing....

Worcester State Professor, Siri Colom, participates in a CUHF Council circle at the MIT Climate Symposium

CUHF at MIT Climate Education Symposium

What does it mean to educate now? How do we meet the times, together and with our students? A Council...

CONNECT

On Sunday, April 16, Council members and conveners from around the world came together around a call to Connect. Together,...

Melissa Hoffer Appointed Climate Chief

On her first full day in office, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy signed an executive order creating the state’s first Cabinet-level...

There is an urgent need for people to bear witness, to truly take in and process what is happening; and do so in community where new insights and collective intelligence can emerge.

CURT NEWTON | Massachusetts Institute of Technology CUHF Steady Council Anchor
It is in these quiet and contemplative spaces, sitting in intentional conversation with others, that the wisdom, strength, and seeds of change we so desperately need to bring about cultural transformation can begin to take root and emerge.

LILY SWANBROW BECKERCUHF National Convener
A Council is a circle. It has no beginning and no end. It has no leaders and no followers, no hierarchy of power or privilege. There are no limits to its revolutions. What a circle has is a center. The center holds honesty, which is a kind of beauty, which is a source of truth.

KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE | Oregon State UniversityNational CUHF member
By listening open-heartedly to one another, we can allow new, unanticipated insights to arise. In this way, Council is a path to an emancipatory way of being with the world and with each other. It is a model for the world we are trying to bring into being.

WALTER WRIGHTCUHF National Convener
There is a spaciousness in our councils—a time-out-of-time—in which we can pause and trust that insight will arise from our creative depths. One insight sparks another and another until we find ourselves seeing possibility and light through the fog of despair. Like an ecosystem, we are generating new ways of being and collaborating for the benefit of all.

KIRSTIN EDELGLASSRando Partnership Council Member
The Council experience rattles the crumbling foundation of a defunct dualistic paradigm, one that demands our choice between mind and body, thought and feeling, matter and energy, self and other, individual and community, human and nature, the mundane and the sacred. It offers instead a vision of the world rooted in interdependence.

KEVIN GALLAGHERCUHF Core Team and National Convener

CUHF IN HIGHER ED

CUHF Community at MIT

Since the summer of 2020, faculty and staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been convening in small circles to build and deepen collective reflection on the planetary environmental crisis, as an Affiliate of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future.

Read the full article on MIT’s website

It’s Time for Higher Education to “Get Real” about the Climate Crisis

Learn about the history of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, and our work in A new Earth conversation (NEC) at Clark University, in a new piece by CUHF Core Team member, Diana Chapman Walsh.

Read the full article on Medium

A new Earth conversation Brochure

The initial Council on the Uncertain Human Future (2014) inspired Clark University faculty and staff to join the process (2015-2019); a vision for A new Earth conversation emerged from those Councils and has grown into a campus-wide climate initiative, enabling deeper conversation and cultivating possibility with students.

View the brochure on Issu