Ferial Puren
Nov 14, 2024
Over the last twelve months, Living Cities Earth has dedicated itself to an evolutionary rhythm of growth, crafting a series of learning experiences that will launch between November and the early months of 2025. These are not just courses but transformative tools, created to help our partners and collaborators equip themselves and those they lead. These evolutionary learning experiences are designed to support a deeper understanding of our world and our interconnected roles within it, enhancing our ability to respond to change with intention and adaptability. In upcoming newsletters, we’ll share more on how these experiences can be accessed and offered to the communities you serve.
Reflecting on September and October activities, including our collaborative Connectathon event we co-hosted, I am reminded of the collective power we witnessed ~ a community of individuals drawn together by a shared vision of renewal. We came together not just to celebrate what we’ve achieved, but to plant seeds of what’s still to come. Dreams are like seeds, full of potential but inert until they’re given to the soil and courageously crack open. And so, as individuals and as a community, we find ourselves on the edge of something new ~ a path that only reveals itself as we dare to walk it.
In this way, November is a metaphor for the road ahead. It calls us to slow down, to take in the wisdom needed to lay deep foundations, build trust relationships and create structures that will support us far into the future. At LCE, we see education as a guide, not just lighting the way but helping us find our place within the vast unknown. For the truth is, we are all operating with limited knowledge. Not from lack of effort, but because life is far too expansive for any one of us to contain or understand. The more we see ourselves as part of this vast ecosystem, the better we flow with it, the more at ease we become within it. Albert Einstein once said, “The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don’t know.” This gentle humility sits at the core of our mission.
We’re not here to control or master the future. We’re here to deepen our understanding of and live in harmony with it, to become attuned to the subtle, often unseen connections working quietly in the background, weaving us all together in a tapestry of interdependence and interconnectedness.
These invisible bonds shape our lives in profound and often mysterious ways, reminding us just how much of life remains beyond our understanding. They influence our experiences, subtly guiding us, and revealing that there is so much we have yet to see and comprehend.
Our upcoming education programs are not about filling minds with facts but opening them, awakening us to our role in the great unfolding story. To engage in this journey is to join a movement of conscious evolution. Learning is no longer about what we can use; it becomes a way of being—an orientation that invites us to live more fully, with each other and with the Earth itself. Together, we are invited to navigate life’s path with intention and a sense of responsibility, rooted in the knowledge that we are in this together.
This journey asks for courage. It calls us to release old paradigms and embrace the unknown, to let go of our certainties and be moved by the flow of life itself. For Gaia is not merely asking us to evolve; Mother Earth is inviting us to awaken to a new way of being, gently reminding us that we are not separate from her, but part of her living, breathing self. And so, November, with its quiet call to reflection, reminds us that our only way forward is through ~ not around, not above, but right through the heart of life as it is.
And so, as we gaze toward what lies ahead, may we feel more than hope ~ a deep anticipation. Can we envision a time when we walk in our full potential ~ not as fragmented individuals, but as a united whole, daring to bring our dreams into reality? Together, we have the power to create something that ripples far beyond us, something that reaches out like waves across the ocean of life. The possibilities before us are vast and ever-present as the Universe itself, waiting for us to reach out, to let them move us as we move them.
With light, learning & Love
Ferial Puren - Co-founder, Living Cities Earth