“Quoting the ancient I Ching, [Gail] writes about “coming to rest in motion.” She should know: a world traveler and social activist, Gail brings the steady calm she finds in the mountains to her work at peacemaking in a troubled world. ”
– Elizabeth Lesser cofounder Omega Institute
I feel like an absurd lover torn between two beloveds. But rather than being drawn to different people, I’m torn between landscapes. My primary loves are the lakes and trees of Minnesota, but I have also deeply fallen for the desert mountains and mesas of New Mexico. And still if I drift into memories, I recall other landscapes that pierced my heart. When it comes to landscapes, Gail Straub is my people.
Gail Straub is the author of The Ashokan Way: Landscape’s Path into Consciousness. In the book and in our conversation Gail shares her wisdom on the dance of landscape and consciousness, her friendship with poet-philosopher (and one of my personal heroes) John O’Donohue, the role the Ashokan reservoir has played in her social activism, and her growth into a wisdom elder. The contemplative gift of The Ashokan Way is that Gail is a generative model of how to attune to a practice that requires focused and embodied attention to develop an intimacy with something larger than yourself.
Gail Straub, co-founder and Executive Director of Empowerment Institute, is one of the world’s leading authorities on women’s empowerment. As part of this focus, she co-founded IMAGINE: A Global Initiative for the Empowerment of Women to help women heal from violence, build strong lives, and contribute to their community. This initiative applies the Institute’s empowerment methodology to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal “to promote gender equality and empower women.” IMAGINE initiatives are under way in Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan and South Africa.These are just some of Gail’s accolades. I am not going to list them all because after this conversation you should head over to her website, empowermentinstitute.net to learn more and possibly support her work.
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EPISODE SHOW NOTES
Resources by Gail Straub
- The Ashokan Way: Landscape’s Path into Consciousness
- Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want it (with David Gershon)
- Returning to My Mother’s House
- Gail Straub’s Indiebound Homepage
Resources Mentioned
- The Ashokan Way: Landscape’s Path into Consciousness
- Beauty by John O’Donohue
- The Four Elements by John O’Donohue
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- The Old Ways: The Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane
People
- David Gershon
- John O’Donohue
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Henry David Thoreau
- Annie Dillard
- Robert Macfarlane
- Rainer Marie Rilke
Highlights
- I deeply admire, philosopher/poet John O’Donohue, 10 years, you were friends, when and how did you first meet John?
- Can you unpack the title of the book, The Ashokan Way: Landscape’s Path into Consciousness? What does ‘The Ashokan Way’ mean, and how has that been vehicle for a ‘landscape’s path into consciousness’?
- I am a big fan of knockout first lines of a book. The archway to the journey. And you have a helluva archway – ‘Attention is form of devotion and a pathway to intimacy.’
- How does the experience of music become a contemplative practice?
- You hold the paradox of nature’s beauty and capacity for blind destruction, how does holding this paradox give you space to hold other paradoxes you experience?
- Gail, you are an elder on the wisdom path, and you write about wanting to nourish future generations. What has that transition been like for you to grow into a wisdom elder?
- You quote the beautiful question posed by writer of place, Robert Macfarlane. I want to read it for everyone listening:For some time now it has seemed to me that the two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?You respond to these questions in the book, so the related question for you is, what is the power of this exercise of knowing of place and being seen by a place?
- What drink would you pair with a conversation on The Ashokan Way?
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