What do you do When The Sky Falls? Great Endings, Love Louder & The Alchemy of Autumn
Thoughts on great endings + bringing storytelling to your community
Greetings Dear Human.
Wow this week! My feed is flooding with words generated by the great big giant trees of Joanna Macy and Andrea Gibson — people whose way of rooting to earth and community sang the song of life into paths for peace for this heart to land in these wild times of coming undone.
More on that later.
At the bottom of this email you’ll find an invitation to join Kumu Ramsay Taum in a live conversation tomorrow, and an invitation to bring storytelling to your community.
When The Sky Falls
Throughout human history, the motif of “the sky is falling” has appeared in folklore and mythology as both a cautionary tale and a reflection of cosmic fragility. In the European fable Chicken Little, a single acorn striking a chicken’s head triggers a cascade of fear, and the story proceeds to warn about how fear, panic, and rumor can interrupt discernment.
Norse cosmology envisions the literal collapse of the heavens during Ragnarök, when stars fall and the world tree trembles, while in ancient China, the goddess Nuwa heals a fractured sky by fusing five-colored stones, restoring harmony between heaven and earth. These stories reveal a universal concern for the balance between seen and unseen worlds, reminding us that chaos and collapse play a role in the return to balance.
And here’s the deal… we know that the sky really is falling all around the world right now.
So let’s notice where we are in the bigger story as we remember that the chaos and undoing we are seeing is part of a larger cycle of coming back into balance.
I’ve been thinking about what happens when the sky falls
and what happens if there is no one to catch it.
It got me wondering… is this crazy feelings that Earth is out to get us with fires and floods a symptom of making Earth a stranger?
That we have forgotten her language, and so don’t recognize when she warns up as she raises her voice, or makes a gesture that expresses her upset? If we were in relationship, we would notice the gesture, the change in tone, would we have a context of relationship?
I often wonder about those from long ago who left their homes and ways of being and relationship with their land behind — and how they had to stitch the memories of their intimacy into old stories that could be carried across borders and boundaries.
Sometimes I imagine your ancestors and mine…and the journey they took on the road to survival, and how so many had to hide their knowledge, culture, and traditions inside of stories, poems, and songs so they could be carried through the frame of memory. “Nothing to show,” one could say, when stopped at the border as their bags were checked. The weight of their words hidden in fairytales.
“No ties to the truth of the fabric of life here,” they could say, and shrug their shoulders with empty palms to bare as they and continued to pass through to the next chapter of life.
So even while they did their best to carry them, many of the threads of relationship were dropped. The relationship to culture, history, and the land, and our stories of our connection to time and place.
But not all stories were lost— some were hidden away so deep into the fold for safety that they became fictionalized rather than realized.
And so here we are.
With a sky that is falling…
and fragments of collective memory of all that has come before to guide us through these times.
So what will you do when the sky falls? When the rivers rise? When the fires burn? Will we say this is the end?
Or declare this the beginning?
Will we place ourselves inside of a story of a cycle of change, inside of the cycle of life? Or will we stand outside of the story, a stranger to the nature or life, to our true nature? Not knowing how to read which way the winds blows?
This way of living in alignment with our world is being remembered and revitalized. Through gardening and permaculture in our own backyards, and out on the open ocean…Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the tiny Micronesian island of Satawal, became a legend for reviving an ancient art of wayfinding—
The traditional system of navigating vast ocean expanses without maps, compasses, or modern instruments—Piailug carried a lineage of star paths, wave patterns, and deep ocean knowledge in his being. In 1976, he famously guided the Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa on its maiden journey from Hawai‘i to Tahiti, proving that Polynesians had intentionally settled the Pacific through sophisticated navigation rather than by chance.
In doing so, Piailug catalyzed a cultural renaissance across Oceania, inspiring new generations to reclaim ancestral knowledge of the seas. His humility, mastery, and service made him not only a navigator of canoes but a navigator of cultural memory and identity.
I mention this— because we are remembering that the seeds of knowing earth as beloved, companion, and healer— are coming alive in so many ways right here, right now.
And as the sky falls… we need to have this remembering come alive in us. Having just sat at the feet of Pele, the erupting volcano on The Big Island, I can share that Creation happens at the exact same time as Destruction.
This process is not polite and no one is waiting in line, saying, “Um, excuse me, I think it’s my turn…”
Creation happens in the wake of destruction when the thread of life is present, known and felt and that thread acts like a guide, paving the golden path way to through the destruction.
As the sky falls, a new ground is created.
So it becomes a race of the creators to see who will create what in the wake of destruction.
This is why we need our storytellers to step up and start writing better endings.
Seriously.
A writer who wrestles with their story hard enough gives us something—they show us how to keep the pulse of life going — The Empire Strikes Back. Life is Beautiful. The Truman Show. Not easy endings. But great.
Because great endings lead to great beginnings.
We are in a time of endings.
So we are in a time of beginnings.
Andrea Gibson just dedicated the last years of their life to showing us that life can be beautiful when we turn and face the ending— with all the real, raw fear, vulnerability, and resistance that reveals.
“Meg knew what I hadn’t yet been able to say:
that care went both ways.
That being medicine for others is medicine to me.”
The Alchemy of Autumn
This nearly not quite lost language of earth… she speaks through the keening of bright red, yellow and orange leaves — as they prepare for their great fall from the tree who grew them, they show us how beautiful life can be when we don’t cling to what they once were. The beauty of autumn emerges as chlorophyll withdraws, and the leaf’s “hidden colors” emerge—its essence revealed in its final act before returning to earth. The reds, oranges, and yellows were always there, just now visible when the act of photosynthesis stops.
This week I met 4 people who have lost their jobs. People who had good jobs doing good work making good money. One man said, “I’ve been out of work for 9 months, all I want to do is go back to work.”
This quandary is our next chapter. A lot of people are asking what do I have to give? Who will I be when the sky falls? And how do we reconcile this when we’ve been inducted into a culture that equates the value of what we have to give to our bank accounts.
Days when I was simply too sick to have a conversation. In those moments I asked a friend who once lived with an illness even rougher than mine, “How do I feel like I have anything to give when I can barely get out of bed?”
She said, “Give love, Andrea. Then give more love. There is nothing in this life more powerful to give than that.”
Hearing her words, I felt my pulse shift. I was wrong in my twenties, when I believed in the idea of having nothing to give. Love. We always have love to give.
So when the sky falls, may you find ease as you learn how to walk on new land.
And when what we have to give changes, may you always know that no matter what you do or don’t do— you always have the most valuable thing in the world to give.
May you be good medicine.
2 Fabulous Things Happening This Week
Kumu Ramsay Taum will be giving a two hour class for STORY AS CEREMONY this Friday at 11:30am PST. Kumu Ramsay is an elder, a guide, a true teacher, and speaks truth into this time with gentle loving aloha. You’ll leave with a deeper appreciation for Hawaiian wisdom teachings.
OUR FIRST MEETING OF LIGHTHOUSE HOSTS
This is an invitation to bring storytelling to your community
Become a Host of Storytelling in Your Community
There is untold power in those unquantifiable networks we create when we connect one-to-one and nourish our sense of belonging in the places we call home.
And this has been the rub with running online events— because many of us are yearning for more connection in our actual communities.
That’s why we’re launching LightHouse Gatherings Pilot Program this August.
We’re inviting people to gather in small, in-person circles— to reconnect as humans through the ancient practice of storytelling. These circles offer space to slow down, listen deeply, laugh, be real with the moment, and imagine what’s possible.
Story is one of humanity’s oldest and most enduring technologies for building communities that thrive across many generations. As global systems fray, we invite you and your neighbors to step into a new frame: what if this unraveling is not the end, but the start of a necessary turning toward a more connected, life-honoring way of being?
LightHouse Gatherings are about connecting with global teachers from around the world globe— while joining from your community hub.
We’ll be gathering on four Tuesday evenings, from August 12 through September 2, for our first in-person storytelling sessions. If you’re curious about joining us, there are two ways to participate:
⭐️—> Sign up to be a LightHouse Host and gather people in your community. ⭐️
Our first orientation is this coming Thursday!
Whether you’re on a farm in Australia, a suburb in Seattle, or a rooftop in Brooklyn, you can be a light in your community.
This is your invitation to slow down and drop in— right where you are. Join us for a shared story experience designed to be meaningful, connective, and deeply human.
These gatherings are done in partnership with NewStories.