Nourish to Nourish: A Path of Sacred Reciprocity

Lynne Twist Delivering A SpeechThis reflection is for the ones whose hearts are aching but aren’t turning away. It’s for those somewhere between outrage and optimism, who hold anger but not hate, who are tired but don’t stop caring. 

In a recent conversation with author, activist and co-founder of Pachamama Alliance, Lynne Twist, something powerful stirred. She helped many of us drop from the noise of the mind into the deeper wisdom of the heart—into listening, feeling, and nourishing what still wants to live.

Reframing the Moment: When Are You?

The UN has declared the urgent threat posed by human-caused global warming as “Code-Red” and most scientists understand the current decade is decisive in humanity’s future. While it’s critical to have a clear-eyed understanding of the challenges we face, it’s important to acknowledge how such framing can constrict the imagination, collapsing the vastness of time into a single, irreversible trajectory.

Lynne Twist offers another orientation—one rooted in responsibility, not denial. A way of widening the temporal frame so that discernment becomes possible. She has a phrase she often uses to get herself there:

“It's empowering for me to think of this as the first 25 years of the first century of the third millennium. It’s tumultuous, it's wild, it's unpredictable, it's scary, and it's just the first 25 years of a whole new thousand years.”

This longer view helps us see our precious time on this planet as more than the final chapter of humanity. This framing restores vision, helping us move from reaction to response.

“It gives you the capacity, the strength, the integrity to respond and be responsible, respond rather than react… to really look and see. . .how is this breakdown actually showing me the seeds of a breakthrough. . .”

From this vantage point, urgency and desperation aren’t the only drivers. Presence and vision are available too. Action, then, can arise from clarity rather than fear.

The Enemy Is Not Each Other

In polarized times, blame can feel like clarity. The instinct to point fingers is often heightened by real harm, real consequences, and a longing for justice and accountability.

Yet Lynne draws a distinction that reframes the terrain:

“We can hate the system that we’re all trapped in, but we can’t hate the other people… That feeds and fuels the fight… we have to find a way to not demonize each other, but demonize a system that would have us be at each other’s throats.”

The real adversary isn’t the person across the aisle, or across the street—it’s the system that scripts our roles, calcifies divides, and feeds on polarization. 

“We need to distinguish the people from the system or from the rhetoric or from the ugliness so that we’re not at each other’s throats. That really doesn’t work… It’s not just the people we’re angry with. We’re all trapped. Keep remembering that and have some compassion.”

This is not a call to ignore harm or dilute truth. It’s a deeper kind of seeing—one that refuses to dehumanize, even in the name of justice. The more we sharpen our analysis, the more we must soften our gaze and reorient ourselves from reactive righteousness toward deep mutuality.

Feelings Are Fuel

The intensity of these times bring up strong emotions but those of us who feel them don’t always have a framework for how to have them be generative. Anger can be seen as dangerous, grief as self-indulgent, and conflict as something to avoid

Lynne makes no apology for feelings—only encouragement to feel more deeply, and to let those feelings ripen into action.

“Anger can be useful if it’s transformed into action. Let your emotions fuel whatever is your action to take.”

The journey of moving through feelings can be slow and uncomfortable. But it is the opposite of collapse. It’s the work of turning pain into power—not by force, but by staying with the feeling until it reveals the movement beneath it.

“Conflict arises and then it turns into an opportunity for everybody to get off their position and be creative with each other.”

Nourish to Nourish

To stay in this work—for justice, for life, for a future worth living—we need more than strategy. We need sustenance. Life-giving work requires life-giving sustenance, not as an afterthought, but as a practice of sacred reciprocity. Lynne speaks of nourishment not as luxury, but as responsibility. As the act that makes all other acts possible.

“To receive the bounty and blessing of being alive… to notice the glory of the trees… listen to the birds… revel in food that’s colorful and beautiful… Nourish yourself with that so that you can nourish. It’s that sacred reciprocity.”

Lynne reminds us that beauty is not a luxury; it’s the medicine. To accept nourishment is to participate in the pulse of life. To care for the vessel that carries conviction. To root in the living world, so that each gesture, each word, each offering carries more clarity, more coherence, more love.

May we move through these days with more presence, less panic. And may the deep nourishment available to all life continue to nourish us so that we can nourish the world.

“Reciprocity is built into the natural world. Give and take. If you just look at your breath—you can’t take in more than you let out.”