The Tension of Emergence: Thriving in a world that remakes, not breaks

Feed What You Love (A Practice) with Jennifer England

• Jennifer England • Season 4 • Episode 8

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What if feeding what you love—even in the face of despair—could be your most vital climate practice?

In this episode, Jennifer offers a guided practice inspired by a recent conversation with climate educator and author Sarah Jaquette Ray, who invites us to face the monstrous scale of climate change not with more fixing, but with more loving. Together, they explored the emotional toll of activism, the trap of numbness, and the surprising resilience we access when we stay rooted in what brings us joy and meaning.

This practice is designed for anyone who feels overwhelmed, powerless, or stretched thin by the weight of the world—and who longs to feel more alive, connected, and steady in the long game.

In this episode, you’ll take away:

  • A fresh perspective on grief and anxiety as signals of what you care most deeply about
  • A two-part reflective and experiential practice to help you feed what you love
  • A gentle invitation to discover how ordinary joys can become acts of resistance and renewal

Join Jennifer in this quiet, potent offering—a return to what enlivens, surprises, and sustains us. Because when you feed what you love, you find others there. And together, we remember how to belong.

Links & resources—


Gratitude for this show’s theme song Inside the House, composed by the talented Yukon musician, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Jordy Walker. Artwork by the imaginative writer, filmmaker and artist Jon Marro. 

S4. Ep 8 Feed What You Love (A Practice) with Jennifer England 
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jennifer: [00:00:00] Recently I had a really honest conversation with the author of a Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, professor and Climate Educator. Sarah Jaquette Ray, and she and I got real about our emotions, about the climate crisis, about activism and burnout and what it takes to stay in the long game in all different shapes of what we consider activism for this planet we love.

And she shared another way to work with the monstrous, all that we cannot tame in the face of climate change. So if you feel at all powerless or numb or despairing about it all, Sarah reminds us that it's essential to feel it and then also to bring our awareness and energy to something else.

And that's simply what [00:01:00] we love. Yes. In the face of despair, the trap of feeling alone, in the midst of all that we can't control. It's so important to remember that these strong and challenging emotions that we have point to what we care about. So if we can bring our attention. Underneath that to what we love and care about.

Our perception and our experience of this monster of climate change can feel way less terrifying. So here's a practice for you, and it's in two parts. The first part is a reflection, and the second part is experiential. So part one. For the next few days, I invite you to grab a journal or your phone if you have a voice notes app and I invite you to take some time [00:02:00] to write or speak stream of consciousness style, which means.

Don't stop your pen from moving or don't stop talking into your phone and see what comes as I offer you these following prompts.

So I'm gonna say the beginning of a sentence and you're simply gonna finish it through writing or speaking, and you can push pause on this episode and work with this in the time that works for you.

The first prompt is what brings me the most joy right now is what brings me the most joy right now is

second prompt is I care deeply about. I care deeply about

third prompt. I trust this knowing because I trust this knowing because fourth prompt, [00:03:00] when I'm in this experience, I show up as when I'm in this experience, I show up as. And final prompt if I were to feed my love for this place, experience person, creature I'd So if I were to feed my love for this place, experience creature, person I'd.

And the idea with the prompts is to see if you can spend about a minute answering each one so you can get kind of the cognitive webs out of your mind and get to the deeper, heartfelt experience that this brings up for you. So I invite you to do this for a few days and see

what surfaces. And then after a few days, look back over your responses and see if you can discover the patterns of what are you really loving right [00:04:00] now? How simple and ordinary is it? And then here's the invitation to play with this practice is if you were to feed that love even a little more.

What might you do?

And we're not talking about jumping on planes and going to really cool places around the world or going out to fancy dinners. I mean, that might be what you really love. But the invitation of this practice is actually to see the ordinary, simple parts of our days that. Get obscured by the distraction of scrolling social media news overwhelm and our massive to-do lists, and feeling super stretched and just returning and making more space for what we love.

And how might you see this act of loving 'cause it's an action as supporting you to [00:05:00] stay energized, curious, and alive, no matter what, monster, no matter what uncertainty and challenges are before you and how is an attunement to more love and loving. Not more fixing support a bigger web of our collective generative giving, creativity and contribution.

My hunch is that when you bring your attention to what you love and you choose to feed it, it's an earthly act of remembrance to the beautiful magic of being human love enlivens. Love reciprocates and love surprises in the smallest of ways. And the benefit of this practice is you don't need to bury your grief, your despair, or your fear about what's happening to our [00:06:00] planet.

These emotions, whatever is present for you, points towards what you care about and what matters. It also benefits you because you're feeding and nurturing what you love, and when you do that, you come more alive to the contradictions and wildness of being human. Yes, the anxieties, the anguish, the agony, that's not gonna go away, but you return and feel and experience the ordinary potency.

Of love that sits at the bedrock of everything. And like Sarah reminds us, when we feed what we love, we find others there on the dance floor, in the garden, in the kitchen, around the table, on the mountaintop or in the streets. And. Somehow we might trust that by following and giving more to love, that it creates a web [00:07:00] that can hold it all.

A few final words about practice. Practice is different than a tool or a technique or simply a mindset shift practice is like an ecosystem unto itself. It's more like a world that invites your playful curiosity. It invites you to pay attention differently.

What can you learn, see, feel, sense from a new doing, a new action? What you'll experience will be different than me or a friend who does the same practice. It's experimental. It's designed to be fresh and alive, dynamic, and relat. And what I emphasize is practice is a gift of learning from your own direct experience, not from experts, coaches, [00:08:00] sages, teachers, but from you.

Practice centers, you as the awake, and attuned one that you already are. Practice is the invitation.

And direct experience is your greatest teacher. I'm Jennifer England. Thanks for practicing and being on this journey on the tension of emergence