Accidental Gods

"I have come to believe something that sounds simple and is anything but: if Mothering were the axis around which we revolved, we would liberate the world. By Mothering I do not mean the biological act of giving birth, or the domestic role that has been used to confine us. I mean the practice – available to all people, in all bodies – of tending to life with full presence: protecting it, nourishing it, teaching it to know itself, trusting it."These are the words of our guest this week, mother, writer, scholar and activist: Zineb Mouhyi in her forthcoming book series, on 'Mothering Liberation'. She defines mothering as the everyday politics - available to all people in all bodies - of tending to life and making every child ours. The book series will be made of three books. The first on mothering ourselves, the second on mothering our children, and the third on mothering the world.Zineb has been an advocate for social change through education, notably through the charitable organizations she co-founded — YouthxYouth & the Weaving Lab — and through her PhD research on the role of education in the Palestinian liberation struggle. I've been privileged to read the early chapters of her books as she is writing them (a courageous act in its own right) and can safely say that this is one of those life-changing works that could move us all to the collective tipping point we need. At a time when the world feels increasingly unstable, making a commitment to the flourishing of all life is central to the way forward. Enjoy!LinksZineb's website Zineb on LinkedInEpisode #141 of Accidental Gods —About Accidental Gods—We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'WALKING THE PATH OF THE INNER WARRIOR' which will run on Sunday 28th June 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

As we crest the wave of the Great Transformation, we have choices: we can crash into chaos and extinction - or we can step into our birthright as fully conscious nodes in the Web of Life, offering the astonishing creativity of humanity in service to life. We've said this on the podcast often, but it's not often that we speak with someone whose entire life is given to helping people step into our birthright, to opening the doors of what we might call Nature Connection, but is so much deeper than this - so that anyone, of any age or circumstance can step forward into whatever it is that our birthright becomes in the twenty-first century. Our guest this week does just this. I've known of Jon Young for decades, heard of his 8 Shields practice and have friends who have trained in his Art of Mentoring, but it was only this last September that we met in person and I was struck by the deep inner stillness he brings to everything he does, the sense that his awareness stretches out across space and through time and he's listening to layers upon layers of meaning. Jon Young is a deep nature-people-self connection researcher, mentor, naturalist, wildlife tracker, author, consultant, and storyteller. Mentored by his grandmothers, Tom Brown, Jr., and a host of elders and experts, he has spent over 40 years leading the field of nature-based community building. His work explores the impact of nature on mentoring, human intelligence, spirituality, well-being, and development, influencing tens of thousands worldwide. He is the author and co-author of seminal works such as What the Robin Knows and Coyote's Guide to Connecting to Nature, and has appeared in documentaries including The Animal Communicator. In 2016, he received the Champion of Environmental Education Award for his innovative and globally impactful contributions to the nature connection movement.So, with all of this as our baseline, it was an honour and a delight to dive deep with Jon into the history and lineages of his learning, of his views of where we are now, and of how we can best navigate this moment of collapse and renewal. https://www.livingconnection1st.net/https://www.jonyoung.orghttps://www.livingconnection1st.net/pages/resourcesJon's TEDx TalkThe Animal CommunicatorSign up for the Living Connection 1st newsletterPaul Hawken's Blessed UnrestKarl Direske's site https://wildernessfusion.com/About Accidental Gods - What we offer. We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme, it's 'FINDING YOUR SOUL'S PURPOSE' on Sunday 22nd March 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer 121 Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

In the midst of collapse, as we watch our governments lay waste to our social agreements, it can be hard to imagine extending the franchise of legal rights to Nature and the More than Human world. And yet, if we're to transcend this moment, it must be because we have become something other than we are now - and to do this, we need the roadmaps that show us how to move through, and beyond, the collapse of the old into something new. We spoke to Ally Pimor about this a couple of weeks ago and when I first met her, I also met this week's guest and they had so much to say that I wanted to talk to each of them. So with this in mind, this week's guest is Brontie Ansell, the founder and co-director of Lawyers for Nature. Brontie founded Lawyers for Nature in 2019 with the (fairly infamous) barrister Paul Powlesland, they are a collective of lawyers who act to represent Nature. They reimagine the law for Nature and advocate for Nature to be given legal rights through education, Nature centric governance, consultancy, research and advocacy. Last year Lawyers for Nature were behind the We Are Nature campaign that sought to change the dictionary definition of Nature at the Oxford English Dictionary to include humans as part of Nature. Brontie was one of the key legal architects behind the Nature on the Board project at Faith in Nature and she was the first human to act as the Nature Guardian speaking on behalf of Nature at the company Faith in Nature, giving Nature a voice and a vote on a corporate board for the first time in history. She then went on to design the legal apparatus to appoint Nature and the voice of future generations to the board of House of Hackney, a company that credits Nature as their most important muse. Most recently she was advising the Comisiwn Seilwaith Cenedlaethol Cymru/National Infrastructure Commission for Wales on their Nature Representation pilot. She features heavily in both Simeon Rose's new book Nature's Boardroom and Frieda Gormley's book In the Company of Nature. She has been a lecturer in law for 15 years, most recently at the University of Essex where she was an associate professor at Essex Law School. Brontie has taught courses on Rights of Nature, climate justice, employment law and land law. Her work is informed by the global rights of nature movement and she is grateful to all who came before her to create the bedrock for work she does. Brontie talks to me about what a society could look like if we really reformed the meaning of ‘justice for all’, and started to understand Nature and aspects of Nature as a subject of law.Because of the times we're in, I felt I could not ignore the shocking events that occurred in America this past week week and so we started with a quote from Elliott Morris and Strength in Numbers, which I was confusing with another organisation - Strength in Numbers is, in fact, a Substack blog - well worth reading. I've put a link in the show notes, along with a few others that I think are worth adding to your must-read list every morning. Last week - with his permission - I read a bit from one of these, by Oliver Kornetzke as part of the intro (hi Ollie if you're still listening!). I'm not going to make a habit of this every week, but I want to read something from Jackie Summers blog, Field Notes for Cracking An Empire, where she says, “If you’ve been reading my work for the last few years, none of this should be surprising. The old narratives are gone. This is what fascism looks like in real time. First, ICE agents killed Renee Nicole Good, a white woman. Now they’ve murdered Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old US citizen. A nurse with no criminal record. White women’s bodies were supposed to be sacrosanct. Respectable professionals were supposed to be “off-limits.” That’s no longer the case. For Black people, this country has always been fascist. What’s new is who else is inside the blast radius. The Venn diagram of “safe” and “endangered” is now a circle. If you’re shaken, it’s not just grief. It’s narrative whiplash. The distance between “this can’t happen” and “it just did, on camera” no longer exists. You have choices. You can either cling to the lie and let someone else keep paying. Or pay the cost of updating the story about this country. About who is “safe,” about what you’re willing to do now that protections are gone. I’ve said it before, the empire can handle outrage. It has no defense against empathy at scale. Outrage spikes, trends, and fades. Empathy—“it can be me; it already is them”—changes what people are willing to risk and protect. This is recruitment by atrocity. Your blood spilled red in the streets, just like ours. It shouldn’t take this. It always has."There follows one of the most cogent, clear, useful, grounded lists of how we can all join what has been called well-organised Anarchists. And if that's what we are, I'm not sure that's bad. At the end, Jackie writes - If you’re going out, your first job is coming home. If you’re staying home, your first job is staying human. I'm writing this from the privilege and safety of a rural home in the UK. Wherever you are in the world, please look after each other. And for ideas on how we can transcend this moment, to start reimagining a world which sees us as humans who reconnect with each other and with Nature, and give Nature the rights it deserves to thrive, please listen on to Brontie Ansell and her beautiful models of Quiet Romance, Care, Guardianship and justice for all life. Linkshttps://www.lawyersfornature.com/https://immersives.pioneerspost.com/lawyers-leading-nature/index.htmlhttps://greenallianceblog.org.uk/2022/09/22/giving-nature-a-seat-on-the-board-is-a-powerful-way-to-make-sure-businesses-protect-our-environment/https://nationalinfrastructurecommission.wales/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/NICW_NOTB_LFN-Final-Report.pdfhttps://www.houseofhackney.com/pages/nature-our-directorhttps://www.natureontheboard.com/https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/professional-business/natures-boardroomhttps://www.waterstones.com/book/in-the-company-of-nature/frieda-gormley/9781645023500https://www.ukrightsofnature.org/https://wearenature.org/

Across the world, our legal systems are crumbling, the rule of sane law dismantled in real time. Yet at the same time, rivers, mountains, bees are being granted legal rights in ways that would have been thought impossible even a few years ago. And in boardrooms around the planet, C-suites and businesses are increasingly looking to the natural world for guidance on how to be in ways that heal the web of life. So how do we make this work? How do we ensure that it's not just another layer of corporate greenwash? Our guest this week, Alexandra Pimor is Director of the Nature Governance Agency (NGA) within the Earth Law Center. Increasingly, she is acting as a proxy for the Voice of Nature in corporations and organisations, in professional practice, project management and organisational cultural evolution. For many years a legal scholar and academic, her practice, studies and research are anchored in a quantum-based ecology of law paradigm, espousing a critical, reflective and multidisciplinary approach. She has a deep passion for people and planet, and, as you'll hear, she now sees it as her mission to promote the facilitation of conscious governance and leadership, at individual, collective and organisational levels, to advance the emergence of an anthropo-eco-logical system of harmonious living. In our conversation, she lays out what it means to take Death - and Life - as our Witness; to evolve a Sacred No and a Sacred Yes; to speak as the web of life, not for it or to it. She walks the fine line between Two-Eyed Seeing - from a Western, Trauma Culture viewpoint as well as from the perspective of an Indigenous, Initiation Culture - and we explore how boardrooms can see ripples of change as we strive to turn the bus that is humanity away from the cliff edge of the 6th mass extinction. Earth Law center's NGAOnboarding Nature Toolkit ( developed in partnership between ELC, B Lab Benelux and Nyenrode Business University)Bio-leadership fellowship (a mycelium of regenerative and curious change makers)Thinking like Gaia cards (Ally invites these cards into board conversations when the time, space and dynamics are right)https://www.linkedin.com/in/apimor/ (Ally on LinkedIn) Article on Solidarity within the EU in 'The Conversation' https://theconversation.com/solidarity-was-a-founding-principle-of-european-unity-it-must-remain-so-74580If you'd like to support us, come along and join the Accidental Gods Membership. Here, you can share in the ideas, the programme that will help you connect to the Web of Life in ways that will last—and you can come to the Gatherings half price. Or if that doesn't appeal, come along to one of the Gatherings. Or buy a subscription/Gathering for a friend... do something that feels like a good exchange of energy and minimises our connection with old economic paradigm. Remember that if any of this is difficult, contact us and we'll find something that works for you. Details below: We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme, it's 'Honouring Fear as your Mentor' on Sunday 8th February 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

If we ever had a genuine democracy (and I would argue we never have) then it is clearly disintegrating now, along with the entire system with which it was entwined. Everyone agrees we need something new, what we don't necessarily agree on across the board is the design of this new thing. This week's guests are two people who spend their lives imagining how things might be different, particularly in the US, where even the pretence of democracy has been abandoned. Dr John Izzo is a friend of the podcast. Once an ordained Minister in a Presbyterian Church, he’s now a bestselling author, speaker, and thought leader focused on social responsibility and intergenerational integration. He’s a a Distinguished Fellow at The Stimson Center in Washington DC, and a Board Member of the Elders Action Network and the Elders Climate Action group. Most notably in terms of what we're talking about here, he's co-host of The Way Forward Regenerative Conversations Podcast on which I heard him speaking to our other guest, Suzette Brooks Masters. Suzette describes herself as a sometime Cassandra who sees around the corner; a serial social entrepreneur, and a thought leader and strategist in the fields of democracy, governance and futures.She has degrees in Economics from Amherst College and Cambridge University, and a Law degree from Harvard. She has spent much of her working life as a strategist working on immigration, inclusion and democracy. She is currently Senior Fellow and Director of Democracy Innovation at the Democracy Funders Network and Co-Founder of the Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance. So listen in for a 3-way conversation on the nature of power, community and change as we move into the new year. John on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjohnizzo/John's showreel: https://vimeo.com/248012255?fl=pl&fe=vlJohn's website: www.drjohnizzo.comJohn's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1adiRng-Ab3d3Wos9pFjAA The Way Forward Regenerative Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-way-forward-regenerative-conversations/id1651941803Episode with Suzette: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-way-forward-regenerative-conversations/id1651941803?i=1000704364583The Way Forward on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@RegenerativeConversationsSuzette on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzette-brooks-masters-0614981bDemocracy Funders Network https://www.democracyfundersnetwork.org/Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance https://www.ffaa-us.org/Suzette's recent report - Becoming Futures Ready: How Philanthropy can leverage strategic foresight for democracy https://www.democracyfundersnetwork.org/resources/2024/10/3/becoming-futures-ready-how-philanthropy-can-leverage-strategic-foresight-for-democracyIf you'd like to support us, there is a Patreon page, but we're not going to link to it, because, honestly, the best way is to come and join the Accidental Gods Membership: that way you can share in the ideas, the programme that will help you connect to the Web of Life in ways that will last—and you can come to the Gatherings half price. Or if that doesn't appeal, come along to one of the Gatherings. Or buy a subscription/Gathering for a friend... do something that feels like a good exchange of energy and minimises our connection with old economic paradigm. Remember that if any of this is difficult, contact us and we'll find something that works for you. Details below: What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme, it's 'Honouring Fear as your Mentor' on Sunday 8th February 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member -but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here