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One Earth Wisdom:

The Quivering Heart

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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

In September 2025, Spirit Rock hosted Refuge and Response: Loving Engagement in a Time of Transformation — a retreat exploring the intersection of contemplative practice and engaged activism. Drawing on Buddhist and Earth-based teachings, the gathering offered space to reconnect with clarity, resilience, and compassionate action for a changing world.

In this session, One Earth’s co-founders, Lou Leonard and Kristin Barker explored the integration of Buddhist practice with climate action through the lens of the “quivering heart” — the capacity to hold climate grief, fear, and uncertainty with tenderness and courage.

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Highlights

I feel like anytime I talk about almost anything these days, I have to start with this reality that we live in now. How do we hold it? How can we be with it? There’s no easy answer to that. But one thing I know is we can only do it together.

Lou

I feel so deeply that this work we’re doing here today,in these days together, is at the top of the list of the most important things that anybody can do if we care about the poly crisis and we care about our children and we care about this living earth community because without it, it will be extremely hard for us to do anything else.

Lou

We go from not knowing this is happening to climate change, species lost … to I don’t want to know this, to I’m sorry I don’t want to know this, to I don’t know how to know this. I don’t know how to speak about it. I don’t know how to act. Like, what does this mean for my life, my livelihood, my choices, the way I move in the world? And then, maybe, I’m learning how to know this, but that takes a lot of support, support we often don’t have. I’m learning how to know this. I’m starting to see causes and conditions that go far far back …

Kristin

You know when hope becomes rigid? When somebody insists that it’s all going to be okay, there’s something that doesn’t smell quite right. That’s not really hope. Do we really need hope, or do we need awe?

Kristin

I stumbled somehow on the beautiful Dharma. And I learned how to turn towards my suffering…

Kristin
Lou Leonard
Co-founder and Principal Advisor

Lou is co-founder and principal advisor of One Earth Sangha. He is a life-long environmentalist who has worked to advance laws, policies and practices that promote care for the Earth and the people and communities that call it home. Lou discovered the dharma as part of his search for balance and support in the face of the difficult emotions that arise as we dedicate ourselves to healing the world and promoting social change. He’s worked in government, civil society, academia, and the private sector, including serving as Senior Vice President at World Wildlife Fund where he led the climate change program for over a decade. Lou currently serves as Dean of the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment at Chatham University supporting students of all ages who are training to advance climate and food justice. Lou is deeply grateful for the refuge he has found in the dharma and the teachers who have helped him find it.

     Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Kristin Barker
Co-founder and Director

Kristin is co-founder and director of One Earth Sangha whose mission is to cultivate a Buddhist response to ecological crises. She is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader program and now teaches with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (DC). As a co-founder of White Awake, Kristin has been supporting white people since 2011 with a Dharma approach to uprooting racism in ourselves and in our world. With a background in software engineering as well as environmental management, she has worked at several international environmental organizations. She is a GreenFaith Fellow and serves on the advisory board of Project Inside Out as well as the steering committee for Interfaith Power & Light DMV. Kristin was born and raised in northern New Mexico and currently lives in Washington DC, traditional lands of the Piscataway peoples.

     Pieces on One Earth Sangha
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