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Idealism, utopianism—grounded in a well-articulated (and experimentally oriented) theory, drive me to keep walking toward the shining city—the city, town, or village in which each person and living creature has the ability to fulfill their potential for greatness—whatever that potential may be.

In his last weeks of life, Murray lay in bed, composing short pieces, hoping his strength would kick in again and he could return to a life’s work that did not end until he drew his last breath. His revolutionary vision—one anchored in knowledge of revolutionary history, philosophy, and a love of humanity—kept him not only alive, but completely passionately engaged for eighty-five years. Had he lived to be one hundred, it would have lasted just that much longer.

I pray each day to do right by my mentor—to do right by all of the lifelong revolutionaries who kept their eyes on the shining city, even when it was clouded by moments of self-doubt, discouragement, and fear.

Before I do yoga each day, I light three candles. The first candle is for expansiveness, reminding me to reach toward the challenges the world presents each day. The second candle stands for acceptance, beseeching me to accept what cannot be changed while also accepting the responsibility to mend whatever I can. The third candle is for gratitude. Gratitude is an eternal oil, burning ceaselessly in the activist’s lantern without ever drying into an oily dark crown of emptiness.

At the end of my yoga practice, I kneel before these candles, erasing each flame with my breath. I thank my teachers, living and gone, for handing down their precious mantles of wisdom, strength, and compassion. I then rise again to my feet, striding out of my temporary sanctuary. I saunter back into the world to give it another glorious try.

Chaia Heller teaches anthropology and gender studies at Mount Holyoke College and taught at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont for over two decades. Chaia has been involved in the ecology, feminist, anarchist, and global justice movements an activist, educator, and writer. Chaia received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her new book, Post-Industrial Peasants, is forthcoming from Duke University Press. It explores the role of radical French peasants in the international controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms. She is a recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Centre de Societe de l’Innovation. Chaia teaches gender studies at Mount Holyoke College and is also the author of Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature (Black Rose Books).

In the Climate Era the Personal Is Political

TZEPORAH BERMAN

When I was fourteen my parents died and I remember wondering how the world could continue. Seeing people go about their daily lives when I felt as though a hole had been ripped through my heart left me astonished and alone. It took weeks before I could function in society, months before I stopped feeling like I was sleep walking and years before the nightmares stopped and I began to feel whole again.

The day I set my despair free was the day I married a sense of purpose with my loss. I was speaking at a rally to protect old growth forests in British Columbia on the steps of the legislature in Victoria. I remember being horrified by the rate and extent of clear cutting on Vancouver Island and feeling a familiar deep sense of loss. Closing my eyes to over a thousand people standing on the legislature lawn I grabbed the microphone and gave it everything I had—lamenting the loss of these great thousand year old trees and decrying the tragedy of the last of the wild being destroyed to make phone books and toilet paper. The roar of the crowd was deafening and when I stepped off the stage I was shaking. Standing by the steps was an elderly couple openly weeping. They stepped forward and introduced themselves as old friends of my parents and told me that they knew my mom and dad