From Othering to Belonging: Growing Beloved Community in a Climate-Changed World
Publication information:
Abstract
From Othering to Belonging: Growing Beloved Community in a Climate-Changed World invites participants into a participatory liturgy of transformation inspired by The Work That Reconnect (Macy). Through film, story, song, sacred activism, and ecological reflection, this 60-minute session responds to the spiritual disease of fragmentation—within ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth. Featuring Gwich’in filmmaker Princess Daazhraii Johnson, Professor john a. powell, founder and director of U. C. Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, and award-winning musician-artivist Melanie DeMore. With Dr. M. Paloma Pavel (HDS alum) serving as moderator, the session weaves wisdom from Indigenous, Buddhist, and systems-thinking traditions. Together we cultivate practices of gratitude, grief, awakening, and renewal—resources for growing Beloved Community in a climate- changed world. Participants will leave renewed in purpose and connected across distances, contributing their own strand to the healing web of life.
Presenter Biographies
Dr. M. Paloma Pavel, Alaskan Chaplain Resident, eco‑psychologist, Fulbright Scholar, and spiritual ecologist, holds a PhD in Organizational and Clinical Psychology and an M.Div. (Harvard Divinity School), and graduate study at London School of Economics. Recipient of the Yale Forum’s Thomas Berry Leadership Award. Her work bridges ecology, justice, and sacred belonging through interfaith dialogue, ecological healing, and regenerative community transformation. Her publications include the recent 30th edition of Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty, awarded the Peacemaker Book of the Year, with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Professor john a. powell, Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley and director of the Othering & Belonging Institute, advances a spiritual vision of justice that transcends separation. Honored with the John W. Gardner Leadership and Housing Hero
Awards, he unites scholarship, contemplative practice, and compassion to cultivate healing communities and sacred belonging. His many publications include Belonging without Othering (Stanford University Press) and Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
Princess Daazhraii Johnson Emmy-nominated Gwich'in writer/director/producer knowns for her work on PBS Kids Molly of Denali and HBO True Detective. Her work uses powerful narratives rooted in cultural knowledge, Indigenous sovereignty and spiritual relationship to land. Appointed by President Obama to the Institute of American Indian Art Board of Trustees. A Sundance Film Fellow, she fuses ancestral story, dance, and ceremony to affirm sacred identity, interdependence, and inclusive futures of narrative belonging. Her latest film, Shaghan Neekwaii, is adapted from the iconic Gwich'in story of Two Old Women who are estranged from their tribe but return to belonging. Her prior short films include Gath & K'iyh: Listen to Heal - a collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma's 'Our Common Nature.'
Melanie DeMore, Three‑time Grammy‑nominated singer, composer, and “artivist,” DeMore is a founding member of the Grammy‑nominated Cultural Heritage Choir and an internationally respected vocal activist. She channels communal song as contemplative practice, transforming performance into spiritually grounded resistance, radical inclusion, and shared liberation through the power of collective voice. Melanie conducts song circles with an emphasis on the voice as a vessel for healing. In her own words: “A song can hold you up when there seems to be no ground beneath you”.