NewStories

"I can say anything I want now at this age — which is a great liberation and a big responsibility." — Meg Wheatley

Meg Wheatley has spent five decades teaching leadership, community, and what it means to be human. At nearly 82, she has arrived at ideas that don't fit neatly into any of it.

She teaches three kinds of compassion—and the one most of us are missing is the fiercest. Idiot compassion is the cape-rushing impulse that ends in burnout. Loving kindness is genuine partnership that strengthens rather than depletes. Fierce compassion is compassion without aggression—the kind that carries a sword. Not for aggression. For clarity. For the courage to speak when something needs to be said.

Our profile on Meg—drawn from a conversation with Great Transition Stories editor-in-chief Stephanie Regalado last week—is live now on Great Transition Stories, where she is also a featured storyteller. And Friday, June 20, Meg is offering a three-hour live exploration: Fierce Compassion: The Power of the Sacred Feminine.

Read our newsletter, including links to Meg’s profile and event, via the link in comments.

Seven-plus years after the Camp Fire, the people of Paradise are still at work—rebuilding, carrying what cannot be put down, and finding the endurance to keep going within their community.

Last month, we enjoyed the honor of witnessing that work firsthand.

The first Re-Storying Disaster Learning Exchange brought community practitioners from across Northern California to Paradise for twenty-four hours of embodied learning—hand-crafted dinners, Ridge tours, housing development visits, conversations with Town Staff, and a gathering at Hope Plaza, the moving community-led memorial honoring the lives lost in the Camp Fire.

What made it different from a conference or a workshop? The place itself was the teacher. By attaching conversations to specific locations in Paradise, something opened up that boardrooms rarely allow. Impromptu exchanges bubbled up throughout the day. Stories emerged in the spaces held open.

"Communities are the authors of their own futures. Learning Exchanges are a way for communities facing similar challenges to see how others are making their way forward—exchanging ideas and experiences while building solidarity and connection across distance and difference."

The Paradise Learning Exchange is the first in a series. Future exchanges will feature communities including Nevada City and Cobb Mountain.

Read our reflection and stay tuned for what's coming next at the link in comments.

Today, Great Transition Stories is live—and we are so glad you're here.

Fifteen years ago, Duane Elgin, Jeff Vander Clute, and Lynnaea Lumbard began gathering the archetypal stories of transformation that could serve as maps for navigating change. Today that vision has found its fullest expression yet: a living commons with more than 200 pages of content, 450+ curated resources, and a growing body of work that translates paradigm-shifting research into accessible stories for anyone seeking deeper understanding of this moment we are all living through.

Today, nine members of our team share their own personal entry points into the site—ten different doors into the same living house. Find the voice that resonates and step inside at the link in comments.

This commons grows richer with every voice that joins it. If you know of a story worth telling, a voice worth amplifying, or a resource worth sharing—we want to hear from you at the email, also in comments.

Cheers!

Today, members of our Re-Storying Disaster team are on the ground in Paradise, California, for the NorCal Fire-Affected Communities Collaboratory Learning Exchange—gathering with community practitioners who have spent seven years building something worthy of what was lost.

NewStories Founder and Board Chair Bob Stilger has spent 50 years asking the most important questions about community—what holds it together, what tears it apart, and what becomes possible when people choose to build something new in the ashes of the old. From Spokane to Zimbabwe to Japan to Northern California, he has been present for that work again and again.

Today he weaves those threads together—and extends an invitation to conspire.
"I am not the disaster guy. I am the possibilities guy," he shares (and everyone who has worked with him agrees).

To Nicole, Michelle, and Bob and everyone gathering in Paradise today and tomorrow: we are with you in spirit—and so proud of this work. 🌲

You can read Bob's full reflection at the link in our comments.

"Life is Earth animated." — Ferris Jabr, Becoming Earth

Pause for just a moment today. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Breathe in slowly and let your body remember what it has always known — that we belong to this Earth as much as it belongs to us. We are not separate from this living world. We are an expression of it.

To every community builder, land steward, storyteller, healer, regenerative thinker, and living systems worker quietly weaving a new relationship between humanity and this planet:

Your work is Earth's work. Thank you. Keep going.

🌍 Happy .

What do we do when the structures and stories we've lived inside all our lives are changing?

NewStories Founder and Board Chair Bob Stilger has spent 50 years helping communities come together, dream together, and grieve together—and he has a clear answer: we find the next elegant minimum step toward a horizon that calls us. We keep walking. We keep picking ourselves up.

This Tuesday, April 7, Bob joins a remarkable cohort of practitioners for At Work in the Ruins—a five-week online journey hosted by Beehive Productions and the Rotterdam Change Days, drawing on Dougald Hine's four essential tasks for navigating a time of endings and emergence:

🌿 Salvaging — gathering the goodness worth carrying forward
🕯️ Mourning — honoring what must be released, and finding the seeds within the grief
🔍 Discerning — seeing clearly what never truly served us
🧵 Weaving — picking up dropped threads of older wisdom ready to matter again

These are not tasks of resignation. They are tasks of orientation—for people who refuse to look away, and who trust that something new can take root in well-tended ground.

Joining Bob are Dougald Hine, Vanessa Reid, Carlotta Cataldi, and a cohort of changemakers navigating this same threshold—hosted with care by Amy Lenzo, Rowan Simonsen, and Mary Alice Arthur.

Five sessions. Tuesdays April 7–28 and Wednesday May 6. Begins at $175. Scholarship opportunities available.

"And our question becomes — how do we participate in co-creating what comes next?" — Bob Stilger

For more information + registration options, visit the link in comments.