Listening to Our Common Home

Issue 7, The Quiet Before Collapse

The world on our hands.

This month, we’re trying something different. You’ll notice the order of this issue has shifted—on purpose. Rather than beginning with a featured story or case study, we start with a vision. A framework. A way to see our common home not just as a setting for collapse, but as a living system we belong to.

By beginning with the EHBI and Pope Francis’ systemic vision, we hope to give you tools to interpret the cases that follow more deeply. You’ll then find stories, loops, and models that embody these insights—and an invitation to build your own.

We don’t always notice collapse when it starts. The early warnings are quiet—whispers in the data, tension in the room, rivers running dry, or fish that stop showing up. This month, in honor of Laudato Si’ Week (May 22–28), we turn to the wisdom of Pope Francis’ encyclical as a systemic call to listen—to creation, to one another, and to the feedback loops that bind us.

“Laudato Si’, mi’ Signore” – Praise be to you, my Lord – is more than a religious phrase. It’s a worldview. A cosmology. A reminder that we are not outside the Earth, but part of it.

When we ignore the signs of imbalance, the collapse that follows is not punishment—it’s feedback from our common home.

This month, we bring together systems, stories, and spirit. Because to care for the Earth, we must first learn to hear it.