a new book by AVF’s FOunder & Executive Director, Lev Natan
The Tao Te Ching is an ancient classic by Lao Tzu. A source of timeless wisdom, it guides us to be rooted in a deep awareness of unity as the way to gracefully navigate the chaos and complexity of life.
The Tao of Movement Building applies the essential principles of the Tao – listening deeply, allowing nature to unfold of its own accord,
and understanding paradox – to the work of changemaking.
“Movements that truly nourish equity, justice, holistic health, and well being; are rooted in sacred silence.”
Do you feel an urgency to step up and face the climate crisis?
At no other time in human history has our human species needed to wake up to the harrowing fact that our planet’s natural systems may not be able to continue to support human life—within the coming generation—by 2050.
Climate Leadership is a workbook for emerging and established leaders in business, community and organizational life, who feel compelled to face this fact and take a stand for the future of all life on our planet.
Lev Natan is driven by the simple question: “What will the world look like when my son grows up?” Climate Leadership is a conscious choice to do everything in your power to create a viable future for the children and generations to come.
ENDORSEMENTS - Climate Leadership
Concerned about climate change? Unsure what to do? Lev Natan’s workbook is a gift of love and encouragement for all of us.
–Jalaja Bonheim, PhD, author of The Magic of Circlework
“This is a wonderful workbook and is beautifully constructed to provide a roadmap to anyone who wants to create a viable future for their children and grandchildren."
– Dr. Kathleen E. Allen, author of Leading from the Roots: Nature Inspired Leadership Lessons for Today’s World
“Live the questions,” said Rilke. “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” said Gandhi. Lev Natan’s provocative book provides stimulating questions and penetrating guidance from a wide range of change agents, inviting us to undertake the deep work we need to do in order to step into our potential as the leaders our world needs now.
—Jennifer Browdy, PhD, author of Purposeful Memoir as a Quest for a Thriving Future
“Kudos to Climate Leadership for showing a way forward in an age of despair. It is indeed time to build a truly new world which leaves the old one in the dustbin, chalked up to humanity’s arrogance. Building that world requires us to be bold and to make new, creative, and courageous choices about our future, including recognizing that nature, and the earth itself, has certain rights that humanity must respect. This is the workbook to guide you through the systemic changes that we need to make to our economy and culture, and to ourselves. Natan lays out the possibilities, it’s up to us to rise to the challenge of pursuing them.”
– Thomas Linzey, Esq. Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
“Changemakers around the world are often encouraged to follow Gandhi's sage advice on inner activism, ‘BE THE CHANGE, you want to see in the world.’ Lev Natan’s Workbook blends the poetic and the strategic, in this step by step recipe book for BEING a systems-oriented, climate leader. After spending 10 years of my own career training the next generation of climate leaders, I wished for such a book a decade ago. The leadership practices and self-inquiry encouraged in these pages will have ripples throughout the climate movement and beyond. At its core, this is a guide to becoming more fully alive, healthy, grounded, and resilient. This is exactly what is needed in an era of massive transformation."
–Daniel Roth, Founder & General Partner of JumpScale
"Climate Leadership is a one-of-a-kind, much needed contribution to all humanity’s urgent need to arrest and, as much as possible, reverse our devastating impact on the biosphere of Planet Earth. As a Jewish man by birth and practice, Lev Natan’s respect for spiritual law and tradition informs his call to our caring stewardship of all Nature, all Life. Every word of this workbook is thus a living prayer. He’s also the dedicated spiritual grandson of a First Nation tribe on this continent. So even the plentiful empty spaces he has placed on the pages are full of meaning and potentiality—like the unhurried, potent silences of a council meeting in a First Nation lodge. We would all do well, and we would do all life on our planet well, to walk our way through every stage of the journey to practical climate leadership that Lev offers us in this brilliant, plainspoken call to conscious action."
—Saniel Bonder, author, Healing the Spirit/Matter Split, Founder, Waking Down in Mutuality®
"If we are going to make the scale of changes we need to make, we need to slow down and go deeper in all of our relationships (to ourselves, others, the natural world and the unseen). I can think of fewer guides I'd trust more to help us make that descent."
– Tad Hargrave, Founder of Marketing for Hippies