Recently, someone asked me what was the best book I'd read for a while.

I paused, pondered, and then responded 'The Magna Carta Manifesto', Michael Linebaugh's exploration of the history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the commons, the subsistence rights of the poor.

Why did I consider this history book the best book I'd read for a while, competing as it was with brilliant books in other fields, from spirituality to fiction?

For me, 'The Magna Carta Manifesto' has been so important, because it has introduced me to the concept of 'commoning'.

In his book 'Plunder of the Commons', Guy Standing writes: "The commons refers to all our shared natural resources - including the land, the forests, the moors and parks, the water, the minerals, the air - and all the social, civic and cultural institutions that our ancestors have bequeathed to us, that we may have helped to maintain or improve. It also includes the knowledge that we possess as a society, built on an edifice of ideas and information constructed over the centuries." What I found so fascinating about 'The Magna Carta Manifesto' is that, in it, Michael Linebaugh highlights how in England in the medieval period, 'common' was both a noun, referring to the commons, and a verb, referring to the practice of commoning, which can be understood as any participatory, communal activity that enables a commons to exist and continue.

Massimo de Angelis, an academic reflecting on commoning, writes:
"There are no commons without incessant activities of commoning, of (re)producing in common. But it is through (re)production in common that communities of producers decide for themselves the norms, values and measures of things ... there is no commons without commoning, there are no commons without communities of producers and particular flows and modes of relations." David Bollier and Silke Helfrich expand on this insight, highlighting how important "the personal and social dynamics of concrete practices, values, rituals, traditions and experiences" are, "all of which generate meaning and identity for people. A commons can survive only if it can nourish and protect this deeper level of commoning, because it is what makes a commons enduring, flexible and resilient."

Since uncovering this concept of "commoning", I've become fascinated by the question:
What are the personal and social dynamics, the concrete practices, values, rituals, traditions and experiences, which generate meaning and identity for commoners, that enable commoning communities to survive and flourish?

For a number of years now, I've been a member of a community art and activist space in Hull, called Ground. Coming out of a period of intense communal reflection together, I ended up falling in love with a phrase: "the art of commoning" and came to suggest a framework for understanding this art, a framework made up of six core principles:

Wake Up to Interconnection
Take Care of One Another
Know and Love the Land
Cultivate Healing Cultures
Collaborate, Cooperate and Co-Create
Continue the Conversation

By 'WAKE UP TO INTERCONNECTION' I meant the communal practicing of a psycho-spirituality of wholeness and interconnection, of waking up and growing up, of coming to know the fundamental oneness of all reality.
By 'TAKE CARE OF ONE ANOTHER' I meant committing to a spirit of mutual aid and solidarity, of caring and sharing, of friendship and community.
By 'KNOW AND LOVE THE LAND' I emphasized our place as humans within the wider web of life, and stressed the importance of knowing and loving the land, the locality we inhabit, working from the heart in a way that honours.
By 'CULTIVATE HEALING CULTURES' I meant nurturing slow cultures of resistance, of memory, of celebration and wildness, that allow for deep healing to occur.
By 'COLLABORATE, CO-OPERATE AND CO-CREATE' I meant growing skillful systems and structures that nurture collaboration, cooperation and co-creativity, built on an awareness of abundance/plentitude available through gift-exchange.
And by 'CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION' I meant committing to the continuous, unfolding, emerging process of social change by learning and practicing the art of transformational, compassionate conversation, reaching out to those who are different and discovering ways forward together.Arundhati Roy writes: "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

For more and more of us, we too can hear that other world breathing. For more and more of us, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current "ego-system" of white-supremecist, capitalist, imperialist, hetero-patriarchy is utterly toxic and unsustainable. For more and more of us, the only hope we can see for a livable future for our children and grandchildren is a wholesale shift and transformation, a "Great Turning", an immense healing and creative work of growing new "eco-systems", new commons, and of welcoming in an emerging world that is wanting to be born.

As Charles Eisenstein writes in his book 'Sacred Economics':
"Today, new paradigms in biology are replacing the neo-Darwinian orthodoxy while movements in spirituality, economics and psychology challenge the atomistic Cartesian conception of the self. The new self is interdependent and, even more, partakes for its very existence in the existence of all other beings to which it is connected. This is the connected self, the larger self, which extends to include, by degrees, everyone and everything in its gift circle. Within that circle, it is not true that more for you is less for me. Gifts circulate so that the good fortune of another is also your good fortune. Immersed in this expansive sense of self, one needs no coercive mechanisms to enforce sharing. The social structures of the gift will still serve a purpose: to remind its members of the truth of their interconnectedness, to rein in anyone who may have forgotten, and to provide gift structures that work to meet the society's needs. Who gives what to whom? The right answer is specific to each culture and depends on the environment, its kinship system, its religious beliefs, and much else. A gift structure evolves over time and guides a culturally appropriate distribution of resources."
For me, "The Art of Commoning" has become my mantra and framework for navigating these times of crises, my roadmap, my compass holding the energy, inspiration and vision for the future system, for the new creation, for the more beautiful worl that is breaking in to the present, as I write.

And so, to finish, I leave you with a poem I call 'reimagining the human':

we can embrace this present moment as an invitation
an invitation to begin again
to commit ourselves to the never-ending process
of reimagining the human
together
we can slow down
we can open up
we can attune ourselves to the eternal now
and listen deeply
sensing in
to all that the future is wanting to emerge
right here
right now
within us
among us
around us

we can wake up to interconnection
we can take care of one another
we can know and love the land
we can cultivate healing cultures
we can collaborate, cooperate and co-create
we can carry on the conversation
and we can ask ourselves, over and over and over:
"what is wanting to die here?
and what is wanting to be born?"
until one day we look around
and find that something new has arrived
that something beautiful
has been birthed
and with a smile
realise
that all along
we have been co-creating this new thing
and with a smile
realise
that all along
we have been reimagining
the human
together!