On average, how many species on earth have gone extinct per day in 2026? Will we ever really know? Can biologists and botanists and all the other scientists tracking such things ever possibly keep up with the millions of losses to our ecosystems as a result of climate change?
Here where I live in Miami, just off the coast are many miles of “coral graveyards,” vast areas of reef that have become bleached by the heating oceans. These reefs expel their colorful algae, causing them to starve and die off en masse, affecting the incredibly intricate marine ecosystems in which they play a central role, and reducing the resilience of coastlines.
If you have ever been on a boat off the coast of Southern Florida, you have likely seen reefs of staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis). These coral are named for their elegant branches reminiscent of stag antlers and they exist mostly in shallow parts of the ocean. They are foundational players in the health and growth of their ecosystems.
Currently, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission lists staghorn coral as critically endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature and as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973. Recent scientific studies have found that the staghorn coral are now ‘functionally extinct’ across the Florida reef tract.1
To memorialize the staghorn coral for myself, I wrote a short ode to them. The following lines are my own way of letting them know how beautiful they are to me and how much I appreciate them:
Staghorn Coral
Your spiney protruberance a
messy exuberance
in the belly of the world
Bending, swaying, hosting the rest of us
with your effortless grace
bring out the best in us
as we join in remembrance
A poem is a place for me to begin mourning individually. But something in me is longing for collective response as well. I am shocked that we aren’t coming together in mourning over how the staghorn coral reefs are disappearing from our oceans. Have we gone that numb? Is the value of a life so little now, that we don’t blink an eye when it ends? Have we siloed ourselves so deeply into our individual acquisitions and accomplishments that what happens to someone else doesn’t register in our bodies?
I would say that our bodies very much register what is happening on earth, to every species, and that our nervous systems are walling that information off from our conscious awareness, as an intelligent, adaptive response to the overwhelm of collective grief. The catch is that when we wall off grief, we also wall off our aliveness.
In order for our bodies to slowly allow the grief waiting for us back into conscious awareness, we need safe, creative spaces where we can do this heavy lifting together.
What are the funerary rites – the rites of praise and mourning – that we humans are performing in order to mark the massive losses we face, like the deaths of our sibling species here on Earth?
As an eco-chaplain, I am committed to creating and testing various ways of gathering that allow humans to collectively address the disruptions brought on by climate change, including, but not limited to, commemorating species when they become extinct and leave the planet forever. Collectively we are in desperate need of rites of passage to metabolize the trauma, the grief, the anxiety, and other ‘eco-emotions’ that are part of the dynamically evolving landscape of climate change.
Why have we stopped gathering together to sing, dance, tell stories of remembrance, share food and share our hearts with one another, when things that affect all of us take place? I believe we remember it in our bones – the way we used to declare our belonging in order to heal in times of loss or crisis. Through ritual, creativity, and a little bit of ‘moral imagination’, we instinctively know how to metabolize together what might otherwise be too much for any one of us to metabolize alone.
Although the term has been around since the 18th century and used in various contexts, I was introduced to the possibilities of stretching our moral imagination through eco-philosopher Joanna Macy. According to Macy, moral imagination is an innate capacity we have as humans to step outside our immediate self and time, and connect through empathy with other beings, ancestors, future generations, and the Earth herself. We all have access to this faculty – kids, grown-ups, artists, scientists, spiritual folks, atheists, the poor, the wealthy, democrats, republicans… All it takes is a safe space to explore and a tiny bit of prompting.
Last month I teamed up with fellow eco-chaplain Alex Julie to offer a weekend retreat called “Love and Mourning: Creativity and Ritual for a World in Transition.” For three days, nineteen participants and three facilitators camped in the Santa Cruz mountains amidst a redwood forest to celebrate our belonging to the natural world, and to mourn the losses we are currently experiencing.
During our time together, we engaged two specific rituals developed and popularized by Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects – the Truth Mandala and the Council of All Beings. These rituals allowed us to express our joys and sorrows and love for the natural world with one another and helped us knit ourselves back together with the threads of our belonging.
The creativity this drew forth from participants was truly remarkable:
My apprenticeship with Grief has been an incredibly rich journey so far. I marvel at how tending the embers of Grief stokes the flames of Love. Although I had already suspected Grief as the primary gateway on our road to collective healing, I saw yet another side to Grief at this retreat that I hadn’t seen before. I saw how a group of creative humans employing a bit of moral imagination can feel the land and the more-than-humans loving them back. Rather than focusing solely on human connection, actively partnering with the land outdoors gave us the experience of coherence within our entire web of relations.
I am not sure there are words in the English language that express the sense of having our dignity and well-being restored through engaging with beings in the natural world who are sharing their own dignity and belonging with us. There were moments during the retreat when I wanted to weep at the thought of all the time I have wasted, participating in systems that rob us of that dignity and belonging.
The memories from this retreat will reverberate in me for a long time, especially the sense of deep well-being it produced in me. Having so many wonderful, creative souls come together in this carefully curated space made it crystal clear to me why our ancestors performed rites and rituals to honor and grieve the dead. The sense of wholeness they offer is impossible to miss.
As I felt into what kind of ritual would allow more of us to participate – not just those already aware of the polycrisis’ tragic emotional and spiritual effects on our communities, but also the unconvinced – I came away resolved to continue the inquiry, providing spaces like this more often.
So mark your calendars for next year’s retreat!
October 12-17, 2027 at the Rocky Mountain EcoDharma Retreat Center in Ward, CO, Earth-willing, we will continue the inquiry together. And as the network of spiritual caregivers I am part of discovers other formats and forms and ritual technologies that will allow wider participation, I’ll be reporting on that here and partnering with others to create more events.
Which more-than-human beings are you in relationship with right now? Are there more-than-human beings from the land you are on who are trying to get your attention? What ways are you expressing your appreciation for them? How are you tuning in to how they might be guiding you, or protecting you, or loving you? What signals to you that you belong to them, and that they belong to you?
Living so close to the ocean, it is water creatures and water birds that have my attention – sea turtles, sandpipers, ibis, yellow-crowned night herons, sargassum, jellyfish, crabs... When I remember the staghorn coral and think about the giant hole their disappearance leaves in their Southern Florida ocean family, I become troubled. It is as if this parent species, host to so much marine life, has left behind countless orphans. What will become of them? Who will be next to go, because their dependence on the staghorn is so great? How does this not tear at the entire web of relations here on earth?
My knees get a little weak, I get a sinking sensation in my belly, and all I can think to do, in my trembling voice, is say, “Thank you, brother coral. You will not be forgotten.”
Derek P. Manzello et al., Heat-driven functional extinction of Caribbean Acropora corals from Florida’s Coral Reef. Science 390, 361-366 (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adx7825
So much fuel here for reconnecting with Earth and all that the more-than-human world offers. I'm intrigued by the questions you raise, especially how we may honor grief in ceremony and community in a way that acknowledges the devastation and loss, while also helps to create a future that addresses the cultural ways and actions that brought it about. In my personal experience of grief -- allowing it, not running from it -- I've found a deep compassion that manifests as an openness to All That Is, and an unexpected connection to a profound sweetness that includes the pain of loss, best described as love.
Some years ago I purchased a book I've yet to read that came highly recommended by Krista Tippet after I listened to her podcast speaking with the author. Manifesto for a Moral Revolution by Jacqueline Novogratz may be a worthy read. Your post has prompted me to move it to the top of my 'to read' pile.
This is beautifully deep. I want to read it several more times. Thank you.