Sanctuary and Shelter

Editor’s Note

With the arrival of the winter solstice, it is a delight and honor to release EcoTheo’s  Autumn 2021 Social Justice folio. Releasing the autumn collection on the winter solstice was an unplanned occurrence borne out of the delays of an eventful fall, but the timing seems serendipitous given the essence of this collection. The theme, “Sanctuary and Shelter,” builds upon our fall print edition’s title of “Sanctuary” with its associations of sacred places and refuge, and expands to consider ideas of protection and home in a world where those too often are elusive for both people and all other living things. On the longest night of the year, when days of warmth, brightness, and justice can seem like an implausible hope, the voices in this folio bear witness to the breadth of the human experience of what contributing poet and attorney Walter Long calls “the holding space we build for one another.”

Paired with Long’s poems is a stirring interview with Gabriel Solís of the Texas After Violence Project, which highlights the organization’s “Sheltering Justice” project and its documentation of the impact of COVID-19 on the incarcerated community. Carrie Green, Rimma Kranet, and Lisbeth White each offer delicately crafted creative nonfiction essays with diverse takes on ruptures within relationships, ourselves, and the places we call home. Lauren Graeber’s review of All We Can Save invites us to find our own niche in the work of preserving the sanctuary and shelter of our shared ecological dwelling. Poetry by Purvi Shah beautifully illuminates movement as shelter in the grounding of nature’s motion. And Julia Lovan, in the wake of unceasing injustices, showcases in her visual art the generative and joyful gift of simply tending to and celebrating the precious living things we are close enough to care for.
 

May these offerings accompany and encourage us as we head into a new year with hope and inspiration for nurturing refuge for all.