Reading AfterNow was a transformative experience for me, and if you’re up for such an adventure, I recommend it heartily. Bob Stilger’s story in AfterNow of working with communities in Japan that had been devastated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster awakened my heart with a vision of how communities of care and collaboration can be created in response to disaster, suffering and grief; how hearts opened in grief and suffering can be healed; how we need and thus can create life-giving relationships that enable us to rebuild individual lives and vital communities in the wake of tragedy.

The book transformed my vision of human possibility and inspires hope, and in a time of cascading natural disasters – e.g, the displacement of 64 million people in 2016 and the likely displacement of 450 million in the next 10 years, the hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico, the still-raging fires in CA – yes, we need hope, and more, we need vision rooted in the reality of how we human beings can find ways to collaborate, celebrate human dignity, and embrace our fundamental interdependence on planet earth. We need a liberating vision of human possibility, a vision that will inspire us to action: AfterNow is such a vision.