Charis and the Agnes Scott College Office of Religious and Spiritual Life welcome author and activist Terry Tempest Williams for a conversation with Charis co-founder, Linda Bryant, about Williams' newest collection, Erosion: Essays of Undoing.

We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. Here, Williams bravely and brilliantly explores the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She examines the dire cultural and environmental implications of the gutting of Bear Ears National Monument—sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American Southwest; of the undermining of the Endangered Species Act; of the relentless press by the fossil fuel industry that has led to a panorama in which "oil rigs light up the horizon." And she testifies that the climate crisis is not an abstraction, offering as evidence the drought outside her door and, at times, within herself.

These essays are Williams's call to action, blazing a way forward through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new territory—emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert lands exposes the truth of change. What has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.

Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of resistance, and that water can crack stone.

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Terry Tempest Williams is an American writer and environmental activist. Known for her lyrical prose with a spiritual depth and political edge,  her books include Refuge - An Unnatural History of Family and Place; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; When Women Were Birds; The Hour of Land; and most recently, Erosion - Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated worldwide. She is a member of the American Academy Of Arts & Letters and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She and her husband Brooke Williams live in Castle Valley, Utah.

Linda Bryant: Linda Bryant is a mother and grandmother. She found her life's work when (along with Barbara Borgman) she opened Charis in 1974. Linda is a graduate of The Candler School of Theology and a member of the Kirkwood United Church of Christ.

The Agnes Scott College of Religious and Spiritual Life is active online throughout the pandemic at this address: https://www.agnesscott.edu/religiouslife/.

Erosion: Essays of Undoing--An Evening with Terry Tempest Williams in Conversation with Linda Bryant