Emergence Disturbs the Concept of Linearity
When Bayo Akomolafe was a child he prayed to God for a "faith-o-meter" -- some kind of tool that would measure his worthiness and assure him of his place in heaven. "Of course I didn't get my prayer answered," he says. "But I got something better than an answer, I got bewildered, and I am in a state of bewilderment now." An academic, poet and philosopher, Bayo Akomolafe has dedicated his life to m... posted on Jun 04 2021, 2,107 reads

Phone of the Wind
"'Hello. If you're out there, please listen to me.' On a hill overlooking the ocean in Otsuchi Town in northeastern Japan is a phone booth known as the 'Telephone of the Wind.' It is connected to nowhere, but people come to 'call' family members lost during the tsunami of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Many visit the phone booth including a mother and 3 children who have lost their father. ... posted on Jun 03 2021, 3,264 reads

The Forest of Orchids
"As Colombia continues to suffer violence and unrest, one family seeks to change the country's story from one of destruction to one of restoration and healing by planting thousands of native orchids across a mountainside."... posted on Jun 02 2021, 4,009 reads

The Alchemy of Bowing
"Since the third century CE to this day, bowing to the Buddha is the most common practice for Asian Buddhists. However, among Westerners, bowing practice, as compared with meditation, is not as well-known. Last summer, I had an opportunity to speak with Reverend Heng Sure, the director of the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, and asked for more information about Buddhist bowing and repentance. In the l... posted on Jun 01 2021, 6,144 reads

Love Letters from Seaweed
"Love Letters from Seaweed was created during the summer months I spent exploring mid-Coast Maine. Each day just before sunrise, I biked to Birch Point Beach to witness the shores changing topography and the traces of ocean life spilled by the tide. Intrigued, I photographed spontaneous configurations of seaweed and natural artifacts in unworldly colors, brought together by spume and sand." Visua... posted on May 31 2021, 4,908 reads

To Become a Better Leader, Question Your Assumptions
"When Wharton management professor Adam Grant sat down to write his new book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, he wanted to make the case for why executives should reconsider their approaches to how to manage people in a modern workplace and embrace new ideas, based on systematic evidence." Here he discusses why it's important for leaders to question their assumptions around ... posted on May 30 2021, 5,222 reads

Rumi, Grace & Human Friendship
Tami Simon speaks with Coleman Barks-- a leading scholar and translator of the 13th-century Persian mystic Jelaluddin Rumi-- about the extraordinary friendship between Rumi and his teacher Shams Tabrizi.... posted on May 29 2021, 5,370 reads

Asha Gond at the Skating World Championships
Change means movement. If you want change you have to disrupt something. See how one skateboarding park in a rural Indian village rippled out into changes in gender restrictions, caste restrictions and poverty restrictions through the voices of Ulrike Reinhard, the founder of the skateboarding park, and Asha Gond, a young member of the tribal community in the village of Janwaar.... posted on May 28 2021, 2,217 reads

We're Gonna Carry That Weight A Long Time
"All houses have memory. Life's big occasions--the triumphs and heartbreak--drift through like smoke, leaving barely a trace. It's the small moments they remember: the hollow at the turn of the stair, the scratches around the keyhole, or wood darkened by touch. "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives," wrote Annie Dillard, and the houses we spend them in record it all."... posted on May 27 2021, 4,216 reads

Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People
"This little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to press in the first weeks of the great war. Many will feel that in such a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant, disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book which deals with that which is called the "contemplative" attitude to existence is wholly out of place. So obvious, indeed, is this point o... posted on May 26 2021, 6,401 reads