The Song of Grandmother Cricket
This beautiful animated short film, inspired by a myth from the Bolivian lowlands, was created by a group of Bolivian animators in collaboration with The Animation Workshop of Denmark. When Abuela Grillo (Grandmother Cricket) sings, it rains, and in a country marked by water shortages, the film is a response to the privatization of Bolivias water resources by foreign corporations. The Cochabamba w... posted on Feb 05 2021, 2,931 reads

Invitations to Stillness: Japanese Gardens
"Every element in the Japanese garden from the shape of the pruned pine trees to the careful placement of stepping stones has intention and is specifically designed to cultivate nuanced awareness. The contrast between what is placed and what is left blank, brings to life a pictorial space that leaves room for our imagination. Symbolism and metaphor in the garden also offer powerful tools to help h... posted on Feb 04 2021, 4,399 reads

Francis Weller: Initiation, Trauma and Ritual
"For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings worked through trauma communally through ritual practices. Ritual was the re-regulating practice after trauma or a death. What happens when we abandon those forms? Again, another thread of what the soul yearns for is dropped. I've spent the last 20-plus years developing ritual practices for community around grief, around gratitude, around initiatio... posted on Feb 03 2021, 12,430 reads

Happiness Is...
In late fall of 2011, after a simple car ride with the windows rolled down, and the music turned up, 17-year-old Elizabeth Buechele posted this update on her social media feed, "Day 1: Happiness is... those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs." Day 1 turned into Day 2, and now more than nine years later, Buechele has gleaned and shared a "Happiness is..." moment from e... posted on Feb 02 2021, 6,009 reads

John Lewis: Love in Action
"Here is an extraordinary conversation with the late congressman John Lewis, taped in Montgomery, Alabama, during a pilgrimage 50 years after the March on Washington. It offers a special look inside his wisdom, the civil rights leaders spiritual confrontation within themselves, and the intricate art of nonviolence as 'love in action.'" More from On Being.... posted on Feb 01 2021, 6,066 reads

My First Best Friend
"In 1945, a child too young for school, I wandered from Grandma's porch and a short distance away, found one of those little creeks that would be my playground for the next few years. Here I formed my first friendship." Thus begins this writer's meditation on the deep, and often overlooked, joy of water and its essential place in life. As she observes, the aging process has a way of deepening our ... posted on Jan 31 2021, 3,009 reads

Walking With George
"I had never been good at practicing mindfulness, or being mindful--period--until I got a dog. Observing your breath, extolled as the surefire way to become present, left me in such a deep state of hyperventilation I quickly wanted a break from taking a break. I was in constant, anxious movement, starting projects but never finishing them, leaving things halfway done, forgetting items, moving from... posted on Jan 30 2021, 7,044 reads

Contact with the Sacred
With spectacular visual images, this film reminds us of the necessity of connecting with the sacred in everyday life. It honors the sacred through sensory feelings of connection, with both the vast expanses such as mountain tops and waterfalls, and with the single dandelion sending its seeds into the future. This connection is further enhanced by the peaceful music that accompanies the images, pro... posted on Jan 29 2021, 4,113 reads

For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing: A Meditative Poem
The origin story of "For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing" lies in a dream that writer Phyllis Cole-Dai had last year. This remarkable poem was published in the early days of the pandemic that has now claimed over 2 million lives worldwide. Cole-Dai's words have comforted many people through the grief and loss of these challenging times. What follows here is the poem's backstory in her own w... posted on Jan 28 2021, 13,138 reads

The Blue Hour: A Celebration of Nature's Rarest Color
"Blue, Rebecca Solnit wrote in one of humanitys most beautiful reflections on our planets primary hue, is the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world, a world of many blues a pioneering 19th-century nomenclature of colors listed eleven kinds of blue, in hues as varied as the color of the flax... posted on Jan 27 2021, 8,335 reads