Murmurations: Breaking is Part of Healing
"The material world is necessarily temporary, and it is only a matter of how deep we are willing to look, how far into the past and future we are willing to consider, to understand this. If you don't believe me, look at the ruins of every society that has predated us on this planet. Remember that the matter that makes up our moon and planet is the dust of stars exploding in other galaxies. Remembe... posted on Jul 12 2023, 4,978 reads

A Prickly Pear History Lesson
"Summer monsoons in the Southwestern Sonoran Desert produce a wild bounty of crimson fruit. Rising from Engelmann's prickly pear cacti (Opuntia engelmannii), these fruits, or tuna in Spanish, perch atop Mickey Mouse-shaped pads like ruby crowns. Against muted browns and greens of the desert, the tuna are eye-popping. When I landed in Tucson for graduate school more than thirty years ago, I was ama... posted on Jul 11 2023, 1,648 reads

Giving Up on Your Dreams
"Perhaps being prudent in dreams also comes down to having a sound sense of self. By rejecting the expectations imposed by others, you can devote time and effort towards what truly works for you, such as growing stout and taking up track and field. Such is the case for the Somali ostrich, soundest and heaviest of all living birds. Not needing to train his pecs for flight means that every day becom... posted on Jul 10 2023, 2,664 reads

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
"In fact, human beings do not see very well. The brain itself makes assumptions about what it is seeing, and can actually can change perceptions to fit its assumptions. You may be familiar with the so-called constancies, perceptual constancy, form constancy, and concept constancy. This means that the brain, which is always looking for easy ways to do things, makes quick assumptions about perceptio... posted on Jul 09 2023, 2,626 reads

Forests Need Its People to Survive
B. Siddan, known as the Birdman of Bokkapuram, has an expert knowledge of birds in his region of India. He enthusiastically shares his love of birds in this short video, proudly introducing them by name like the old friends that they have become after his many years of bird watching. One such bird friend, a spot-bellied eagle owl, looks down knowingly on him. In holistic conservation, which B. des... posted on Jul 08 2023, 1,179 reads

Excavating Ancestral Wisdom
"Stephen Lewis, a social catalyst of community transformation and healing, was shaped by the classroom and medicine making activities that existed within his grandparents' kitchen. Without a college education, Stephen's grandparents held degrees in the practice of hospitality, leadership formation, and business. They were wise elders, farmers, food alchemists, educators, and community healers who ... posted on Jul 07 2023, 1,221 reads

Instructions for Traveling West
"Somewhere in the middle of the pandemic, I started driving west. The instinct was as startling as it was insatiable. I lapped up skylines like honey after famine. Then came six weeks of climbing mountains, avoiding clients and swallowing as much sunshine as I could. One morning in the middle of Arizona, I sat down with my laptop. A desert hummingbird--its whole body, the shape of a shining comma,... posted on Jul 06 2023, 7,232 reads

Seasons of the Monastic Table
"'Remember the earth whose skin you are,' writes Joy Harjo, and there is literal truth to this. We are grown from the body of the Earth, we are made of it, and to it we return. Plants, bacteria, animals, fungi, humans: we all exist in relationship to each other and to a rotating and orbiting planet whose journey around the sun gives us waxing and waning light, seed sprouts and withering stems. Bei... posted on Jul 05 2023, 1,630 reads

The Cataclysm Sentence
"One day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this question to a group of undergraduate students: If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? Now, Feynman had an ans... posted on Jul 04 2023, 3,371 reads

Three Black Men: A Journey Into the Magical Otherwise
"We know that we're living in a critical time in human history. We know that we can no longer say, "It's not my responsibility." What is it that this time begs us to see? Tami Simon joins visionary leaders Bayo Akomolafe, Orland Bishop, and Resmaa Menakem for a compelling conversation about the intersection of past, present, and future and the creation of new rituals and pathways for healing, equi... posted on Jul 03 2023, 2,122 reads