We All Have a Brush
"Kazuaki Tanahashi is a Japanese calligrapher, translator of the Zen master Eihei Dogen's Shobogenzo (The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), and a deeply committed peace worker, who is active in the United States. Known also more simply as Kaz, he approaches all of his work with both thoughtfulness and fluid spontaneity. His methods, emphasizing the inherent power of each moment, and of every breat... posted on Jun 26 2022, 1,716 reads

Barbara Kingsolver: The Urbicene
"Kin la Belle, the Congolese call their capital, and Ive looked for Kinshasas beauty. The Congo River, pulse of a planet, fifteen miles wide as it courses past? Abdims storks wheeling overhead, hippos lolling in the rapids below the caf where I had lunch under the gaze of giant orange-headed lizards? All beautiful, I thought, but was gently corrected. Beasts and crawling creatures dont really belo... posted on Jun 25 2022, 2,027 reads

The Night Is Just Beginning
Vocal artist Mariana Sadovska traveled along the front lines of the first invasion of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2016, giving benefit concerts and meeting people in the war-ravaged area. Based on her journey, she created a unique musical story - The Night Is Just Beginning - that is all too relevant today. This excerpt of the performance, called "Tovye Imya" (Your Name), beg... posted on Jun 24 2022, 1,504 reads

How Animals See Themselves
"In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexkll noted that every animal exists in its own unique perceptual world a smorgasbord of sights, smells, sounds and textures that it can sense but that other species might not. These stimuli defined what von Uexkll called the Umwelt an animals bespoke sliver of reality. A ticks Umwelt is limited to the touch of hair, the odor that emanates from skin and the he... posted on Jun 23 2022, 2,640 reads

Grieving Beneath the Stars: Mourners as Spiritual Teachers
"When I heard my dad was dead, there was a breaking--a shattering inside of me that felt so violent I could almost hear it. I woke up to a knock on my front door in the middle of the night, and sat up in bed, sure something was wrong. It was my older brother. He said he had bad news. "Really bad." And then the words left his mouth: "Dad had a heart attack, and unfortunately, he passed away." Like ... posted on Jun 22 2022, 4,233 reads

Stonehenge: A Summer Solstice Experience
"I wanted to watch the sunrise on the summer solstice from Stonehenge, ancient druid temple, aligned to the solstice, keeper of mysterious magic yet unknown to us. A picture of Stonehenge had been my desktop screensaver more than 15 years ago, and walking amongst these stones had been a long cherished dream of mine. So when I realized that I could be there on this special day when they allow peopl... posted on Jun 21 2022, 3,145 reads

Listening and the Crisis of Attention
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee talks with biologist and author David G. Haskell about his latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken: a journey through deep time that traces the evolution of sound. Their conversation touches on the legacies of kinship that are present when we listen, and how deep experiences of beauty can serve as a moral guide for the future.... posted on Jun 20 2022, 1,691 reads

The Art of Soil
"Karen Vaughan is a scientist, paint maker, educator, mom, and artist. The soils she studies and learns from and with during her day job as an associate professor of pedology (the study of soil formation) have woven their way into her journey as an artist. Vaughan creates nature-inspired, soil-based watercolor paints that she uses to create art that communicates environmental challenges, condition... posted on Jun 19 2022, 2,307 reads

Seeing Truth in van Gogh
"In her book The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: The Thought and Art of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, art historian Naomi Margois Maurer discusses the state of mystical consciousness in which an individual sees directly into the essence of reality, senses nature's unity, and 'feels himself to be part of the flow of universal life.' She goes on to describe it as a direct experience of fundamental... posted on Jun 18 2022, 2,159 reads

Down By the Riverside
What if we as a society could say we were going to live in the Spirit of Love, cooperation and nonviolence and "study war no more"? This song performed by the Playing For Change organization has inspired many people all around the planet to work together for a better world. Playing For Change (PFC) is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief th... posted on Jun 17 2022, 1,644 reads