The Missing Piece
"Unlike most beginning meditation practices, which provide a simple object of focus for the attention (like following the breath or reciting a mantra), Centering Prayer provides no such focal point; it merely teaches the practitioner how to release the attention promptly when it gets tangled up in a thought. Echoing the teaching of The Cloud of Unknowing (which turned out to be Centering Prayer's ... posted on Apr 03 2022, 3,443 reads

Fighting Fire with Fire
"Victor Steffensen talks to Rosemary Rule about his pioneering work reintroducing indigenous cultural burning practices in Australia. 'Climate change means the land is telling us something. It is not all doom and gloom. If we look at it the right way, it is an opportunity for change.'"... posted on Apr 02 2022, 2,773 reads

Writing a Better Story
There comes a time when we choose what stories we tell ourselves personally or as a community. "So let us all honor the stories that gave us courage and personal grounding, the stories that brought us here, the finest ones the ancestors carried for us until we could carry them for ourselves. Let us acknowledge the stories that its time to finally release, to name the dragon so that the dragon can... posted on Apr 01 2022, 2,252 reads

A Selfless Respect for Reality
"Thinking about our current global situation, I recall the work of Kazimierz Dabrowski, the Polish psychiatrist and psychologist who proposed a theory of personality development called positive disintegration. This is a transformational approach to psychological growth based on the idea that crises are important for our personal maturation. Dabrowski's concept is similar to a tenet of systems theo... posted on Mar 31 2022, 4,246 reads

For the 8-Year-Old In You
Kate DiCamillo's books include, "Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, The Magician's Elephant, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and Flora & Ulysses. Krista Tippett read Kate's books with her children. Then, in the early pandemic months, feeling unmoored, she cracked them open to read by herself, inspired by a piece in the New York Times by the wonderful writer of adult novels, An... posted on Mar 30 2022, 4,414 reads

Finding Joy in the Unknown
"Writing was a way for me to communicate," says Dara McAnulty, "I didn't like to speak to people. In fact, I spoke to basically nobody outside of close family, and any conversation I had outside of that was incredibly awkward and I hated every second of it. Writing, on the other hand, I found incredibly easy to do. It was something where I could take what was going on in my mind and put it into so... posted on Mar 29 2022, 3,086 reads

Shop Class As Soul Craft
"Matthew Crawford was on what most people would think was the "right track." Then he left his job as executive director at a think tank in Washington to open a motorcycle repair shop. In his book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, he makes the case that our society has placed too great a value on white-collar work and not enough value on the trades. Crawford tells host Guy Raz that the mechanical arts have... posted on Mar 28 2022, 3,037 reads

Conserving Quiet
"In nature, there is nothing wrong with quiet. It exists under the weighted depths of ocean and in the cool of rocky caverns. It spills out beneath the wings of eagles as the world below freezes. Nature is never wholly silent: she speaks in breathy whistles and the jingle of dry leaves. She listens, but she is not mute. Even in the high desert, where sage-shrouded grouse have just begun to stir an... posted on Mar 27 2022, 3,439 reads

Seek Silence
Silence helps us to explore our shared humanity as it speaks to the part of life that is beyond words. This video created by Green Renaissance and filmed in South Africa encourages us to hear the words that silence whispers to our hearts and to find a quiet space in the busyness of life, wherever we live. It invites us to explore what silence means to us.... posted on Mar 26 2022, 3,281 reads

My Pen is the Wing of a Bird
"'My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird' came about through the efforts of Untold Narratives, a UK-based organization which works to develop and amplify the work of writers marginalized by social, geopolitical or economic isolation, particularly those in areas with recent or ongoing conflict. In 2019 and early 2021, Untold put out open calls across Afghanistan, asking women to submit short stories in eithe... posted on Mar 25 2022, 2,157 reads