Befriending Ourselves: An Invitation to Love
Is self-improvement sometimes a disguised version of self-agrression? If the focus is always on how I might be "better" in the future, it can be hard to extend toward myself a hand of friendship and compassion. I miss out on the present miracle of who I am NOW. Maybe moving from a perspective of improvement toward one of healing actually begins with loving my current messiness.... posted on Jul 28 2019, 9,045 reads

On Calligraphic Perception: A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield
In an interview begun in 2012, when being honored with the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Award in American Poetry, Jane Hirshfield shares her experiential journey towards "the quick brushstroke of singular perception" for which her poems have come to be known. Acknowledging the grace of her gift she says, "I never take for granted that I'll be able to write. There's no acorn stash of ideas in my desk dr... posted on Jul 27 2019, 4,381 reads

The Work of Love is to Love
"My own time on earth has led me to believe in two powerful instruments that turn experience into love: holding and listening. For every time I have held or been held, every time I have listened or been listened to, experience burns like wood in that eternal fire and I find myself in the presence of love. This has always been so. Consider these two old beliefs that carry the wisdom and challenge o... posted on Jul 26 2019, 9,266 reads

Wild Imagination
"Anguish over the diminishment of our world, the destruction of Earths life support systems, and the extinction of species is deep in our shared human psyche, though largely unexpressed. So many of us can only dimly imagine our way through the psychic and physical debris to a regenerated, thriving, Earth community. Yet the mysterious human imagination itself may be our best resource for experienti... posted on Jul 25 2019, 8,410 reads

Wild Wisdom
Jenny Cullinan dedicates her time to studying and learning from bees in the wild. Spending time with any species in the wild over time leads to understanding of that species as it truly is. She calls this greater understanding wild wisdom. With an allergy to bee stings, instead of being afraid of them she chose to learn how to be with them. She urges us to look at nature's genius and use it as a g... posted on Jul 24 2019, 2,262 reads

The Lost Words: Reclaiming the Language of Nature
"In early 2015, when the 10,000-entry Oxford children's dictionary dropped around fifty words related to nature -- words like fern, willow, and starling -- in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste, some of the worlds most prominent authors composed an open letter of protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children's vocabulary and its consequent diminishment of children's belonging t... posted on Jul 23 2019, 12,600 reads

Finding a Way Back
Breast cancer does not ask you if it is part of your plan for life. When the diagnosis comes, your plans must change to accommodate. And how do women find their way back into life without cancer as it's center point? Colleen Webster, a DailyGood reader, shares her experience leading a retreat she organized for breast cancer survivors where she had to travel a similar journey. While she planned for... posted on Jul 22 2019, 5,105 reads

The Teachings of Grass
How do we relate to the land that sustains us--as a source of belonging or as a source of belongings? As the planet teeters on the brink of environmental collapse, botanist, teacher, and author Robin Wall Kimmerer urges us to consider our broken relationship to the Earth and the hard choices that lie before us by examining the history of her Potawatomi ancestors. Through cultivating the sense of r... posted on Jul 21 2019, 2,804 reads

A Gathering of Men with Robert Bly
In this interview between Bill Moyers and poet Robert Bly, they explore the confusion men feel about their roles in society and in their inner lives. In retreats like A Gathering of Men, their sense of loss is met with a sense of hope. Men learn from one another through sharing and listening to the wisdom, writings, and poetry of men like Bly. A father figure at these gatherings, Bly is an essayi... posted on Jul 20 2019, 4,390 reads

How Doctors Use Poetry
While doctors are educated to focus primarily on medical science, some are beginning to expand their outlook and focus on something greater: language, in particular, poetry. While the Hippocratic Oath many physicians take requires them to "remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug",... posted on Jul 19 2019, 2,886 reads