Tyson Yunkaporta: Humans as a Custodial Species
"You don't need to believe in ghosts to balance spirit and live the right way in this world. You can use any metaphor you like--for example ego, id, superego and persona. Frontal lobe, monkey brain, neo-cortex and lizard brain. Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Malfoy. Monkey spirit, Pig spirit, Fish spirit and Tripitaka. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Whatever stories... posted on Nov 08 2022, 1,486 reads

Everything Happens for A Reason & Other Lies I've Loved
"In life's toughest moments, how do you go on living? Kate Bowler has been exploring this question ever since she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. In a profound, heartbreaking and unexpectedly funny talk, she offers some answers -- challenging the idea that "everything happens for a reason" and sharing hard-won wisdom about how to make sense of the world after your life is suddenly, c... posted on Nov 07 2022, 7,832 reads

The Link Between Landscape and Diaspora
"My observations of nature sparked adventures into landscape and history, and it was in bearing witness to these injustices that I found language. And observation and description are at the root of bearing witness: it is about saying, in the face of the machinations of power to twist and deny its brutality, this is what I see. It is a simple act, but also a powerful one, for it cuts through facade... posted on Nov 06 2022, 1,188 reads

Wendell Berry and Helena Norberg-Hodge on Caretaking
"In 2018, Helena Norberg-Hodge sat down with Wendell Berry for a far-reaching discussion. The two are giants of the local economy movement. Berry is a poet and activist, an author of over forty books--including The Unsettling of America and Home Economics--and a lifelong advocate for ecological health, the beauty of rural life, and small-scale farming. He is a recipient of the National Humanities ... posted on Nov 05 2022, 1,692 reads

Truth and Reconciliation
Lis Cox, videographer and activist, is on a one woman mission to try to ensure that there is a future for young people. Drawing on successes of protests in the 1960's and 1970's, this video inspires young people and people of all ages to unite in protest against climate problems, police brutality and racism. She quotes from the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, saying, "You're either on ... posted on Nov 04 2022, 986 reads

Merlin Sheldrake: Entangled Life
"Merlin Sheldrakes book Entangled Life [1] has rather taken the world by storm since it was published in 2020, appearing on the best-seller lists in both the UK and USA. Subtitled How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures, it constitutes a comprehensive overview of our current scientific understanding of fungi, from the extraordinary hidden networks of the wood wide web to... posted on Nov 03 2022, 1,998 reads

Love Song
"Whether we accept it or not, the land itself is our earliest predecessor, the main character of all our stories, and listening to it, after all, is not a onetime undertaking but a practice." Chris Dombrowski's book, "The River You Touch," begins with a profound and timely question, "What does a meaningful, mindful, sustainable inhabitance on this small planet look like in the anthropocene? What f... posted on Nov 02 2022, 1,965 reads

George Saunders on Writing
"As a writer, the work is always particularization to move from mere concept (tree, forest) into specific descriptions that sort of take that thing apart and then cause a new and more intense perception of it to occur within a particular mindstate (usually that of a character). So, what really happens is that you start to dissolve the traditional distinction between the natural and man-made world... posted on Nov 01 2022, 1,551 reads

Spirituality, Art and Innocence
"Nothing can be loved at speed, and I think we might be looking at the loss of love in the world due to the increased velocity of ordinary life; the loss of care, skill and attention enough to ensure the health and happiness of each other and the planet earth. It is a baffling problem and governments seem unable to recognize it, or do much about it at present. To put it as a bleak modern metaphor,... posted on Oct 31 2022, 2,107 reads

Their Irrepressible Innocence
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a moist, gray November in my soul; whenever I find myself expecting to be cut off in traffic, to be shortchanged at the store, to hear an ominous clank in the transmission, to catch a cold, to be ludicrously overbilled by the insurance company, to find the library closed early, to endure computer malfunction, to discover the wine... posted on Oct 30 2022, 2,084 reads