The Sounds of Silence
"When I was a sixteen-year-old naturalist in training, we were instructed to sit in the forest and wait for the return of something called the baseline symphony. The baseline symphony was the music of a landscape at easethe confluence of insect, bird, and animal song, underscored by wind and water. The dynamics of that symphony shifted as day progressed into night. There were brief caesuras, but i... posted on May 20 2022, 2,030 reads

Watching River Otters
"Walking in the wetlands I encounter a family of river otters playing in the water, then sliding their sleek bodies onto the land. They tumble over each other in the sand, as a blue heron watches nearby. In their primal world there is neither truth nor falsehood, just life present, unfractured. Once, long ago, we walked in this landscape, were part of this ecology of place. With songs and prayers,... posted on May 19 2022, 1,962 reads

This Fantastic Argument of Being Alive
"Padraig O Tuama is a friend, teacher, and colleague to the work of On Being. But before that was true, Krista took a revelatory trip to meet him at his home in Northern Ireland, a place that has known sectarianism and violent fracture and has evolved, not to perfection, yet to new life and once unimaginable repair and relationship. Our whole world screams of fracture, more now than when Krista sa... posted on May 18 2022, 3,360 reads

Things to Look Forward To
In 2020 when the pandemic tore across our globe, "She [children's bookmaker, Sophie Blackall] coped the way all artists cope, complained the way all makers complain: by making something of beauty and substance, something that begins as a quickening of self-salvation in ones own heart and ripples out to touch, to salve, maybe even to save others -- which might be both the broadest and the most prec... posted on May 17 2022, 7,527 reads

Neurodiversity and Creativity
"If we put neurodiversity with creativity together, what can we get? At the moment, what is dominant is what we call the deficit approach meaning, that we see neurodivergent processes as problems, disorders and abnomality. We have a medical model. There is a process of diagnosis, and various remedies are prescribed such as special equipment and human support, medication, etc. This essentially put... posted on May 16 2022, 1,951 reads

Navigating the Mysteries
"The correct response to uncertainty is mythmaking. It always was. Not punditry, allegory, or mandate, but mythmaking. The creation of stories. We are tuned to do so, right down to our bones. The bewilderment, vivacity, and downright slog of life requires it. And such emerging art forms are not to cure or even resolve uncertainty but to deepen into it. There's no solving uncertainty. Mythmaking is... posted on May 15 2022, 2,291 reads

The Age of Invisible Stones
"We were old. We were weathered. We lost our youthful looks. We dotted Japans coastline. We stood at human height, sometimes taller. They called us tsunami stones. Our faces were carved with messages: build on higher ground. remember the last calamity. A few of us, near Kesennuma, had been around for six hundred years and our faces said: CHOOSE LIFE OVER YOUR POSSESSIONS." When did the Anthropocen... posted on May 14 2022, 1,935 reads

Beyond Polarity
"This animated video offers hope for creating together the world that honors our collective needs by building on what unifies us. To make personal change that scales up to social change requires meeting our most important needs and recognizing that people are different. These differences can add color and richness to life and they can also be polarizing. Knowing another person's needs is a startin... posted on May 13 2022, 1,837 reads

Iyore (I Return)
"My name is Imuetinyan Ugiagbe and I am a visual storyteller who happens to be visually impaired. The title of the piece I am sharing with you is Iyore (pronounced E YO RAY), which means I return in the Edo language. When I take a trip, I rarely think of whether I would make it home safely. But, all of that changed on the 13th of June, 2020." Imuetinyan Ugiagbe shares more in this moving piece.... posted on May 12 2022, 3,544 reads

Resisting Revenge to Embrace Humanity
After a Palestinian sniper killed ten Israeli soldiers including her son, who was active in the peace movement, Robi Damelin's first words were: "Do not take revenge in the name of my son." Somewhere below the grief, she knew even in that moment that exacting vengeance would merely fuel the cycle of violence. In her pain, Robi couldn't bear "business as usual" and closed down her PR office. She so... posted on May 11 2022, 2,510 reads