Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People
"This little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to press in the first weeks of the great war. Many will feel that in such a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant, disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book which deals with that which is called the "contemplative" attitude to existence is wholly out of place. So obvious, indeed, is this point o... posted on May 26 2021, 6,461 reads

Finding Time: Slowness is an Act of Resistance
"The four horseman of my Apocalypse are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our l... posted on May 25 2021, 6,384 reads

Joy Harjo: The Whole of Time
"Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world," the extraordinary Joy Harjo has written, "nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm." She is a saxophone player and performer, a visual artist, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, and the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. She opens up with Krista Tippett about her life, drea... posted on May 24 2021, 5,736 reads

Where the Horses Sing
"Witnessing a growing wasteland, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee seeks the threshold that could bring us back to the place where the land sings-- to a deep ecology of consciousness that returns our awareness to a fully animate world."... posted on May 23 2021, 5,388 reads

How Trees Secretly Talk To Each Other
Yes, scientists have discovered that plants can actually talk to each other. This short animated film, commissioned by BBC World Service, explores what has been nicknamed "The Wood Wide Web" -- the intricate fungal network connecting plants across entire forests. Says ecologist Suzanne Simard."Trees are "social creatures" that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for h... posted on May 22 2021, 4,453 reads

Love is the Last Word
"To understand anything -- another person's experience of reality, another fundamental law of physics -- is to restructure our existing knowledge, shifting and broadening our prior frames of reference to accommodate a new awareness. And yet we have a habit of confusing our knowledge -- which is always limited and incomplete: a model of the cathedral of reality, built from primary-colored blocks of... posted on May 21 2021, 5,764 reads

The Art and Science of Conquering Your Fears
Aristotle believed courage to be the most important quality in a man. "Courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible," he wrote. Today, it's one of the more neglected areas of positive psychology, but recent research has begun to move toward an understanding of what courage is and how we might be able to cultivate the ability to face our fear and make decisions with gr... posted on May 19 2021, 65,782 reads

Wendell Berry: The Peace of Wild Things
The Peace of Wild Things is a beautifully animated film of a poem written and read by Wendell Berry as part of the Poetry Films series of the On Being Project, which features animated interpretations of beloved poems. This poem is a warm invitation to return to our early memories of peace and joy, perhaps lying in the grass on a sunny hill, listening to bird and insect sounds, when suddenly, for a... posted on May 18 2021, 4,363 reads

David Hoffman: A Positive View
David Hoffman's career in filmmaking goes back over 58 years. "I picked up a camera in 1964 and found that from behind the camera, I could ask questions and find out things I didn't know about, or that scared me...By the time I was 25 I was getting opportunities to interview really big folks. And every chance I could come up with I focused on what "ordinary" people would say to me -- people I bega... posted on May 17 2021, 2,847 reads

Burned Pages Don't Lie: A Genealogy Search
"A genealogy search can yield many things and go down many paths, but at its core, it is a story waiting to be told and a person to tell it." Ten years ago, artist Pat Benincasa, received a unique mission, one that arrived in the form of a charred book of Italian love poems. It had belonged to her grandfather. "What was he doing with this book and why was it burned?" What follows is the story of P... posted on May 16 2021, 4,652 reads