poetry they shared. Henrikson founded Street Poets in 1996. What started out as a writing workshop in a juvenile detention camp grew into a small group of writers and performers; then infiltrated Los Angeles high school classrooms with transformational results. Today, Street Poets sponsors community open mics, operates a recording studio that produces CDs of its performers’ work, publishes compilations of their poetry, and engages young men and women through workshops, drum circles, nature retreats and indigenous ceremonies, outreach to youths on Indian reservations and, most recently, a mobile recording and performance studio called “Poetry in Motion,” created from a... posted on Jul 29 2016 (15,767 reads)

September 2 1867, a 29-year old Scottish immigrant called John Muir sat alone in an oak wood on the shore of the Ohio River, a pocket map spread in front of him, his forefinger tracing an arc through the deep South of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia, and finally pausing along the Florida Gulf coast a thousand miles away. He planned to walk there. A lover of wild nature, Muir had long fantasized about visiting Florida, the “land of flowers” as he called it in his journal, and from there board a ship to South America. His immediate plan was to take the wildest and “least trodden” path he could find. “Folding my map,” he w... posted on Nov 22 2016 (20,318 reads)

don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.” “If we design workplaces that permit people to find meaning in their work, we will be designing a human nature that values work,” psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote in his inquiry into what motivates us to work. But human nature itself is a moody beast. “Given the smallest excuse, one will not work at all,” John Steinbeck lamented in his diary of the creative process as he labored over the novel that would soon earn him the Pulitzer Prize and become the cornerstone for his Nobel Prize two decades later. Work, of course, h... posted on Jan 15 2017 (17,228 reads)

human beings; questions that are not answerable by science, or even by many of the religions; questions such as, "Who am I? What am I? Why do we suffer? What can we know? Why is there evil?"      I've come to the sense that we human beings have two fundamental currents or forces within us. One is to function well and honorably in this life, in this material world of spending, family, success, health, community. And another current, another part of our human nature, is our quest for what we call the inner: faith, transformation or transcendence—or openness to a higher reality within us and the universe.      These two natures de... posted on Oct 2 2017 (10,949 reads)

laws or even lead to a political revolution. But if we stop there, the relationships between the communities are still divided, and there could still be fear, mistrust and resentment. If the human relationships are not healed, the conflict will resurface again on some other issue. Any peace gained through political revolution but not a revolution of relationships is short-lived. Reconciliation is what a principled nonviolent approach demands. The need for healing The very nature of violence is unjust. As Rev. James Lawson, one of the lead trainers for the civil rights movement, has said, “Violence has a very simple dynamic. I make you suffer more than I suffer. I... posted on Jan 15 2018 (15,353 reads)

of scientist Rachel Carson was when long ago she pioneered a new cultural aesthetic of poetic prose about science, governed by her conviction that “there can be no separate literature of science” because “the aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth,” which is also the aim of literature. It is in such lyrical prose and with an almost spiritual reverence for trees that Haskell illuminates his subject — the masterful, magical way in which nature weaves the warp thread of individual organisms and the weft thread of relationships into the fabric of life. Illustration by Arthur Rackham for a rare 1917 edition of the Broth... posted on Jan 4 2018 (16,047 reads)

as a power, a presence, a capacity, that is available. It's part of the way the world works -- a spontaneous movement toward new forms of order, new patterns of creativity. We live in a world that is self-organizing. Life is capable of creating patterns and structures and organization all the time, without conscious rational direction, planning, or control, all of the things that many of us have grown up loving. This realization is having a profound impact on our beliefs about the nature of process in interpersonal relations, in business organizations, as well as in nature itself. In this article, I will focus on some of the recent shifts in our understanding of the way things ... posted on Jun 15 2018 (9,423 reads)

needs to be remembered that it was not until relatively recently that the religion and shamanic traditions of the First Peoples—with all their diversity—were viewed to be one of the world’s religions itself. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed and put into law in 1978, allowed indigenous peoples to freely practice their traditional religion without fear of persecution. The timeless wisdom of the diverse cultures of the world speaks in a singular voice on the nature of the Absolute or Spirit, which is often referred to as the perennial philosophy (philosophia perennis). Joseph Epes Brown, renowned scholar of the Native American Traditions and World Religio... posted on Mar 12 2018 (10,884 reads)

to my patients for the medical system, for the ugly environment or for the oncologist who didn’t tell them the truth about their diagnosis.  So as a practitioner it’s beautiful to be part of this humanistic approach to care. Buddhism still informs the model, and so there’s this idea that you relate to people through suffering, through when things don’t go well. That means there’s no shame or sense of failure in dying. You just have this sense of nature being much larger than you and yet you’re part of it. And as a human being it’s so nice to know when I picture my own death that there are places like this and people who bring thei... posted on Oct 29 2018 (12,604 reads)

quiet, the voice of his soul became louder. This new voice urged him to connect with the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where he became intimately acquainted with the Native American inhabitants. What happened next, was a deep relationship with a community silenced by injustice. This caused Kevin to evolve a new voice that changed his life and his style of leadership forever.   “Strengthen the voices of others; practice restraint; learn the ways of shared leadership through nature; take care of your employees; work should enhance the evolution of the soul.” Kevin shares these principles and more in this interview. He offers us ways to illuminate the authentic v... posted on Nov 6 2018 (5,865 reads)

extent than any other species—have what I call a ‘patterning instinct:’ we are driven to pattern meaning into our world. That drive is what led humans to develop language, myth, and culture. It enabled us to invent tools and develop science, giving us tremendous benefits but also putting us on a collision course with the natural world. Each culture tends to construct its worldview on a root metaphor of the universe, which in turn defines people’s relationship to nature and each other, ultimately leading to a set of values that directs how that culture behaves. It’s those culturally derived values that have shaped history. Early hunter-gatherers, for ... posted on May 16 2019 (6,390 reads)

same place each night to find comfort in the memories still lingering there until a new season called me to move on in new directions.   The catbird eventually migrated south in September as the nights grew cooler and the days shortened.  I missed him deeply but felt grateful for all that I had been given. My heart was changed by that bird. There was no greater spiritual pilgrimage or teacher that summer, no better friend.  https://blog.nature.org/science/2015/06/10/consider-catbird-surprising-secrets-common-backyard-birds/ http://www.poetrycat.com/mary-oliver/catbird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdgYLuswqY8   https:... posted on Sep 24 2019 (6,191 reads)

which has become a formative group to change our institutional and business approaches towards agriculture and using technology to replace food animals. He co-founded a start-up of sorts, or fundraising vehicle, to support efforts to reduce suffering for animals through alternatives in the food space. Milo has been on a journey himself in this process -- writing books, delving into meditation and yoga, and becoming an advocate outside of farm animals for LGBT rights and for the rights of nature. What follows is an edited transcript of an Awakin Call with Milo in conversation with Ariel Nessel. The unedited transcript and audio recording of the call can be accessed here.  Ari: ... posted on Dec 5 2019 (4,879 reads)

I hope they will continue to evolve and people will come up with even more useful ones. And that’s what makes 21st Century economics exciting. I guess it was a quest for certainty we were on. I mean the analogy to mechanics and physics is obviously very appropriate in the sense that people are trying to find more and more certainty. And one of the things you talk about is that we need a new portrait of humanity at the heart of economics. That there’s something around human nature and self-awareness and maybe even psychology for how we design our societies and economics. How do you reflect on that? So there’s this rational economic man, the little Lego character... posted on Jul 19 2020 (8,203 reads)

countries of Ireland and Scotland, that our ancestors lived in a way that was very deeply connected with the natural world—just in the way that we think of other indigenous peoples now. Our old stories show us that that is our inheritance. So I wrote the book, really, to try to help people understand those old stories and reclaim that way of being in the world. We don’t have to look to other cultures for wisdom about how to live in balance and harmony with nature. Our own connection is right here under our feet, in our own stories, which spring directly out of this land. But we haven’t been taught to see those stories in that way. They’re di... posted on Oct 17 2020 (7,786 reads)

Rather than aspiring to enlightenment, these people delved into the underworld, which is the realm of the soul.  What is the soul in this conception? It is the primitive and essential core of our individuality, the portion of spirit that lives in us and adopts our peculiar characteristics—those that distinguish us from all others.  The descending journey plunges into the depths, in search of that particular expression of the sacred that is you. It explores our animal nature, our deepest fears, our dialogue with death and disease, our experience of sexuality, our desires, our creations, our dreams, our unconscious and its symbols.   This is how the brillia... posted on Nov 18 2020 (7,174 reads)

and critical response to Western ideas of sustainable development, Buen Vivir is about respecting the rights and responsibilities of communities to protect and promote their own social and environmental well-being by driving grassroots change. Cotacacheños have been engaged in resistance against large-scale mining operations in the region for more than three decades in the name of Buen Vivir, because the destructive nature of mining is in conflict with their vision of environmental reciprocity. Local Indigenous community leader David Torres explains, “Buen Vivir signifies first and foremost&nbs... posted on Jan 20 2021 (4,653 reads)

Union for Conservation of Nature still classifies them as Endangered, with only 1,200 to 1,800 birds confined to Cambodia and two regions of India—Bihar and Assam, where Barman lives. Despite the longstanding cultural disgust that surrounded the birds, Barman quickly began to appreciate the storks’ more appealing side. Raised for several years by her grandmother, who often took her outside and taught her songs and stories about birds, she developed a connection with nature that brought her solace during a period when her parents were away. Later, she studied zoology and wildlife biology at Gauhati University, where she earned an undergraduate degree and then a ma... posted on Mar 19 2021 (5,623 reads)

cave people, like, not like. “Me like calm, me no like turmoil,” right or wrong? Who taught you that? Your parents? Do you have to go to school to learn that? Oh, that’s as intuitive as it comes, all right? “I don’t want to be drowning, OK. I like it being comfortable in here.” Of course you do. Of course you do. Ain’t that nice, I get to say that, don’t give that up, you could never give that up. You understand that? That’s part of your nature. So your being is in there, you are resting on this lake. You don’t realize that because you’re so lost in it. You’re resting on this lake, and you’re only OK when the l... posted on Dec 31 1969 (139 reads)

powerful people have created enormously complicated systems based on supposedly scientific theories of government. And this took place at the same time that science and technology made it possible to make and use ever more energy to drive a civilization that allows a few of us to live lives of luxury and ease unknown in the entire history of humankind. The great majority of us, however, are swept aside in this tsunami of what we call progress. So- called progress that is rooted in divorce from nature. Nature has become scenery and resource. We change nature to make it what we want it to look like. Here in Hawai’i we move huge amounts of sand around to make beaches for tourists, we mov... posted on Aug 17 2022 (3,679 reads)