do I become a perfect instrument. Live In the Soul and Be Guided By It Dr. V firmly believes that action motivated by love exerts a force and organizing power of its own. He makes the cultivation of unconditional compassion for all beings a daily goal—a Dalai Lama-esque endeavor not always easy to pull off. In an early journal entry, he detailed the petty dynamics that can hijack a doctor’s best intentions, before diving into a stream-of-consciousness meditation on the nature of the mind: You feel drawn to a patient because he’s from your village, known to you, and then you try to do your best for him. But at times, a patient is aggressive and demands some ... posted on Oct 1 2018 (9,789 reads)

that sedates and lies to the dying, ultimately defrauding them of the possibility of a good death. Stephen’s influences are diverse, from farming to Harvard Divinity School to talking with men’s groups, not to mention many years spent leading the palliative care team at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. In some ways, he is a radical, a man deeply at odds with many of the values of modernity. He argues that we have lost touch with our ancestry, with the stories that connect us to nature and those who have come before us. He decries the excessive emphasis on the personal that characterises modern culture, pointing to the deeper cycles of life and death, growth and decay, that u... posted on Oct 19 2018 (12,407 reads)

route by slashing with their machetes here and there in the bark of the great trees, leaving tracks which they would follow back when they had left me alone with my destiny. Each of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green and white silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid down over centuries, among half-fallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as fresh obstacles to bar our progress. We were in a dazzling and secret world of nature which at the same time was a growing menace of cold, snow and persecution. Everything became one: the solitude, the danger, the silence, and the urgency of my mission. Through this dangero... posted on Nov 2 2018 (7,383 reads)

planets or the moon. Even in the day we do not experience the sun in any immediate or meaningful manner. Summer and winter are the same inside the mall. Ours is a world of highways, parking lots, shopping centers. We read books written with a strangely contrived alphabet. We no longer read the book of the universe. Nor do we coordinate our world of human meaning with the meaning of our surroundings. We have disengaged from that profound interaction with our environment inherent in our very nature. Our children do not learn how to read the Great Book of Nature or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water comes from or ... posted on Nov 21 2018 (5,655 reads)

because you are, you are because I am. It implies that we find our humanity in each other. Ubuntu literally means a person is a person through other persons. This heartfelt tradition concentrates on the irrevocable connectedness that exists between people. Based on this fundamental commitment to human kinship, there is no word for orphan in the African continent, because each tribe automatically assumes a lost child as part of its larger family. At work here is the belief that in our very nature, we rely on each other to grow. As quarks combine to form protons and neutrons, which then form atoms, which then form molecules, individuals innately form families, which then form tribes, whi... posted on Dec 13 2018 (11,274 reads)

We have a question from Gayathri in India. She asks: "Some of your stories almost sound like you have been divinely protected and guided. Do you feel that that's true? What is your conception of the divine? Do you have any advice on how we can better align ourselves with, and listen to intuition, the divine heart, wisdom, whatever one would call it?” Scilla: I do very much believe in a higher intelligence. I can see it all around me in the way the abundance of nature comes about in each season.  I call on this higher intelligence in the form of a Chinese goddess of compassion called Kwan-Yin. She's been my invisible mentor for many years. W... posted on Feb 15 2019 (7,692 reads)

in the world. After some resistance, they learned how to give their full listening attention to one another and they reported: “What you taught us enables us now to resolve in 15 minutes what previously would have taken four hours of argument, and still not been agreed!” So, real listening is a key skill in transforming conflicts. Interconnectedness is the longing to nurture and protect our planet and her resources. The arrogant celebration of ‘man’s conquest of nature’ is being replaced by the realization that we need to respect, safeguard, and help regenerate the planetary life of which we are a part. This is evident in the refusal of millennials... posted on Dec 21 2018 (8,437 reads)

think it’s enough to keep a person afloat. MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] Let’s talk about your last couple of books. Which also are an insight into you at this stage in your life. And then I’d love for you to read some poems. MS. OLIVER: OK. MS. TIPPETT: You have said that you were so captivated. That you were — I don’t know if you’ve said this that way, but it seems to me you’ve kind of written about being so captivated by the world of nature that you were less open to the world of humans. MS. OLIVER: Yes. MS. TIPPETT: And that as you’ve grown older, as you’ve gone through life, what did you say — y... posted on Jan 18 2019 (46,008 reads)

And she wept and wept, all in the container of the community, in the presence of witnesses, along side of others deep in the shedding of their grief. When it was over, she shone like a star and she realized how wrong the stories were about these pieces of who she is. Grief is a powerful solvent, capable of softening the hardest of places in our hearts. To truly weep for ourselves and those places of shame, invites the first soothing waters of healing. Grieving, by its very nature, confirms worth. I am worth crying over: My losses matter. I can still feel the grace that came when I truly allowed myself to grieve all my losses connected to a life filled with shame. Pesha ... posted on Oct 22 2023 (49,375 reads)

The problem with these secondary satisfactions is that we can never get enough of them. We always want more. But once we find our primary satisfactions, we don’t want much else. Though primary satisfactions are rare in our culture, we do experience them. We can remember what that felt like and let our longing for that state become our compass, telling us what direction we need to go to get back to those satisfactions. We can find them through our friendships, by spending time in nature, by risking being vulnerable with someone we trust. McKee: A minute ago you spoke of the “soul.” How do you define that word? Weller: I don’t use soul&nbs... posted on Feb 26 2019 (61,611 reads)

of building peace? We need all dimensions of the c’s in Ceeds of Peace – “courage without compassion is dangerous. Lots of compassion without critical thinking, then you don’t take compassion to take good work in the world. Central part of our message is you have to develop multiple arenas of self. But umbrella ceed is connection.” Maya’s organization tries to encourage people on how they can be more connected to self, others, sense of purpose, and to nature, and to transform opportunities to build real sense of connection. “For example, you don’t just have to meditate in isolation. Instead of 2 hours zazen, how can you connect to br... posted on Feb 24 2019 (5,863 reads)

of her heart-wrenching series, “Thoughts in Passing.”  “In making this work I came to observe a profound paradox: in talking with me about dying, these people taught me how to live more meaningfully and more intensely,” she writes in a statement on her website. “I found that, for most people, what mattered was how they had participated in the world and what they had created — whether that was through connection with their children, community, work or nature. Though I spoke with people from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, nobody wished they had made more money, worked harder or bought more things.” The works in “Thoughts ... posted on Apr 9 2019 (13,119 reads)

from The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2013 by Charles Eisenstein. Reprinted by permission of publisher. A year or two ago a young man confronted me at a talk in Florida. I’d been describing my view that the paradigm of urgency, heroic efforts, and struggle may itself be part of the problem; that it comes from the same place of scarcity and domination as the conquest of nature; that coming from that place, we might blindly create more of the same. Instead, I suggested, we might try slowing down, perhaps even doing nothing sometimes. Instead of holding ourselves to a high... posted on Mar 28 2019 (9,613 reads)

in my face.  Hello, you who made the morning  and spread it over the fields  and into the faces of the tulips  and the nodding morning glories,  and into the windows of, even, the  miserable and the crotchety. For those of us who read her like a daily liturgy, her name is synonymous with other such essential words: mystery, wild, awe, terror, devotion, gratitude, grace. All of them come alive in her simple poems, that seem to rise from the crossroad of nature and spirituality, brimming with good questions. Since Whitman and Thoreau, no one had made the grass and the sky speak so eloquently, as ambassadors to the embodied sacred. Few were ... posted on Mar 24 2019 (24,518 reads)

violated. Warrantless raids on Greyhound buses within 100 miles of the border (an area referred to by some as the “Constitution-free zone”) are clear violations of human rights. These violations are not due to the current state of politics; they are the symptom of blatant racism in the United States and a system that denigrates and abuses people least able to defend themselves. It is not surprising that some of the mechanisms that drive modern American racism are political in nature. Human beings are predisposed to dislike and distrust individuals that do not conform to the norms of their social group (Mountz, Allison). Some politicians appeal to this suspicion and wrongly... posted on Jul 22 2021 (28,277 reads)

FILM BECOMES THE FIRE In 2017, we released our labor of love film, TeachMeToBeWILD: A Story of Hurt Children and their Animal Healers. This film is a universal healing story that brings together many interconnected elements: children, animals, nature, silence and the power of safe, non-judgemental listening spaces. One of our greatest inspirations to make the film was witnessing how Steve Karlin and John Malloy do not teach the children—rather, they create a “safe space” where the children  learn experientially. As we began screening the film in schools, juvenile detention centers, community groups and spiritual institutions, we experienced ... posted on Mar 20 2019 (8,423 reads)

have discovered. As a result, a certain kind of artwork has been emerging because of technological advances and a discerning eye. In a winning combination of science and art, what is observed microscopically can be magnified into large images that defy a viewer's guess as to what they might be. To me, they register as abstract paintings or textile designs. In fact, there are artists using such images to create their own work in these mediums. While the subjects have been aspects of nature, for the most part, imagine what would occur if you suddenly zoomed in on all those things you have lying around your house and studio or rusting outside. What new art might be inspired by such... posted on Jul 10 2019 (7,078 reads)

not approve of me using the present tense in this essay, I think, or what she termed “focused narrative tense”, but I would argue that in this case, the fixed bright beam is necessary. This is about the work. I know what I’m doing, Ursula. You taught me well. To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It’s worth it.– Steering the Craft Yes. * To nature lovers, pay attention. Matthew Keely over at Tor muses that if circumstances were different, she may have been known as one of the best nature writers. All my life I knew th... posted on Apr 30 2019 (6,913 reads)

and his work are the focus of a documentary, Griefwalker, directed by Tim Wilson and released in 2008. In it, we see Jenkinson in teaching sessions with doctors and nurses, in counseling sessions with dying people and their families, and in meditative and often frank exchanges with the film’s director. We glimpse his life on the land as a farmer, fur trapper, and canoe-builder—attempts to live simply and in harmony with the seasons and other demands of nature. Refusal to live within these demands is part of what makes death so difficult for contemporary Westerners; we have no experience with it. Contrary to everything we hear from those around ... posted on Apr 26 2019 (21,443 reads)

to earth. Without blackboards or chalk we were shown the passage of the seasons and the inter-connectedness of birds, seeds, insects, bark, fruit, worms and soil. The excitement of feeding mulberry leaves to silk worms kept in shoe boxes exposed our fertile minds to a riveting life cycle. These first pets plumped corpulently into caterpillars as they munched towards their grand finale spinning gossamer threads into soft creamy cocoons. This miniature cardboard diorama showcased close-up nature’s ingenious design. In summer the first mulberry fruit would bud, tight fisted in delicate shades of pink. We’d watch and wait impatiently until they puckered fat and sweet and b... posted on May 5 2019 (7,172 reads)