there a secret to happiness? Is happiness spending time with loved ones, or spending time alone in nature? Is it losing yourself as you dance to music, or finding yourself while quietly meditating? The secret to happiness is actually all of these things and more, and it varies from country to country and culture to culture. According to the annual World Happiness Report, Norway is the happiest country, scoring highly in its approach to caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance. Meanwhile, the Happy Planet Index ranks Costa Rica as the happiest country on Earth. While opposites when it comes to climate, the two ... posted on Feb 21 2018 (20,983 reads)

a small town in the Italian Alps said “Yes!” to a pesticide-free future. The following excerpt is adapted from A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved Its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher. For hundreds of years, the people of Mals — a tiny village in the South Tyrol province of northern Italy — had cherished their traditional foodways and kept their local agriculture organic. Yet the town is located high up in the Alps, and the conventional apple producers, heavily dependent on pesticides, were steadily overtaking the valley below. Aid... posted on Mar 2 2018 (13,687 reads)

   “We can’t use these. They look like heirlooms!” Gina, a guest at my holiday gathering, holds up one of the elaborately embroidered napkins from the buffet table. “Where’d you get them?”     “Out of a dumpster. The tablecloth and those candleholders were in there, too.”     “You can’t be serious! Why would they be in a dumpster?” The shock in her voice carried across the room, and others looked up.     It’s common that women ask where something came from, especially if it’s an attractive article of clothing or new addition to the house. Bu... posted on Apr 1 2018 (1,170 reads)

We don’t have the capacity to kill just that part of a person who committed a terrible crime who then deserves punishment. We kill all these other things. We kill this person who’s capable of care-giving, this person who’s capable of generosity and compassion, who might be a father, a brother, a son or a daughter, a friend, who might be all of these things that every human being strives to be. And that’s why it becomes a sentence that is disproportionate by its very nature. That made me see how unacceptable the death penalty is. It made me more burdened when people couldn’t get stays of execution ‘cause I realised what a tragedy that was. But in ma... posted on Mar 27 2018 (7,697 reads)

is we all know that “the boat is leaking and the captain lied” as Leonard Cohen once sang; we know the statistics about climate change and acidified oceans and decapitated mountains. The news that the numbers of kittiwakes on St Kilda have plummeted or that the ancient trees of Sheffield have been felled pains us. We don’t numb out that pain, nor do we indulge it in the see-saw of hope and despair. We know the Earth is not an abstract concept of environment or ‘nature’ and requires a very different relationship, one that wrests the material of life out of the hands of the ‘quants’ and economists and gives it due respect. The question we fac... posted on May 22 2018 (5,415 reads)

of a Jeannette Winterson or a Tolkien. But myth itself is connected to time and space. It has to pass through many mouths and many communities, until it takes on the kind of weight that means it’s authentically a myth. So my challenge for anybody is to regard themselves as a kind of a mythological scholar in training. And to go out and to look through the old anthologies, get a library card, and try and collect these stories that are waiting to say something vital about the nature of our times. And the second part of that challenge, the most crucial part of the research, will be your individual expression of that story. It doesn’t have to be an oral storytelli... posted on May 13 2018 (7,526 reads)

these two together synergistically. We connect more with the heart, extending the circles of compassion more widely to include responsibility to others. Eight Ways of Cultivating Heartfulness This book is organized around a way of being and living that is called heartfulness. In my grandmother’s teachings and in my life stories I identify eight principles for cultivating heartful living. These are learned from observing life circumstances, practicing self-reflection, studying human nature, practicing mindfulness, counseling, teaching, parenting, and partnering. There is considerable overlap in the principles, which form the core of the chapters in this book, and there is nothing... posted on Mar 8 2018 (13,923 reads)

coherence with the rest of life. My letters, phone calls, and modest support of particular environmental organizations will continue, but the most intimate, meaning-saturated action I take on behalf the wild Earth is to engage as if stone, lizard, yucca, lichen, and cloud are intelligent, ensouled beings, with their own longings, and as if the land and creatures are sacred presences and as if acknowledgement of their subjectivity and nobility encourages them to reveal more of their animate nature. I know for sure that I come more alive with such enactments, shiver with a sense of participating with sentient presences, and with life’s great intelligence. In our time of disturban... posted on Mar 15 2018 (19,101 reads)

time to celebrate crooked things. We often seek perfection but will we ever get it all straight? I don’t think so. Maybe we once believed that “straight is the gate and narrow is the way” and went in search of it. But by now most of us are pretty sure we’re not going to find it. And even if we did manage to squeeze through that narrow aperture from time to time, didn’t our pathbecome pretty crooked from then on? How often do we stray from our intention out of curiosity or stupor or to smell the roses! Nature moves in curves and curlicues. Perhaps that’s why I love the many crooked trees even more than the few arrow-straight ones. They look li... posted on Apr 16 2018 (10,561 reads)

that help young people remember they can do anything.”  From Kehkashan's efforts for environmental sustainability to Fahima's work with child homelessness, these children's stories shine a beacon of guiding light for other children seeking to become the change they want to see in the world. For more, visit the Together For Good campaign hub. Kehkashan From a young age, Kehkashan Basu (2016 Peace Prize winner from United Arab Emirates) felt connected to nature, planting her first tree at 8, going on to become the United Nations Environmental Coordinator for Children and Youth, and start (at 12) her own organization, Green Hope, to plant trees, clean ... posted on Apr 3 2018 (8,724 reads)

remodeling itself as you learn from your experiences. When you repeatedly stimulate a “circuit” in the brain, you strengthen it. The brain operates so rapidly—with neurons routinely firing 5-50 times a second—that you can grow resilience and well-being many times a day, taking a minute or less each time. To have beneficial experiences in the first place, it helps to be alert to the good facts around you—for example, fortunate circumstances, the beauty of nature, tasks you are completing, people who care about you, or your own talents and skills. You can even find the good in hard times, such as seeing the kindness of others as you go through a loss. ... posted on Apr 24 2018 (26,441 reads)

EASTERN CHEROKEE TRADITIONS RESTORED IN THE MOUNTAINS OF VERMONT FROM THE TRAIL OF TEARS TO THE LEGALIZED OPPRESSION OF THEIR SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, THE EASTERN CHEROKEE PEOPLE HAVE A HISTORY FILLED WITH VIOLENCE AND PAIN. THIS, HOWEVER, IS A STORY OF RESILIENCE, TRUTH-TELLING, SANCTUARY, AND SERVICE. Nestled in a valley within the Green Mountains of Vermont is a place called Odali Utugi—The Sunray Peace Village. Odali Utugi means Hope Mountain. On this beautiful 27-acre site, Sunray Meditation Society has, since 1987, been creating a Peace Village for today’s world, modeled after the Cherokee Peace Villages of the last century. It is a place where people of a... posted on May 31 2018 (9,537 reads)

incredible how much arises from it. The neurons themselves are immensely beautiful. Their shapes are a testament to how chaos rules our environment. You see the shapes of neurons in tree branches, lightning bolts, and cracks in the pavement. It’s often times the shape that you get when you have some force that’s causing a line to be elongated. It’s energy finding the path of least resistance. That’s wonderful, the ability to see the neurons displayed over and over in nature. It’s incredible. You see neural shapes in galactic super clusters; thousands of galaxies oriented within the universe. You’re just kind of scratching your head, asking what does... posted on May 7 2018 (11,690 reads)

is possible for them. So they are both speaking into existence their own narrative and their own future, and then also actively participating in changing the landscape of who can come after them. And I think that’s revolutionary. And it makes me think of the word “flux,” which you have on your website, with the definition: “the action or process of flowing and continuous change.” We are always changing and the world is always changing, it’s up to us and nature what that change looks like. I wonder how you think of yourself and your poetry in relation to that word “flux.” Yeah, I mean, man, if we’re not in continuous change, like,... posted on Jun 17 2018 (10,702 reads)

mean. That 1.618 is in your DNA, in galaxies, in trees, and in beauty. Whenever you see something a human has made that is absolutely gorgeous, you can probably find that equation in that thing because we are attuned to seeing and creating that beauty. The cover of a book I did just a few years ago is a gorgeous photograph of a cut nautilus shell, which is a perfect expression of that mathematical formula. So for me that was powerful proof that there is order. I’m not sure what the nature of that order is, but it is sacred. It's everywhere, and we didn't put it there.  I wrote something a long time ago called “Clergy,” in which I said that my clergy a... posted on May 10 2018 (11,715 reads)

sense me, ready to break into being at your touch? But gradually over time, as the mind relaxed, capacities bred by my earlier Christian experience resurfaced and infused my understanding of Buddhism. The presence that I became aware of, around and within me, is apprehended through an act of rapt, wordless attention, receptive and probing. And what the presence seems to be is the web itself, the thrumming relationality of all things. Rilke’s recognition of the reciprocal nature of our relationship with God, and even with life, is itself a poetic and profoundly personal complement to the Buddha’s central doctrine of dependent co-arising. Asserting the radical int... posted on Jun 25 2018 (10,711 reads)

2016, the Harvard biologist emeritus and naturalist E.O. Wilson (TED Talk: Advice to a young scientist) published Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, in which he proposes that half the earth’s surface be designated and protected as conservation land. Just since 1970, human beings have destroyed more than 30 percent of forests and the marine ecosystem, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. The destruction has been an unintended consequence of population growth, the desire for increased material wealth and comfort, and the associated need for more energy. It’s also been driven by the inexorable imperative of capitalism and the powerful desir... posted on May 20 2018 (135,030 reads)

Like everyone, I have several circles of support. For me these include (in no particular order): my family, especially my husband and my brother; fellow writers and poetry teachers; fellow Amirah volunteers; friends-in-faith; and, my amazing therapist. When I was teaching the survivors I made sure to regularly engage with these folks. I kept up dates with my husband. Every week I called my friend-in-faith, Lenka, who lives in California. I also made time to take my kids out to do activities in nature so we could laugh together and relax. These were conscious moments of connection. When we’re connected to others and present to others, light find us and enters us. When we let light in, ... posted on Jun 30 2018 (12,614 reads)

from your old life to a new life by a being far larger than yourself, you start to panic. You start crawling up the sides of your box. You wish you never asked for more. You contemplate breaking out of the plan you made for yourself and for a better life. You consider going back to the mindless job you hate, returning to that lover who pays the bills and steps on your heart, taking that drink or pill instead of continuing to make amends and stay sober. Miracles are terrifying. By their very nature, miracles are solutions to a problem that you and the world cannot provide. And miracles, like love itself, can never be forced upon us. Miracles require our participation to germinate and g... posted on Jul 25 2018 (13,173 reads)

toward them. Letters to a Young Poet — which also gave us Rilke on what it really means to love, the life-expanding value of uncertainty, and why we read — remains one of the most beautiful, profound, and timeless works ever composed. Complement this particular portion with Rachel Carson on writing and the loneliness of creative work and Virginia Woolf on the relationship between loneliness and creativity, then revisit Rilke on the nature of creativity. ... posted on Jul 8 2018 (11,580 reads)