Processing What Happened at the US Capitol
Resmaa Menakem, national expert on cultural trauma joins the executive director of African American Child Wellness Institute, and 2020 Minnesota Teacher of the year in this powerful in-depth dialog around the violence and chaos that erupted this Wednesday, when a mob that included white supremacists stormed the US Capitol. How did it come to this? And what do these times demand from ordinary citiz... posted on Jan 8, 6232 reads

10 Ways & 50 Questions to Help Strengthen Democracy
Ken Cloke is a world-recognized mediator, dialogue facilitator, conflict resolution systems designer, teacher and more. Given the political polarization, deep divisiveness and unrest rearing its head in the United States, he recently shared a detailed list of 10 actions that can help us transform autocratic, power-based political conflicts into democratic, collaborative efforts. In addition he off... posted on Jan 10, 16425 reads

For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing: A Meditative Poem
The origin story of "For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing" lies in a dream that writer Phyllis Cole-Dai had last year. This remarkable poem was published in the early days of the pandemic that has now claimed over 2 million lives worldwide. Cole-Dai's words have comforted many people through the grief and loss of these challenging times. What follows here is the poem's backstory in her own w... posted on Jan 28, 13449 reads

The Blue Hour: A Celebration of Nature's Rarest Color
"Blue, Rebecca Solnit wrote in one of humanitys most beautiful reflections on our planets primary hue, is the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world, a world of many blues a pioneering 19th-century nomenclature of colors listed eleven kinds of blue, in hues as varied as the color of the flax... posted on Jan 27, 8485 reads

Happiness Is...
In late fall of 2011, after a simple car ride with the windows rolled down, and the music turned up, 17-year-old Elizabeth Buechele posted this update on her social media feed, "Day 1: Happiness is... those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs." Day 1 turned into Day 2, and now more than nine years later, Buechele has gleaned and shared a "Happiness is..." moment from e... posted on Feb 2, 6169 reads

9 Rules for the Woke Birdwatcher
"1.Lower your binoculars. See bird and person in the full context of their being, feathers or skin. We all share the same air, same water, same earth, and same fate in the end. Don't just list and be done." Author J. Drew Lanham shares eight other rules/invitations in this short and powerful piece.... posted on Feb 6, 7416 reads

The Politics of Flower Cultivation
"The tradition of gifting roses for St. Valentine's Day is actually a misguided ritual from an ecology perspective because the roses are actually transported from Kenya, for example. Roses do not grow locally in countries north of the equator during February. Because flowers are not food, we tend to overlook the fact that they are also seasonal products, and we just cannot have it all the time unl... posted on Feb 7, 4530 reads

Happy Men
"Let me set the scene: I walk up to five men skateboarding by the statue in Prospect Park, they are hanging with each other and I approach and I say, 'Hey, I wrote a poem about you, for you, can I read it to you?'" Winter Miller is an award-winning writer. She has a Masters in playwriting from Columbia University, and has written over 70 articles for the New York Times. She shares what happened ne... posted on Feb 11, 10167 reads

The Energy of the Universe is Neutral: James O' Dea
"The central thesis of my book, 'Creative Stress--A Path for Evolving Souls Living Through Personal and Planetary Upheaval', is that the energy of the universe is neutral. It's only in the last hundred years that the word "stress" has come to denote something negative. For the poet, stress is language, for the composer, stress is musical notes. So stress is a neutral concept. It's the pressuring ... posted on Feb 12, 2267 reads

Be A Blessing
"There is a question rolling around even in the most secular of corners: What do religious people and traditions have to teach as we do the work ahead of repairing, renewing, and remaking our societies, our life together? Krista Tippett's conversation with Rabbi Ariel Burger, a student of the late, extraordinary Elie Wiesel, delves into theological and mystical depths that are so much richer and m... posted on Feb 25, 6466 reads

Waiting for the Thaw
"It's about this time in the long stretch of winter that I begin to ache for spring. By March, I tend become a bit dulled to the beauty of winter. Though my prayer and meditation keep my heart open to seeing the passage of time and seasons with appreciative eyes, mostly I just want the cold days to be over. As the earth begins to thaw, we often want the process to hurry up. I long for bright flowe... posted on Mar 25, 13237 reads

Our Nervous Systems in the Time of COVID
"The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing yet many of us feel as exhausted as at any time in the past year. Memory problems; short fuses; fractured productivity; sudden drops into despair. Were at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again. Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isol... posted on Mar 30, 14149 reads

The Voice of the River
In 1973, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepared to open a new dam project, flooding miles of the Stanislaus River Canyon, a beautiful, pristine river valley flowing from the western Sierra Nevada mountains into California's Central Valley. In 1979, Mark Dubois chained himself to a boulder behind the New Melones Dam and threw away the key. "If you guys are going to flood 9 million years of evolu... posted on Apr 22, 2467 reads

The Body's Grace: A Paralyzed Yoga Teacher's Insights
"Matthew Sanford says he's never seen anyone live more deeply in their body -- in all its grace and all its flaws -- without becoming more compassionate toward all of life. He's a renowned teacher of yoga. And he's been paralyzed from the chest down since a car accident in 1978, when he was 13. He teaches yoga to the able-bodied. He also adapts yoga for people with ailments and disabilities, inclu... posted on Apr 27, 0 reads

A Seed of Freedom
Actor Jeremy Irons narrates this landmark film by The Gaia Foundation and the African Biodiversity Network, in collaboration with MELCA Ethiopia, Navdanya International and GRAIN. In it, we learn how our world has gone from a vast bedrock of diversity, created over thousands of years," to genetically modified seeds engineered to withstand pesticides refined with a few changes from explosives and n... posted on May 7, 2200 reads

Learning from Navajo Nation's Generosity in a Pandemic
"Last year, the Irish people raised nearly $2 million dollars for the Navajo and Hopi Nations so they could protect themselves from the pandemic. At the time, the infection rate in the Navajo community -- 2,304 cases per 100,000 was the highest in the country. It was a show of thanks to Native Americans for a $170 gift sent by the Choctaw to the Irish people at the height of the potato famine in ... posted on May 11, 3880 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, 65912 reads

Kolam: Ritual Art that Feeds a Thousand Souls Every Day
Each dawn, millions of Tamil women create intricate, geometric, ritual-art designs called 'kolams,' at the thresholds of their homes, as a tribute to Mother Earth and an offering to Goddess Lakshmi. A Tamil word that means beauty, form, play, disguise or ritual design-- a kolam is anchored in the Hindu belief that householders have a karmic obligation to "feed a thousand souls." By creating the k... posted on May 20, 16832 reads

The Wisdom of Forgetting What You Know
We are so afraid to let go, to just be, to allow the unfolding of this marvelous life without getting in the way. This fear keeps us paralyzed and stuck. And longing for the peace that is possible -- if only we would put down all the efforts we make to know. There is no greater gift you can give yourself than the invitation to enter the world of not knowing. Why? If you are always going to know wh... posted on Jun 7, 61173 reads

Four Stages of Groundedness
"The ground is both a metaphor and a felt sense. As a metaphor, it means to be in touch with reality. As a felt sense, it refers to feeling our center of gravity low in the belly and experiencing a deep silence, stability, and connection with the whole of life. Feeling grounded does not require contact with the earth; it can happen anywhere and anytime -- even when we're flat on our backs in a row... posted on Jun 10, 9598 reads

How to Write Love
"Stranger Care is Sarah Sentilless heartbreaking, heart-expanding account of her relationship with her foster daughter, Coco--although saying that is a bit like saying Walden is a book about a pond. It is, but ponds are just the beginning. It is, and yet, well never look at ponds the same way again. After Stranger Care, Ill never look at mothers the same way again. Or daughters. Or parenting. Or c... posted on Jun 12, 3474 reads

The City Planting a Million Trees in Two Years
As described so eloquently here by the mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, the loss of forest due to the impact of climate change is about much more than the loss of beauty and shade. Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr is leading her city's efforts to make Freetown a tree town by planting one million trees in two years, increasing the vegetation cover by 50%. The goal is to reduce the risk of landslides and fl... posted on Jul 3, 1464 reads

100 Thank Yous
For a year and a half, artist Lori Portka painted her gratitude through individual pieces of art for 100 people who have made a difference in her life. In her effort to truly live a life of gratitude, Lori learned that gratitude grows, and grows, and grows. "The more that I focused on gratitude, the more I was grateful for." This beautiful film captures Lori's motivation and some of the reactions ... posted on Jul 7, 2974 reads

Earning Humility: My Story of Meeting Rollie Grandbois
"It was a bright August morning and I had the shop all to myself. Since my wife and I were staying nearby, we'd driven past the place before on the way to town. To tell the truth, from the look of it, I'd decided it was best avoided. But this morning, I'd decided to go against my snap judgments. Besides, I needed a little break. So as an exercise, I thought I'd go out for a walk and strike up a co... posted on Jul 11, 2690 reads

Practicing the Art of Wonder: Lessons from the Hummingbird
"A Broad-billed Hummingbird hangs for a few seconds, not three feet away. The brilliant sapphire gorget flashes for an instant, and then the tiny bird is gone in a shot, his raspy cry fading like a lost thought into the oaks. I close my eyes and try to feel the impact that the hundreds of hummingbirds I've seen over the past few days have had on my psyche. The swirl of their presence, their diminu... posted on Jul 15, 8114 reads

For Love of Wild Horses
Wildife biologist, Craig Downer's, childhood experience with his trusted horse, Poco, and their many adventures in the wild lands of Nevada, led to a lifetime of passionate advocacy for the protection of wild horses and burros in the Western United States. His is often a lonely struggle between raising consciousness about the long term ecological benefits these animals bring and the forces more co... posted on Jul 29, 1822 reads

Moon Tree
"In 1971, more than four hundred tree seeds were collected and ensconced in an aluminum canister. They were chosen from across the United States: the resinous sweet gum and mud-loving southern loblolly; the northwestern Douglas fir, green and mossy; the sycamore leafing over mid-western flood plains; and the coastal redwood, stretching along the sandy loam of the Pacific. For all the preparations ... posted on Aug 1, 3813 reads

On the Road with Thomas Merton
"In May 1968, Christian mystic Thomas Merton undertook a pilgrimage to the American West. Fifty years later, filmmaker Jeremy Seifert and writer Fred Bahnson set out to follow Mertons path, retracing the monks journey across the landscape. Amid stunning backdrops of ocean, redwood, and canyon, the film features the faces and voices of people Merton encountered. The essay offers a more intimate med... posted on Aug 7, 9429 reads

The Leadership Imperative
"Oren Lyons, seventy-six, is a wisdom carrier, one of the bearers of a variety of human tradition that cant easily be reduced to a couple of sentences. One reason he and the tradition for which he is a spokesperson isn't more widely known is that he doesn't actively seek forums from which to speak. If someone asks him, however, about the principles behind the particular Native American tradition... posted on Aug 8, 4652 reads

Catching Sight of Yourself
"How things seem is not how things are. For most of us, most of the time, it seems as though the self is an enduring and unified entity, an essence, a unique identity: the recipient of wave-upon-wave of perceptions, and decision-maker-in-chief about what to do next. We sense, we think, we act. This is how things seem. How things are is very different. The story emerging from a rich blend of philos... posted on Aug 14, 5120 reads

A Modest Purchase
"Today I went down to the local gravestone vendor to see if I might pick up some pieces of broken stone. Why wouldn't scraps accumulate from flaws or mishaps in the ordinary course of cutting and dressing memorial stones? It seemed reasonable to think I'd be able to pick up some nice pieces of marble and granite for next to nothing from such discards. And since Mountain View Cemetery, over a hundr... posted on Aug 22, 3185 reads

What Slime Knows
"Here in this little patch of mulch in my yard is a creature that begins life as a microscopic amoeba and ends it as a vibrant splotch that produces spores, and for all the time in between, it is a single cell that can grow as large as a bath mat, has no brain, no sense of sight or smell, but can solve mazes, learn patterns, keep time, and pass down the wisdom of generations." Author Lacy M. Johns... posted on Aug 28, 3499 reads

The Dancing Doctor
On a chilly morning in November, 2013, Deborah Cohan, MD, a clinical professor and program director at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, walked into an operating suite, her curly hair tucked under a cap, not to perform surgery but to undergo a double mastectomy for breast cancer. Within minutes, the sterile room began to enliven with R&B drumbeats, and the entire surgi... posted on Sep 1, 9166 reads

Re-inhabiting the World
"The plants that grow out of pavements have a history longer than our own. Birds communicate their news in songs and calls. Insects tunnel their way through the earth. The clouds draw the geography of the sky and the stars speak the language of light. We are surrounded by a living and vibrant universe that we barely know, and that we rarely feel as our own." In the following excerpt Fabiana Fondev... posted on Sep 5, 4796 reads

Death Doulas Provide End of Life Aid
"The word 'doula' comes from the Greek word meaning "woman who serves," though most people associate it with someone who helps during birth to usher in life. In recent years, however, more people have come to recognize the need for as much assistance at the end of life as the start, part of the so-called death positivity movement that is gaining momentum in the United States and other countries. T... posted on Sep 19, 7958 reads

Inside the Fight to Save an Ancient Forest
The ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest are home to giant old-growth trees, and many secrets, which science is just beginning to understand. These forests are our best climate change allies, storing huge amounts of carbon and retaining water, protecting communities from droughts, floods, and wildfires. But these forests are at risk of disappearing. In British Columbia on First Nations territo... posted on Sep 17, 1835 reads

Place, Personhood & the Hippocampus
"'Place and a mind may interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered,' the Scottish mountaineer and poet Nan Shepherd wrote in her lyrical love letter to her native Highlands, echoing an ancient intuition about how our formative physical landscapes shape our landscapes of thought and feeling. The word 'genius' in the modern sense, after all, originates in the Latin phrase genius loci -- 'the s... posted on Sep 26, 4299 reads

Comparative Suffering & Compassion
Measuring one's suffering against that experienced by others is not an unusual tendency. The disproportionate degree of loss we have witnessed over the past year has left many struggling to make sense of where they fit into the whos-got-it-worse-hierarchy. When the world as we know it is undergoing tremendous and tumultuous shifts, how do we frame our blue days and broken hearts? In this article, ... posted on Sep 27, 4614 reads

The Spirit of Yes
"When was the last time you were completely and joyfully astonished? What was your last amazing surprise? How often do you feel filled to the brim with "yes?" In the midst of a growing tide of chaos and anxiety, many of us retreat into the comfort of predictability. Routines turn into ruts. The miracles of our days pass by un-cherished. Surprise rarely pays us a call. Or if it does, we don't bothe... posted on Oct 13, 7666 reads

Beauty & Science: A Conversation with Edward Johnson
Dr. Edward Johnson, a distinguished research scientist, died earlier in 2021. His fundamental work in molecular cell biology opened new fields of study, contributed to the work of two Nobel laureates and has been important in the understanding and treatment of a range of diseases and neurologic disorders. On the occasion of a weeks getaway in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, in an impromptu conversation... posted on Oct 20, 1633 reads

Old Growth: The Best Writing About Trees
To celebrate the release of "Old Growth," -- an anthology released by Orion Magazine-- of essays and poems about the lives of trees, Robin Wall Kimmerer held a conversation with Robert Macfarlane and David Haskell. The trio of celebrated nature writers discussed the legacy of trees in deep time, that they each detail in their most recent books, Braiding Sweetgrass, Underland, and The Song of Trees... posted on Oct 23, 4637 reads

Making Children's Books Amid Loss
Even as artist and celebrated children's book author Nancy Carlson coped with her husband and best friend's devastating degenerative disease, and navigated bankruptcy, this resilient author continued to produce her captivating children's books. More about her story of courage and creativity here.... posted on Oct 26, 2562 reads

Ecosystems & the Practice of Love
"One of the things that I have tried to do in my work is to understand our reality as a 'commons' -- to see the whole of reality as a shared process of mutual transformation and productivity. This term '"commons" has been coined to express the idea of shared culture and resources being accessible to all members of a community. I use the term because being alive means that we are always participati... posted on Nov 1, 2442 reads

Solitude: The Seedbed of Self-Discovery
"In her Journal of a Solitude (public library), May Sarton records and reflects on her interior life in the course of one year, her sixtieth, with remarkable candor and courage. Out of these twelve private months arises the eternity of the human experience with its varied universal capacities for astonishment and sorrow, hollowing despair and creative vitality."... posted on Nov 4, 5169 reads

Presto
"Early on there was no word for 'groundhog.' Neither were there groundhogs, or grandmothers, or event coordinators. There were events but they were uncoordinated like the Tunguska Event. There was nothing, but no word for it. In some ways it must have been nice, all that wordlessness, because sometimes now you meet somebody and all you can think is, Please stop talking. Our planet has become so mu... posted on Nov 17, 2339 reads

The Nap Ministry: Rest as Resistance
"I think all of these things are working to get us back to our full selves and back to who we are: divine human beings. That's one of the central ideas of the Nap Ministry: you are not a machine, you are a divine human being. If you knew your divinity, you would not be grinding. You would not allow for grind culture. You wouldn't allow yourself to miss sleep. If you saw yourself deeply as who you ... posted on Dec 1, 3905 reads

Tell Them What We Have Learned Here...
"There has been an emerging awareness of a body of work that arose during the Second World War. Fragments of it have been known for some years to disparate groups of academics and their students, but it is as if now, in the 21st century, these writings are forming themselves into a body, steadily enjoining us to give them our attention. The group has become known as the 'Death Cell Philosophers' a... posted on Dec 7, 3293 reads

How Much Is Enough?
"Over the next 20 years, a minimum of $35 trillion, and up to $70 trillion, in wealth will transfer from the post-World War II generation to the next younger generation. Most of that wealth will flow in the upper canopy of the wealth forest, between family members in the world's wealthiest 0.1%...But some beneficiaries of this system are working to disrupt it, with the help of financial advisers w... posted on Apr 26, 4270 reads

Atlas of the Heart
"Researcher, academic and best-selling author Brene Brown has spent the last two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy. Her TEDx talk, "the power of vulnerability", is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with more than 50 million views.In her sixth and newest book, Atlas of the Heart, she takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that ... posted on Dec 26, 6141 reads

Desmond Tutu: Father of South Africa's Rainbow Nation
"Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu has died at the age of 90. Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as 'The Arch.' When South Africans woke up on the morning of 7 April, 2017 to protest against then President Jacob Zuma's removal of the respected Finance... posted on Jan 7, 3323 reads