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, 2975 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, 9167 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, 2563 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, 2443 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, 6142 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

Beings Seen and Unseen
"In this wide-ranging conversation, Amitav Ghosh talks about his latest book, "The Nutmeg's Curse," that explores our shared past, the root causes of climate change, and how climate change is intimately linked to colonialism, genocide, and structures of organized violence. He calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining: decentering human narratives and re-cente... posted on Jan 10, 3575 reads

On Generosity
"Twice this week I was rendered speechless by the power of unexpected generosity. The first was an actual gift from someone I barely knew, and the second was a story of survival that took such courage to write that I experienced it as a gift. The gift was brought by one of my students, from her mother who I only met once. It was her mother's way of saying thank you to me for loving her daughter so... posted on Feb 2, 4164 reads

On Death and Love
"I met Death in my early twenties. I had already lost loved ones before this time. A friend at school was taken by leukemia in a breathtaking six weeks one strange, hot summer. My grandfather, Eric, and my uncle, Tim, both died before their time. But none of us truly meets Death until we are ready to understand what it means. My first meeting came while sitting in a recording studio with a Holocau... posted on Jan 24, 4913 reads

His Back Pocket & Other Poems
Mick Cochrane is a professor of English and a longtime teller of stories. His published works include novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. His work is compelling, candid, and cuts straight to the heart of what it means to be human, what it means to experience love, loss, limitation, and transcendence. Here is a selection of three of his poems.... posted on Jan 27, 5218 reads

The Cloud Appreciation Society
"Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society (CAS), which aims to foster understanding and appreciation of clouds, and has over 50,000 members worldwide from 120 different countries. He has also written several books, among them The Cloudspotter's Guide, The Cloud Collector's Handbook and, most recently, A Cloud A Day." In this interview he discusses his fascination with c... posted on Feb 7, 3150 reads

Robert Lax: A Life Slowly Lived
"Robert Lax was an American writer and poet who developed a unique style of abstract poetry, described by Jack Kerouac as 'one of the great original voices of our time'. He was also a contemplative who, outside of a formal monastic context, adopted a lifestyle based upon simplicity and prayer which was an inspiration to his many friends and visitors. Thomas Merton, his closest friend, immortalised... posted on Feb 14, 6483 reads

We All Have a Brush
"Kazuaki Tanahashi is a Japanese calligrapher, translator of the Zen master Eihei Dogen's Shobogenzo (The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), and a deeply committed peace worker, who is active in the United States. Known also more simply as Kaz, he approaches all of his work with both thoughtfulness and fluid spontaneity. His methods, emphasizing the inherent power of each moment, and of every breat... posted on Jun 26, 1765 reads

Ukraine's Kseniya Simonova: Weaving Stories with Light & Sand
In 2009, 24-year-old Kseniya Simonova stunned judges and audience alike on "Ukraine's Got Talent", by creating mesmerizing pictures on an illuminated sand table. The series of haunting images that bloomed beneath her swift-moving fingers depicted Germany's invasion of Ukraine during World War II, and its impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. Today, as the world prays for the safety and well-be... posted on Feb 25, 18236 reads

Bending the Arc
"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." Paul Farmer, the renowned Harvard physician and medical anthropologist, died this week at age 62. While the world mourns the loss of this towering figure in global health, it recollects his incandescent legacy of profound solidarity, fierce commitment and catalytic friendships across borders in delivering high-... posted on Feb 26, 2089 reads

To Spring from the Hand
At age 4 Paulus Berensohn asked his parents for dance lessons. "Boys in our family don't dance," was their response. That didn't deter him. When his mother complained to a friend about his persistence, her friend exclaimed, "But Edith, to dance is to spring from the hand of God!" Berensohn would go on to study dance at Juilliard, but his life took another unexpected turn when he witnessed Karen Ka... posted on Apr 12, 12519 reads

When Love Breaks Your Heart
When science journalist Florence William's husband of 25 years unexpectedly asked for a divorce, William found herself feeling dazed and ill. ""Physically, I felt like my body had been plugged into a faulty electrical socket," she writes. "In addition to weight loss, I'd stopped sleeping. I was getting sick: My pancreas wasn't working right. It was hard to think straight."To help understand what w... posted on Apr 13, 7826 reads

The Magnitude of All Things
Earth is our mother and when she suffers, we all suffer. Jennifer Abbott's climate change documentary "The Magnitude of All Things" helps us to see grief on a personal and global scale. When her sister died from cancer, Abbott's sorrow opened her up to the grief that is being experienced on a global level by people who are already losing their homes and lives due to climate change. The film is a r... posted on Apr 27, 2119 reads

Small Kindnesses
"Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection," is an anthology that includes poems by Ross Gay, Marie Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye and many others. The poems within it urge readers in these polarized times to "move past the negativity that often fills the airwaves, and to embrace the ordinary moments of kindness and connection that fill our days." What follows is one of the poems from this coll... posted on May 4, 3287 reads

Beyond Polarity
"This animated video offers hope for creating together the world that honors our collective needs by building on what unifies us. To make personal change that scales up to social change requires meeting our most important needs and recognizing that people are different. These differences can add color and richness to life and they can also be polarizing. Knowing another person's needs is a startin... posted on May 13, 1851 reads

Navigating the Mysteries
"The correct response to uncertainty is mythmaking. It always was. Not punditry, allegory, or mandate, but mythmaking. The creation of stories. We are tuned to do so, right down to our bones. The bewilderment, vivacity, and downright slog of life requires it. And such emerging art forms are not to cure or even resolve uncertainty but to deepen into it. There's no solving uncertainty. Mythmaking is... posted on May 15, 2299 reads

Things to Look Forward To
In 2020 when the pandemic tore across our globe, "She [children's bookmaker, Sophie Blackall] coped the way all artists cope, complained the way all makers complain: by making something of beauty and substance, something that begins as a quickening of self-salvation in ones own heart and ripples out to touch, to salve, maybe even to save others -- which might be both the broadest and the most prec... posted on May 17, 7911 reads

The Sounds of Silence
"When I was a sixteen-year-old naturalist in training, we were instructed to sit in the forest and wait for the return of something called the baseline symphony. The baseline symphony was the music of a landscape at easethe confluence of insect, bird, and animal song, underscored by wind and water. The dynamics of that symphony shifted as day progressed into night. There were brief caesuras, but i... posted on May 20, 2044 reads

Anna Breytenbach: The Animal Communicator
Anna Breytenbach is a professional interspecies communicator and the subject of a documentary titled, 'The Animal Communicator.' Breytenbach's lifework is dedicated to interspecies communication. Over the last couple of decades she has worked with baboons, great white sharks, big cats, and other creatures across multiple continents, astounding people with her capacity to connect with animals in al... posted on May 30, 3077 reads

Black Joy in Pursuit of Racial Justice
"I've been longing to talk about all the ways in which these last couple of years have been so much of a gift for me. And yet I struggle with holding that fact in the same space with all the ways these last couple of years have challenged the very core of who I am as a human being and the way I navigate this world as a Black woman. And yet, in writing my book Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resi... posted on Jun 8, 2782 reads

Listening and the Crisis of Attention
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee talks with biologist and author David G. Haskell about his latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken: a journey through deep time that traces the evolution of sound. Their conversation touches on the legacies of kinship that are present when we listen, and how deep experiences of beauty can serve as a moral guide for the future.... posted on Jun 20, 1747 reads