How Place Can Connect Us to Gratitude
"Certain places can evoke a profound experience of gratitude for us. Have you ever noticed how your favorite bakery, or neighborhood park, or familiar church, or your own living room, can bring you profound gratitude that you feel in your body?...Place connects us to gratitude, and gratitude connects us to place. And this gratitude also finds its place in our bodies. As we find gratitude in a sens... posted on Dec 7, 6627 reads

Do You Remember Your Song
"When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose. Then the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud."... posted on Dec 16, 12195 reads

What Does the Earth Ask of Us?
Robin Wall Kimmerer, scientist, professor of environmental botany, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, and spellbinding storyteller, helps us to hear what the earth is asking of us. With a calm and soothing voice that belies the urgency of her message, she brings us to an awareness that we are called to be living expressions of gratitude for all that the earth has given us, and to give our gifts in ret... posted on Dec 20, 2325 reads

Speaking of Nature
"We have a special grammar for personhood. We would never say of our late neighbor, "It is buried in Oakwood Cemetery." Such language would be deeply disrespectful and would rob him of his humanity. We use instead a special grammar for humans: we distinguish them with the use of he or she, a grammar of personhood for both living and dead Homo sapiens. Yet we say of the oriole warbling comfort to m... posted on Jan 19, 6102 reads

Orion's 25 Most-Read Articles of the Decade
"From 2010 to the present, Orion Magazine has produced over fifty issues full of personal essays and science reporting, poetry and book reviews, photography and art, all responding to the most pressing issues facing the planet. Here are the 25 most-read Orion articles published within the last decade."... posted on Jan 11, 11690 reads

Reflection
Brandur Patursson is an artist from the Faroe Islands who works with light in the creation of his glass and metal sculptures. After losing 70% of the sight in one eye he started understanding what it is to really see. He realized that we see with our eyes, but how we perceive things is what truly gives them meaning in our lives. If we can literally see and reflect on someone's else's feelings inst... posted on Jan 6, 2955 reads

One Love
At five minutes to midnight on June 14, 2018, about 800 people waited to enter Jerusalem's Tower of David Museum. Jews, Muslims and Christians, young and old, most of them strangers to one another, they were forgoing a night's sleep for the chance to sing Bob Marley's "One Love" in three languages and three-part harmony as a show of unity from Israel.... posted on Jan 8, 10572 reads

Finding Chika
Renowned author Mitch Albom introduces us to a story of love, a story about the making of a family through love. He shows us that the rules of what a family should look like don't matter as long as there is love bringing them together. He introduces us to Chika, who became the much beloved daughter of he and his wife Janine after Chika's mother was killed in the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Chika'... posted on Jan 15, 2074 reads

Overcoming the Brain's Negativity Bias
Why are we waylaid by criticism or unable to get past a minor snub from our best friend? Thats our negativity bias. We humans have a propensity to give more weight in our minds to things that go wrong than to things that go rightso much so that just one negative event can hijack our minds in ways that can be detrimental to our work, relationships, health, and happiness. Overcoming our negativity b... posted on Jan 17, 15921 reads

Meaning and the Song of the Soul
"Meaning is what calls from the depths of the soul.
It is the song that sings us into life. Whether we have a meaningful life depends upon whether we can hear this song, this primal music of the sacred. The sacred is not something primarily religious or even spiritual. It is not a quality we need to learn or to develop. It belongs to the primary nature of all that is. When our ancestors kne... posted on Jan 31, 8288 reads

Jane Rosen: Stay Here. Tell My Story.
"When I arrived from New York and got planted on this horse ranch where I was renting a house, I was supposed to go back to New York, which is my home. I couldnt quite make up my mind what I wanted to do. Then one day I was walking and something called me. I looked up and there was a red-tailed hawk circling over my head. I heard a voice say, clear as day, 'Stay here. Tell my story.'" Artist Jane ... posted on Feb 18, 2723 reads

Refugee Docents Bring a Global Museum to Life
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology -- known as The Penn Museum -- has hired refugees and immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Central America as part of their "Global Guides" program. More in this story by NPR.... posted on Feb 22, 2701 reads

Accepting What Is
"When the word acceptance enters a room, but is never far behind. But what about suffering and injustice? What about the pursuit of our personal goals? What about our individual and collective potential? As soon as the idea of acceptance surfaces, we seem to, ironically, brace ourselves against it as though it will render us incapable of anything other than complacency and apathy." This thoughtful... posted on Feb 25, 13466 reads

The One Most Important Thing You Can Do Right Now
"The point to all the closings and all the cancellations is this -- to manage the healthcare system so that it can respond to those who are vulnerable to die from COVID-19, and to shorten the arc of the pandemics duration. In effect it is to keep our bodies from being unwitting vehicles for the virus to jump from doorknob to doorknob, credit card to credit card. The more we lessen our physical sco... posted on Mar 17, 30134 reads

From What Is to What If
"In 'How Did We Do That? The Possibility of Rapid Transition', Andrew Simms and Peter Newell tell the story of Iceland's 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption, which sent fine dust into the sky that spread for thousands of miles and grounded most of the world's planes. Then what happened? People adapted. Quickly. Supermarkets replaced air-freighted goods with local alternatives. People discovered other, ... posted on Mar 19, 10815 reads

Every Act a Ceremony
"In a ceremony, one attends fully to the task at hand, performing each action just as it should be. A ceremony is therefore a practice for all of life, a practice in doing everything just as it should be done. An earnest ceremonial practice is like a magnet that aligns more and more of life to its field; it is a prayer that asks, "May everything I do be a ceremony. May I do everything with full at... posted on Apr 25, 8667 reads

Connected
Singer songwriter Luke Dick and a talented group of young people connect in this short video to share a message of hope. With youthful enthusiasm the young conductor leads her small group through the song, enabling us to "hear that cosmic spark" of connection. As the drums, guitar, violin, keyboard and voices all combine in joyful music, we are reminded that we are all connected with all that is, ... posted on Mar 20, 3085 reads

Erich Fromm: The Antidote to Helplessness and Disorientation
"To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness -- a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a ... posted on Mar 30, 15042 reads

The Lost Gift
Writing in his journal, nine year old Abeer speaks of his frustrations with having to always prove himself at school and at home, never being allowed to be himself. His heartfelt and eye-opening words remind us that each child really is unique and should be cherished as such. The poignant message is, "Don't look at who your child could be, but who your child is." As Abeer points out, if children t... posted on Apr 3, 3370 reads

Courage & Vulnerability: Corona & the Wisdom of Elders
"In every crisis of my life, learning has helped me find my way through. That means paying attention, allowing myself to feel as well as think, looking at things from different angles, gathering the best info available, trying to connect the dots, and 'living the questions' when the answers elude me." For more than five decades, Parker Palmer has written and spoken about subjects ranging from cont... posted on Apr 6, 17316 reads

Charles Eisenstein: The Coronation
"For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swans beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them? Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomena... posted on Apr 16, 14314 reads

Powered by Love --- an Emerging Worldview
"There is a worldview that has come to dominate every aspect of global reality affecting human civilization, the natural world and planetary climate conditions. It can be summarized as the quantitative worldview. The quantitative worldview is in a crisis so deep it is leading, in an interconnected and interdependent world, to deep systemic disruptions, chaotic conditions and signs of complete fail... posted on Apr 17, 11269 reads

Three Methods for Working with Chaos
"Times of chaos and challenge can be the most spiritually powerful... if we are brave enough to rest in their space of uncertainty. Pema Chodron describes three ways to use our problems as the path to awakening and joy: go to the places that scare you, use poison as medicine, and regard what arises as awakened energy."... posted on Apr 19, 11940 reads

Going Into the Hospital: COVID 19 (Poem)
"When I walk out the door these days
For a shift in the hospital
Two small people cry at the door
My daughter and son.
4 and 1 1/2
Tears fall
big drops against their full brown cheeks"
So begins this moving poem by Sriram Shamasunder, a physician and father who is leading a HEAL Initiative medical team serving on the ground in Navajo Nation.... posted on May 8, 8521 reads

Gathering Gratefully in the Time of Coronavirus
"The hardships we face may feel amplified by our increasing need to stay home, isolating ourselves from others in service of the common good. Discovering ways to foster ease, belonging, kindness, and well-being under these circumstances may feel challenging, yet opportunities for nourishment can find their way into our worlds. The gifts of technology can offer us meaningful connection and support ... posted on May 12, 7187 reads

Educate the Heart
Poet and author Shane Koyczan narrates this poignant short video on the importance of educating children's hearts as well as their minds. While children need knowledge to prepare them for life, those who love and care for them must also educate their hearts. Teaching compassion, acceptance, tolerance and respect are needed along with knowledge to adequately prepare children for the world.... posted on May 19, 3738 reads

Turning Ourselves Towards Stability and Hospitality
"The Benedictine-Camaldolese monk, Bruno Barnhart says it very well: We humans prefer a manageable complexity to an unmanageable simplicity.
A complex instability is our typical default setting. Restless with where and how and who we are, we think we need to be somewhere else, or live some other way, or be someone else." David Mckee shares more.... posted on May 27, 6315 reads

Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair
"Caught in the maelstrom of the moment, we forget this cyclical nature of history -- history being merely the rosary of moments the future strings of its pasts. We forget that the present always looks different from the inside than it does from the outside -- something James Baldwin knew when, in considering why Shakespeare endures, he observed: "It is said that his time was easier than ours, but ... posted on Jun 1, 8898 reads

Activism in a Pandemic : Progressive Examples from Australia
Each month the Commons Library provides a small taste of actions and events which challenged the status quo and pointed to better ways forward via their ever growing "From Little Things Big Things Grow: Events That Changed Australia" list. These posts generally focus on events from a particular month, but in response to the Coronavirus pandemic they are sharing protests, campaigns and events from ... posted on Jun 2, 4939 reads

Turning to Face the Dark
"In May of 2019, Rabbi Dr. Ariel Burger sat down with educator and writer Parker J. Palmer for an unscripted conversation. What emerged was a wide-ranging contemplative dialogue on suffering, healing, and joy. Parker is the author of 'Five Habits to Heal the Heart of Democracy', and many other life-changing books. Ariel is the author of 'Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom'"
... posted on Jun 9, 7927 reads

Educate the Heart
Poet and author Shane Koyczan narrates this poignant short video on the importance of educating children's hearts as well as their minds. While children need knowledge to prepare them for life, those who love and care for them must also educate their hearts. Teaching compassion, acceptance, tolerance and respect are needed along with knowledge to adequately prepare children for the world.... posted on Jun 11, 3476 reads

Warriors Wanted: Training People to Defend the Human Spirit
"Seventy-five year old writer, consultant and activistMargaret Wheatley has studied the cyclical nature of civilizations throughout history and she is quite confident that the end of our civilization is closer than we might like to think. And she is doing something about it... something radical. Wheatley is building an army of 'warriors for the human spirit' with people who want to lessen the suff... posted on Jun 17, 9484 reads

Hard Times Require Furious Dancing
"I am the youngest of eight siblings. Five of us have died. I share losses, health concerns, and other challenges common to the human condition, especially in these times of war, poverty, environmental devastation, and greed that are quite beyond the most creative imagination. Sometimes it all feels a bit too much to bear. Once a person of periodic deep depressions, a sign of mental suffering in m... posted on Jul 1, 9928 reads

What Did Sisyphus Dream Of?
"In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to endlessly try to push a large rock to the top of a hill, an activity Zeus had rigged so that as it neared the top, the rock would roll away from Sisyphus. The story captures the ultimate in frustration and activities that take all of our energy but with no end in sight. The whole exercise was rigged against Sisyphus from the outset. The poor s... posted on Jun 30, 4797 reads

A Pandemic Poem-Prayer
Phyllis Cole-Dai is a writer and poet, perhaps best known for 'The Emptiness of Our Hands', a spiritual memoir chronicling the 47 days that she and co-author James Murray practiced "being present" while living by choice on the streets of Columbus, Ohio. On her 58th birthday earlier this year, she wrote 58 one-line pandemic prayers and crafted them into a poem. You can read it here.... posted on Jul 2, 45461 reads

The Dynamic Mystery of Relationships
"The more open, present and awake we are, the less objective our relationships become. So-called relationship becomes simple relating. The noun transforms into a verb -- an apparent thing opens up into an alive process. If I no longer take myself as an object, I also cannot make you into one. Nor can I create what is happening between us into something. We may call it friendship but it is really a... posted on Jul 4, 6639 reads

Advice from 100-Year-Olds
Three centenarians were asked the secret of their longevity. With simple grace and wisdom they give us an insight into the optimism and humor that sustain them. as they each share what is most important to them. They exemplify the value of listening to and learning from the lessons of one's own life as they remind us to "keep right on to the end of the road".
... posted on Jul 5, 8505 reads

World At Dawn
"At dawn, the world rises out of darkness, slowly, sense-grain by grain, as if from sleep. Life becomes visible once again. "When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think anymore," Claude Monet once lamented. More light! Goethe begged from his deathbed. Dawn is the wellspring of more light, the origin of our first to last days as we roll in space, over 6.684 billion of us i... posted on Jul 6, 3652 reads

Freedom in Prison: The Story of My Great-Grandfather
Aryae Coopersmith recounts the moving story of his great-grandfather Shmuel, a Talmud scholar who was forced war front in Bosnia-Herzegovinae. When it was discovered he didn't have the makings of a soldier in him, he was given prison guard duty instead. "How was Shmuel, a naive young kid who knew nothing about prisons, going to run a prison full of battle-scarred soldiers? He offered the prisoners... posted on Jul 13, 6703 reads

The Beauty in Breaking
Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is predominantly male and white. In her new book, "The Beauty in Breaking," she explores the themes of race, gender, injustice and hope -- and in doing so shares the story of how her own healing emerged through a life lived in service of others. Read an excerpt from the book here.... posted on Aug 27, 4269 reads

DH Lawrence on Trees, Solitudes and What Roots Us
"A supreme challenge of human life is reconciling the longing to fulfill ourselves in union, in partnership, in love, with the urgency of fulfilling ourselves according to our own solitary and sovereign laws. Writing at the same time as Hesse, living in exile in the mountains, having barely survived an attack of the deadly Spanish Flu that claimed tens of millions of lives, the polymathic creative... posted on Jul 27, 6154 reads

The Power of Real Love
"If love is what we need more of-- and we do --then Sharon Salzberg and bell hooks are two of the most important voices of our time. As a leading teacher of loving-kindness meditation, Sharon Salzberg answers the all-important question: how, precisely, do we bring more love into our lives? As one of America's leading political and cultural critics, bell hooks advocates for the power of love to tra... posted on Aug 6, 5216 reads

Milford Zornes: An Artist's Life
"When I met Milford, he was 97 and blind. I met him on Friday and on Saturday he was going to give a watercolor workshop. Earlier that Friday, I'd asked his art dealer, "How does a painter give a workshop if he's blind?" "I don't know," the dealer said, "But he does!" I liked Zornes's paintings and asked, "Does he live around here?" Cutting to the chase, three hours later I was at Milford's door. ... posted on Aug 8, 3405 reads

Celebrating Wendell Berry
"Wendell Berry has been an Orion contributor and advisor since the magazine's beginnings in 1982. Berry is the author of over forty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, and has farmed in Port Royal, Kentucky, for over forty years." Orion celebrated Wendell Berry's eighty-sixth birthday by compiling their all-time favorite writings from Berry, published in Orion over the past four decades. Check i... posted on Aug 10, 5920 reads

A Man Impossible to Classify
The young man walked up to us still smiling and, without a word, pointed again. I stared in puzzlement. At this he nodded his head and, to clarify matters, repeated the pointing. "What do you mean?" I managed to ask. "Donuts!" He said. "Do you guys like donuts?" It was 1965. He was one of the first people I met in San Francisco, a street person, and the story that followed spanned some twenty year... posted on Aug 18, 3824 reads

Revisiting Fred Rogers 2002 Commencement Address
"I'm very much interested in choices, and what it is, and who it is, that enable us human beings to make the choices we make all through our lives. What choices lead to ethnic cleansing? What choices lead to healing? What choices lead to the destruction of the environment, the erosion of the Sabbath, suicide bombings, or teenagers shooting teachers. What choices encourage heroism in the midst of c... posted on Aug 31, 12317 reads

At a Tipping Point -- Towards Healing the Climate
"Climate change is the undercurrent that drives and shapes our lives in countless ways. Journalist Judith D. Schwartz sees the term as shorthand. It's almost as if people think climate is this phenomenon, determined solely by CO2, as if we could turn a dial up or down," she tells me over the phone. We are missing so much." In her quest for climate solutions, Schwartz leans into the complexity of n... posted on Sep 5, 5027 reads

Mark and Doug: The Power of Friendship
Mark Redding survived a devastating traumatic brain injury in an auto accident when he was in his early 20s. Almost 30 years later, Mark met Doug Kline through the PALS (Providing a Link for Survivors) program at Brain Injury Services, a program that enables clients and community volunteers to connect in a mutually enriching friendship to build skills and combat isolation through community integra... posted on Sep 19, 2229 reads

When the Source Ran Free: A Story for Our Times
"Watching the sun rise over the wetlands, the mist fading, even here in the midst of nature there is the strange stillness of a world in lockdown waiting, wondering, anxiety, and fear its companions. I am writing these words in the time of the great pandemic, when for a few brief months our world slowed down and almost stopped; when as the stillness grew around us there was a moment to hear anoth... posted on Sep 20, 7193 reads

Forming a More Perfect Union Through Indigenous Values
"How might we unlock hope in an expansive spirit of democracy for present and future generations in this time of upheaval? This new conversation series on "The State of American Democracy" invites us to explore this question with some of our most creative thinkers and public intellectuals. The first episode on September 17, 2020, focuses on the moral foundations of democracy we can draw for guidan... posted on Sep 24, 3737 reads