Sabrina Imbler was in college, they enrolled in a class they thought was about whales, but which turned out to be about whaling. In one of 10 brilliant essays in their new book, Imbler recalls the class, which focused on “the systematic hunting and harvesting of the animals that brought human populations to the verge of unimaginable prosperity and whale populations to the brink of extinction,” with their ex, during the denouement of their relationship. Contemplating the necropsy of a whale and how this might be a way to analyze the death of a relationship, Imbler was reminded of “all the ways we shoehorn distinctions between ourselves and other animals, often harming b... posted on Mar 30 2023 (1,926 reads)

I will often enter the space with a very specific question. You know: "How am I meant to approach this relationship that's causing some friction in my heart?" Or, I asked my body as I was going through this cancer journey, "Like, am I supposed to have a mastectomy? Am I supposed to have a double mastectomy? Am I supposed to have a lumpectomy?" And I asked my body and did authentic movement. And it came to me in the form of a story and some archetypical images. And there was my answer, and I knew it was true. So I think there are many ways for people to tap into that deep listening. For some people it's drawing, for some people it's in medita... posted on Apr 21 2023 (4,084 reads)

very dangerous not to have hope. And if you can’t have hope, I think we need a little awe, or a little wonder, or at least a little curiosity. Tippett:I wrote in my notes, just my little note about what this was about, “recycling and the meaning of it all.” I don’t think that’s — [laughter] Limón:Kind of true. You boiled it down. I will say this poem began — I was telling you how poems begin and sometimes with sounds, sometimes with images — This was a sound of, you know when everyone rolls out their recycling at the same time. And it sounds like thunder? [laughter] Limón:And then you go, “Oh no, no, that... posted on Apr 22 2023 (3,554 reads)

exquisite face of a doe with her summer coat I will always remember the date, November 16, 2001, not only for an unforgettable deer encounter but also for another reason which I will tell you about at the end of this blog.  On that day, David and I were doing many chores on our 2 ½ acre animal sanctuary. We, along with our horses, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and rooster, live in a pine forest with many wild animals all claiming the same territory and calling it home.  David was at the front of the property working on a project next to the street. I was at the back of the property on a sloped area digging holes in the ground to put in some new native hydrangea bushe... posted on May 22 2023 (7,342 reads)

six months. The brown envelope comes, I open them, I have U-ungraded, I have an F. I go back to my mother, “I have failed again!” My mother said, “We can sell more groundnuts, they are about to finish, but I’ll do the best that I can.” Eight years. Finally, I have an A, and I have a B. My grandmother and my mother, in those eight years they would always say, “Tererai, go to that place where you buried your dreams, sit and visualize, and make those mental images as though you have already achieved your dreams. Feel the dreams, smell them.” And I would sit in that place, and visualize myself getting into the airplane—and remember I had ne... posted on May 24 2023 (3,124 reads)

one considers the facts, it appears undeniable that the human capacity to earn affects the human capacity to yearn.  Purchasing power renders us prey to the sales pitch. And sales pitches befuddle the soul’s longing. Animals have no purchasing power. They cannot easily be manipulated into yearning for things that are not aligned with their essence. This is why advertisers leave them alone. Animals are not susceptible to billboards, Google ads or product placement. In their world, Twitter is three or more birds on a wire. An influencer is anyone to whom you might be love-interest, or lunch. Animals do not have to untangle their aspirations from trendiness and the shi... posted on Jun 3 2023 (3,832 reads)

bodies are radiant but not all radiance is visible: stars radiate visible light; planets and donkeys and couches radiate infrared waves. (If your couch is emitting visible light GET UP IMMEDIATELY!)" -- Amy Leach Everything is visibly illuminated under Amy Leach's virtuosic pen. Whether she's writing about beavers, migratory birds, mesquite trees, or the moon, to read her words is to see things in a new light. To see in things a new light. And to find your mind being woken up, your conventions jostled, and your ribs being tickled multiple times along the way. Arguably no other writer in the world waltzes so delightfully between scientific fact, p... posted on Jun 21 2023 (2,091 reads)

I’m curious how you each experience your sort of inner instrumentation, if you will, or vocalization or inner music, what that’s like for you as individuals who are now playing, creating music together, what that’s like for you? Resmaa Menakem: I have had the experience from being with these brothers, and it’s interesting that you just couched it like that, because ever since I’ve been starting to meet with these brothers, one of the ancestors’ images that keeps popping up for me is Miles Davis. He keeps popping up, and it’s just a quick image of him onstage with the trumpet down. And ever since we’ve been talking and convening w... posted on Jul 3 2023 (2,256 reads)

How does art capture emotion and feeling? BWE:  In another of my books, Drawing on the Artist Within, I take up this subject. Somehow, human beings are able to intuit the meaning embedded, for example, in a drawn line. The speed or slowness of a line, or the darkness or the lightness of a line, can trigger a response—can be read as an emotion. For example, if we ask students to express anger by using just lines drawn with pencil on paper, with no recognizable images or symbols whatsoever, in almost every case, students will use very dark, rapid, and jagged lines. Then, if we ask them to express joy, the lines they draw are lighter, smoother, circular, and ... posted on Jul 9 2023 (2,735 reads)

BY MICHAEL LUONG/YES! MEDIA I was in a conversation recently with a friend who had just returned from a meditation retreat. She said one of the ideas shared with her group was that “the teacup is already broken,” a meditation on how the death or ending or brokenness we fear is inevitable. We will die, everyone we love will die, the organization will end, the nation will come apart, the system will collapse. The teacup will break. The end has already happened in our minds, our imaginations, our predictions; it is implied by the very pattern of our existence, which we understand to be impermanent. I find that this idea brings me as much peace as does the idea of&... posted on Jul 12 2023 (5,379 reads)

that way, and it will start to tell me its structure. So from that, that’s also how I retrieve and write the nonfiction books. I will have an idea, but I know my idea is just kindling. Not one book I’ve written has ever turned out to be the book that happened. And I know that, and that’s a wonderful thing, that’s not a frustration. So I feel like I’m an inner explorer, and in my movement in the world and with others and with nature, I take fragments and images and pieces of things that ring true, and I gather them like shells along the shore. Then I will take one at a time and it’s, “Huh,” like the story of the fish on the shore,... posted on Jul 16 2023 (4,106 reads)

the land of my birth, is famous for its culture of grieving. Our word in English to keen or to lament comes from the Irish word caoineadh, meaning to cry. One of the significant rituals of this grieving culture is called a wake. James Joyce’s epoch-defining novel Finnegan’s Wake references this ritual. To this day, over half of the funerals in Ireland involve some form of a wake. At a wake, the body of a loved one is laid out in their home. For two or three days, the family stays with the body, and the community comes and pays their respects and shares their sympathies. • • • • • Every life is like a day. We be... posted on Jul 18 2023 (5,042 reads)

exultations: Before us are the fields, already green. Facing the immense, clear sky, of a blazing indigo, my eyes — so far from my ears! — open nobly, welcoming in its calm that indescribable placidity, that harmonious, divine serenity which dwells in the limitlessness of the horizon. Art by Ryōji Arai from Every Color of Light This longing for the infinite accompanies the young man and the old donkey as they cross the hills and valleys on their daily pilgrimages: The evening extends beyond its normal limits, and the hour, infected with eternity, is infinite, peaceful, unfathomable. Again and again, Platero’s presence magnifies the poet&... posted on Jul 25 2023 (4,353 reads)

Nhat Hanh’s courageous path of engaged action reveals how insight, community, and a deep aspiration to serve the world can offer hope, peace, and a way forward for millions. The film’s release on April 2, 2022 coincides with the release by his students of an Open Letter calling for peace and an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine: https://plumvillage.org/articles/an-o... Content Warning: This film includes a few brief scenes which some viewers may find upsetting (including sounds and images of war). These are intended to convey the true suffering caused by war, but they may also be triggering for some people, so please use your discretion when sharing this film with children."... posted on Jul 29 2023 (4,843 reads)

a sleety, bitter night” when Father Ed came to meet him, his memory altered the weather to fit his mood. For, according to Dowling’s desk calendar and his speaking schedule, Father Ed visited him late in the evening on Saturday, November 16, 1940. And, on that night, according to contemporary newspaper reports, Manhattan’s temperature was indeed chilly—just above freezing—with some wind gusts, but there was no precipitation. What Bill sought to convey with his images of Father Ed’s “coat…covered with sleet” and his “hat…covered with snow” was the courage with which Dowling selflessly sailed straight into the storm... posted on Aug 2 2023 (6,927 reads)

29, 2013 Today is my father's birthday. If  he were living today, he'd be 102. I cannot even imagine that. He was 67 when he died, and that's too young, but lately, as I stare at some hard realities of aging and mortality, I begin to appreciate the fact that  he didn't have to endure a long period of frailty, pain, and dependence. My father was himself to very the end, brilliant and good and a force of nature, the most important person in my world, and I miss him terribly even now.  Maybe especially now. I find solace in these words from a poem my friend Naomi Shihab Nye wrote after the death of her own beloved father:  There's a wa... posted on Aug 6 2023 (3,959 reads)

century has witnessed an incomprehensible savaging of flesh.  Its global and local wars, genocides, politically directed torture and famine, terrorist attacks, the selling of children and women into prostitution, and personal wanton violence to family members and street victims would be more than enough evidence for a non-terrestrial to condemn us for criminal disregard for the muscle fibers, fluids, and neural networks within which we live.  An alien visitor might not notice, however, that these painfully tangible wounds to the body politic are symptomatic manifestations of highly abstract ideas that rapidly gained a disproportionate amount of physical power.  While viol... posted on Sep 17 2023 (2,572 reads)

became a scientist because I wanted to save lives and I wrote poetry to save myself. My book of poems, The Whisper, is a lyrical conversation I had with the tiny voice that I had ignored for years while I climbed the corporate ladder. [From the book's blurb] Poems written by an executive who could no longer ignore the tiny voice inside herself that had an important message for her and the business world. The Whisper is a poetic engagement with the intimacy and audacity of being here human, alive. It reminds of what it is to hide from the world, and in doing so becoming hidden to our own selves. An invitation to integrate the many and multitudes that make us whole and avoid our se... posted on Oct 7 2023 (4,047 reads)

the external parts of your life are like a dream. The Talmud says if you really want to live, then die before you die. Let go of the shell you're in while you’re alive so you can get out of the cage that holds you. Then, share the message with everybody else. Not long before I made the decision to leave the rock band, I invited a friend of mine over for Friday night dinner. We called it for 7 p.m., but as I continued to glance at the clock, it quickly went from 7:15 to 7:45. I looked at the food on the counter and realized he wasn’t showing up. My table faced the door, and I had left it wide open so I could hear him if he was lost and looking for it, but what happened ... posted on Feb 13 2024 (4,695 reads)

it. I had a lot of time on my own and I had very loving parents, but I spent a great deal of time alone in my room. And I read a lot and I got interested in magic, performing magic very early on. I was probably nine years old. And when you’re nine, doing a card trick or an actual miracle occurring — there’s gray area between that. The idea that there are things that we don’t understand when we see them and don’t make sense, and as a practicing magician, creating images that gave people the feeling that they were seeing something that they weren’t seeing, it blurred the line for me where reality begins and ends. And it’s still blurred. Tippett:&nb... posted on Nov 30 -0001 (60 reads)