The Medicine of Memory
"Every life is like a day. We begin the night before and, in the darkness, we are formed as a word that strikes a spark. This spark lands like a seed coming to the ground in the soul of the womb. Then miraculous growth pulses like wildfirean unstoppable explosion of unimaginable geniusthe exponential roar of universal proportion. Every life well-lived holds in its hearts core the knowing that all ... posted on Jul 18 2023, 4,817 reads

Honey Church
"Our first summer in Baltimore. The first year of our marriage--your only marriage, my second one--when my kid became our kid. This house, our home. We watched the parade of ants--polite little soldiers marching single file along the kitchen baseboards in a thin and steady stream. You took a white sheet of paper from the printer, slipped it under their quick feet, then whoosh, like a magician and ... posted on Jul 17 2023, 2,074 reads

Mark Nepo: The Half Life of Angels
"How do we know our own authenticity? How can we return to our hearts when we find we've left them? As we evolve and change along our journey, how do we relate to the 'former selves' in our past? Tami Simon and poet-philosopher Mark Nepo address these questions and more, as they discuss his creative process; his new book, The Half-Life of Angels; and how we can each touch the ever-present and whol... posted on Jul 16 2023, 3,713 reads

Carrie Newcomer: Asking the Right Questions in Song
Carrie Newcomer is an American performer, singer, songwriter, recording artist, author and educator. The Boston Globe described her as a "prairie mystic" and Rolling Stone wrote that she is one who "asks all the right questions." According to a 2014 PBS "Religion and Ethics" interview, Newcomer is a conversational, introspective songwriter who "celebrates and savors the ordinary sacred moments of ... posted on Jul 15 2023, 2,713 reads

Love's Work: Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting it Wrong
""There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love," the humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in his classic on the art of loving. In some sense, no love ever fails, for no experience is ever wasted -- even the most harrowing becomes compost for our growth, fodder for our comb... posted on Jul 14 2023, 2,423 reads

Never the Same River Twice
""Before I arrived in Japan, I was intoxicated by its tradition of wandering poets. They weren't roaming around lakes and hills like Wordsworth, but proceeding along a rough, pointed path, in the way of Matsuo Basho. His most famous work--Narrow Road to the Interior--could suggest both the remote areas of northern Japan through which he was walking, and the inner terrain that the act of walking wo... posted on Jul 13 2023, 1,858 reads

Murmurations: Breaking is Part of Healing
"The material world is necessarily temporary, and it is only a matter of how deep we are willing to look, how far into the past and future we are willing to consider, to understand this. If you don't believe me, look at the ruins of every society that has predated us on this planet. Remember that the matter that makes up our moon and planet is the dust of stars exploding in other galaxies. Remembe... posted on Jul 12 2023, 4,850 reads

A Prickly Pear History Lesson
"Summer monsoons in the Southwestern Sonoran Desert produce a wild bounty of crimson fruit. Rising from Engelmann's prickly pear cacti (Opuntia engelmannii), these fruits, or tuna in Spanish, perch atop Mickey Mouse-shaped pads like ruby crowns. Against muted browns and greens of the desert, the tuna are eye-popping. When I landed in Tucson for graduate school more than thirty years ago, I was ama... posted on Jul 11 2023, 1,607 reads

Giving Up on Your Dreams
"Perhaps being prudent in dreams also comes down to having a sound sense of self. By rejecting the expectations imposed by others, you can devote time and effort towards what truly works for you, such as growing stout and taking up track and field. Such is the case for the Somali ostrich, soundest and heaviest of all living birds. Not needing to train his pecs for flight means that every day becom... posted on Jul 10 2023, 2,635 reads

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
"In fact, human beings do not see very well. The brain itself makes assumptions about what it is seeing, and can actually can change perceptions to fit its assumptions. You may be familiar with the so-called constancies, perceptual constancy, form constancy, and concept constancy. This means that the brain, which is always looking for easy ways to do things, makes quick assumptions about perceptio... posted on Jul 09 2023, 2,604 reads