like to offer some words in praise of chickadees. Though seven different species inhabit North America, four of them in Alaska, here I will focus on the black-capped chickadee, the bird that transformed my life nearly three decades ago. Because they’re among the most common birds to inhabit the Anchorage area—and much of our continent—nearly everyone can recognize black-capped chickadees (which I sometimes simply call black-caps) and their familiar chick-a-dee-dee calls. At the same time, I suspect that most people largely ignore black-caps, don’t give them much thought, simply because they are so common (those who put out bird feeders being exceptions... posted on Oct 18 2022 (7,276 reads)

delivered in January 2023 for the 20th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium at University of Pennsylvania. The evening was graciously hosted by Symposium Committee, Office of the Chaplain and Office of the President.] Thank you for such a heartfelt introduction. To be in the company of such inspired love-warriors from the community and to be in shared field of honoring Dr. King's legacy is a tremendous honor.  Having just spent a couple of months in India, today, I'm hoping to build a bit of a Gandhi-Dr. King bridge that perhaps points us to the hem of the Infinite. I want to start in 1958. Dr. King was 29 years old, his first book had come out, and he was&nb... posted on Feb 2 2023 (8,902 reads)

FUERTH LEMLE April 11,1916---April 17, 2011 For the first 58 years of my life, I would have to say that my relationship to my mother was a complex and difficult one. She was a huge personality, full of great passions, creativity, rages, and generosity. I remember saying to friends that I loved my mother in small doses, but that she didn't come in small doses. She was a force of nature. She had no sense of boundaries; my memory of going to restaurants with Edna, was that as the waiter placed my plate in front of me, her fork would be in my food before I was even able to lift my own. She would often just show up at my house anywhere in the world, uninvited. She was also very contro... posted on Jul 1 2016 (46,581 reads)

Shamasundar (left) with June Jordan (right). Photo courtesy Sriram Shamasunder. I remember being a kid with shaky confidence. I entered the University of California, Berkeley, as a freshman, a child of Indian immigrants, keeping my head down and taking primarily science classes. To fill a humanities requirement, I meandered into a class called Poetry for the People, a course taught and conceived by June Jordan, the great poet and activist.  Even though I fulfilled the requirement in just one semester, I stayed in the class for two years, not so much because I thought I was a poet, but because June—as I later came to call her—made me feel that even a youn... posted on Feb 14 2023 (2,858 reads)

way it happened was we were there in the monkey house and it was Stan and me and Myrrena, who had just learned to sit up. We were reading the sign by the orangutan cage and the orangutan, who was an old female with wrinkled, pendulous breasts, came up to the corner of the cage where we were and she was looking at Myrrena’s feet. Stan had Myrrena on his shoulder and it was a hot day so there were her bare legs and bare feet sticking out of the diaper and that was all the orangutan could see of her. This lady orangutan had one of the most beautiful faces I’ve ever seen, expressive brown eyes with wrinkles all around so that seeing her face was a revelation of tenderness... posted on Feb 20 2023 (2,702 reads)

from Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound, by David Rothenberg. Published by University of Chicago Press (May, 2019.)  Are you surprised there are nightingales in Berlin? They have flown thousands of miles to get here, up from Africa and over the sea like refugees of the air. They sing from wells of silence, their voices piercing the urban noise. Each has his chosen perch to come back to each year. We know they will return, and yet when they do arrive every song still seems a wonder. Of all the days to schedule a midnight concert in Berlin’s Treptower Park, we have somehow chosen May 9, the one night people descend upon this park in the... posted on Feb 21 2023 (2,580 reads)

by Rupali Bhuva We live in an age of spiritual smorgasbord: People are mixing concepts, aphorisms, and insights from a broad variety of mystical and faith traditions. A blend of notions culled from many spiritual paths is now surfacing as popular prescription for all and sundry seekers: “Believe everything will turn out perfectly”; “deny the power of the negative by emphasizing the positive”; “always trust your intuition”; “focus on being and becoming over doing or engaging in activism”; “don’t get caught up in the world of forms and illusion”; “live in essence.” Such a list is clearly a simplistic ... posted on Mar 3 2023 (2,332 reads)

neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, she lost feeling in her teeth. She had been grinding them as a profound stress response to burnout from her responsibilities as a wife, mother, and tenure-track professor. Knowing from her academic work that the brain can change, she told herself at the start of summer, “before I quit my own career, let’s see if I can get my own brain to change.” She had just heard a talk about the power of meditation to change brain images from another neuroscientist. And although she had grown up in a Hindu family, born in the Indian city of Gandhi’s ashram – where meditation practice was “in the air&rdquo... posted on Mar 9 2023 (4,839 reads)

or brainstorm new ideas. Creative rest reawakens the awe and wonder inside each of us. Do you recall the first time you saw the Grand Canyon, the ocean or a waterfall? Allowing yourself to take in the beauty of the outdoors — even if it’s at a local park or in your backyard — provides you with creative rest. But creative rest isn’t simply about appreciating nature; it also includes enjoying the arts. Turn your workspace into a place of inspiration by displaying images of places you love and works of art that speak to you. You can’t spend 40 hours a week staring at blank or jumbled surroundings and expect to feel passionate about anything, much less com... posted on Mar 21 2023 (14,752 reads)

Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus (2022) by Neil Douglas-Klotz. For a longer excerpt and more information, please see: www.revelationsofthearamaicjesus.com Why consider Jesus’ sayings in this language, much less use them in prayer or meditation? Language determines our way viewing the world. Languages have different words for the same thing, but also unique words that cannot be put into words in another language. In ancient languages, these unique expressions were all about the way people perceived their relationships to nature, other human beings, and Reality itself (a reality often translated “God”). Aramaic offers a way of looking at life as an inter... posted on Mar 22 2023 (3,726 reads)

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 (1,802 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 (3,718 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 (3,254 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 (6,883 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 (2,900 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 (3,581 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 (1,952 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 (2,107 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 (2,611 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 (4,909 reads)