5 Tips on How to Live Like a Lichen
"I. Bow down.Bring your face, your heart, your hands, your belly, down, down, close to the groundto the rock of the world, the dirt, duff, sand. Let surface meet surface, warm cheek meet cool stone. Go ahead, belly flop flat on the sidewalk. Greet what you are not. Lichens love and adhere to their surfaces, love to sink into their substrates, mineral or wood, anything that stays still. Draw close.... posted on Sep 10 2023, 1,727 reads

Zen & the Art of Poetry
"It's my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this. Great literature does not take sides with the small-minded. It's not partisan or narrow. It tells us that where there is sorrow, there will be joy; where there is joy, there will be sorrow. A uni-dimensional poem would be boring. Sometimes the other side is so deeply buried, you really have t... posted on Sep 09 2023, 1,596 reads

Shrine
Tracey Schmidt performs her poem Shrine, an evocative poem about love, about self, and about fitting into the world. Her whole being becomes a shrine through which divisions between herself and the rest of the world recede and "then the love fits perfectly," and her life shines brilliantly.... posted on Sep 08 2023, 1,815 reads

Thomas LeGrand: The Politics of Being
Author and sustainable development leader Dr. Thomas LeGrand invites us to co-create a new development paradigm focused on "being" and human flourishing instead of a materialistic "having." Through his work as a social scientist, spiritual search, and 20 years of professional experience in microfinance and sustainability for the UN and other public and private sector entities, Thomas has come to b... posted on Sep 07 2023, 1,142 reads

The Framed Infinite
"I believe windows are celebrated in direct proportion to the degree one is conscious of circumscription. For those who live a seemingly free range existence, oblivious of external limits, the windows presence and function is assumed. Simultaneously looked through-- and overlooked. Unregistered as the pattern of curtains in a neighbors home, or the direction of the thieving wind that rifles casual... posted on Sep 06 2023, 2,393 reads

In the Ground of Our Unknowing
While facing the paradoxes and ambiguities of the pandemic, writer David Abram stumbled upon "beauty in the midst of shuddering terror. As we're isolated in this uncertain time," he writes, "we can turn to the more-than-human world to empower our empathy for each other."... posted on Sep 05 2023, 1,531 reads

Conspiracy of Goodness
Many times throughout history there have been silent movements of goodness that have made a significant impact on humanity. Perhaps we are on the verge of the greatest one yet, and the only thing stopping it is what's under your fingers! Dr. Lynda Ulrich, a dentist turned social innovator, is the founder of Ever Widening Circles (EWC), a positive media company on a mission to prove that in spite o... posted on Sep 04 2023, 2,249 reads

The River of Silence
"Death, whether our own or others, can be a powerful gateway to complete tenderness. The confrontation with the impermanence of all things is perhaps the widest gate to liberation from suffering. Facing death or dealing with death, our sight becomes clear. "Priorities and omissions are etched in a merciless light," as Audre Lorde wrote. Given the sheer quantity of death around us, why not use this... posted on Sep 03 2023, 2,123 reads

The Syntax of Sedimentation
"Susan Tichy's recent collection of poems, North | Rock | Edge: Shetland 2017/2019, distills somatic observations down their bones. Tichy describes an immersive, granular experience exploring the contours, rocks, winds, and waters of Shetland, a remote northern archipelago between Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Norway. In isolated yet accumulative images and line breaks, she details the distance... posted on Sep 02 2023, 1,027 reads

Albert Camus on Writing, Creativity and Stubborness
"Three years after he became the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded him for literature that "with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience," Albert Camus (November 7, 1913January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. The writings he left behind -- about the key to strength of character, ab... posted on Sep 01 2023, 3,293 reads