The Practice Before the Practice
"From the moment we open our eyes, we are meaning-seeking creatures, looking for what matters though we carry what matters deep within us. And more than the hard-earned understandings we arrive at, more than the principles or beliefs we stitch together out of our experience, how we stay in relationship to the mysterious Whole of Life is what brings us alive and keeps us alive. Everyone knows first... posted on Nov 06 2023, 1,878 reads

Griefhouse
"When my father died, I began making weekly visits to a public grief house. I mean greenhouse. For seven Mondays, I rode the streetcar across town to warm myself in a glass building full of plants. No one had warned me that hard-hitting losses sometimes take the form of ordinary problems such as temperature-related discomfort. I had not seen this play out in stories, so I was not prepared for the ... posted on Nov 05 2023, 2,531 reads

Passing Through the Storm
"What does it mean to be a person? Inevitably we think of people as individuals. A Google search supported by an experimental generative AI defines personhood as a state of being characterized by properties including intelligence, the capacity to speak a language, creativity, the ability to make moral judgments, consciousness, a soul, self-awareness. A person, Googles A.I. informed me, is also det... posted on Nov 04 2023, 1,957 reads

The End is an Illusion
The uplifting words and music of Jont are accompanied by a heart warming video display of loving connections, providing a healing combination of "medicine the world needs right now." With the focus on a sense of belonging and living fully, it is a joyous reminder that "connecting to the love will keep us safe and we will be just fine. We will be just fine."... posted on Nov 03 2023, 2,372 reads

Beware the Fairy Host
"In Ireland, Halloween (Samhain) is a major temporal hingewhen the year turns from light to dark, and the boundary between the living and dead, the fantastic and the mundane, grows gossamer thin. Orion's science editor, Natalie Middleton, caught up with Jonny Dillon, archivist of the National Folklore Collection at the University College of Dublin to find out what fairies can teach us about naviga... posted on Nov 02 2023, 1,881 reads

Carol Sanford: Indirect Work
Building on over four decades of her research and experience, author Carol Sanford's latest book, "Indirect Work," explores how a deep understanding of living systems can translate into "a practical human technology for daily life at home and work. Through foundational wisdom and exercises for self-discovery, this guide will illuminate your understanding of the unlimited power of regenerative chan... posted on Nov 01 2023, 1,554 reads

Kintsugi: The Golden Joinery of Love
Sue Cochrane was a family court judge who sought to bring more love into the practice of law. The forces she battled were not confined to the court room -- among them, poverty, violence, addiction, abuse, a terminal diagnosis and more. In this powerful piece, she explores kintsugi -- a stunning Japanese art form in which broken pottery is repaired by filling the cracks with gold. Kingtsugi, poems,... posted on Oct 31 2023, 53,680 reads

Pooja Lakshmin: Self Care the Right Way
"The wellness industry saturates our cultural consciousness, with juice cleanses, organic skincare, and spa retreats flooding our social media feeds. But what does this plethora of dazzling -- and often expensive -- lifestyle products all amount to? Not much, argues Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a psychiatrist who specializes in women's mental health and clinical assistant professor at George Washington Uni... posted on Oct 30 2023, 2,256 reads

Kabir Helminksi: Rumi & the Mysterion
"Kabir Helminski is co-director, with his wife, Camille Helminski, of the Threshold Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge and practice of Sufism. He is the author of Living Presence and the translator of four volumes of Rumis poetry, including Love Is a Stranger and Rumi: Daylight. His new book which we discuss on the podcast is The Mysterion: Rumi and the Secret of ... posted on Oct 29 2023, 2,062 reads

The Endless Vows
"There are four vows we can practice in any given moment that will return us to what matters, that will return us to ourselves and each other. They are simple and always in reach, though they require everything from us. They are the utterances: help, thank you, I'm sorry, and I love you." Poet Mark Nepo shares more in this piece from Parabola magazine.... posted on Oct 28 2023, 2,349 reads