also an active participant in Indigenous Peoples gatherings worldwide, and it was at one of these gatherings—Defend the Sacred in Portugal—that I first met her. I immediately felt the integrity and strength of her presence, and warmed to her open heart and wicked sense of humour. I am privileged to be in conversation and collaboration with such a unique and powerful individual. This story originally ran in issue #63 of Dumbo Feather First of all I’d love to ask you about your childhood and what were some of the experiences that have been significant in shaping who you are. Well so I always say that my greatest gift to the world is being able t... posted on Jul 27 2021 (3,868 reads)

of India, so I got an incredible exposure to the people, the languages, the religions, certainly the arts and crafts, and the history. Somewhere along the line, I wrote another book with a colleague on the cotton industry in India, as kind of a supplement to education, to make the US Civil War understandable from a whole new perspective. That was very important to me, and I’ve been back to India almost every year since, with different projects. I feel very much at home and certainly love the people and the vibrancy of India, and the phrase, “It’s no problem.” It permeates you when you hear it so much and you begin to see the way people interact with one another;... posted on Aug 18 2021 (2,970 reads)

you very much." And I say lots of blessings and prayers. We try to be really careful about waiting for an invitation from the actual patient. Even though the sound of our singing affects everyone in the room, family members, caregivers, staff, we really try to have the invitation from the person in the bed.    works:  That would be primary.   KM:  Yes.    works:  I'm guessing you must have many memorable experiences at bedside and I'd love to hear some of them.   KM:  Okay. The first one that comes to mind involves Claudia here, and it comes very early on. We arrived at a home in Berkeley at the appointed time and the p... posted on Oct 6 2021 (6,659 reads)

out that it’s difficult to make a public defense of one’s private life, but he asks to weigh in (the only time he does in the four days I’m there). “I want to give you a little of my testimony,” he says. Tanya’s role in his writing starts long before he reads that first draft to her, because as he writes he is thinking about her reaction. Knowing he will read it aloud to her—“to somebody I care about and am trying to impress and cause her to love me”—is especially intimidating, he says. “I haven’t worked alone in any sense,” he says. “I’ve been by myself a lot, but I haven’t been alone. I... posted on Nov 24 2021 (5,818 reads)

a beat when asked a question, because he has a ready-made answer. But when dealing with complex systems, like the brain, and brain problems, which vary from person to person, there are no ready-mades, and expertise is best shown by the doctor’s ability to be a student of the patient’s unique problem. One thing you must learn as a psychoanalyst is that when someone walks into your office, and you think you understand them, you probably don’t. They use the word “love” and you think you know what they mean; but with time you realise what they mean by “love” is nothing like what the previous patient meant by the word “love,” o... posted on Nov 10 2021 (11,584 reads)

been attending to it, trying to rewild it, and taking out invasive species. It took at least twenty-five years, but the woodland is making a comeback. The trees are growing, the birds have returned, and there are otters in the water. That makes me feel good—that’s something I was part of. The feeling is more than an idea; it arises because I can smell the fresh air and hear the life around me. I realize, That’s where I belong. I’m on this Earth. There’s love and respect for the natural world, as well as an attitude of restraint toward it. These mental qualities happen naturally through knowing where we are. We’re all in, and form a part of, a l... posted on Dec 3 2021 (4,728 reads)

name is Mícheál ‘Moley’ Ó Súilleabháin. I am a poet from Ireland. These three poems are love letters to presence. That presence we feel when we are close to the source of this life. Gratitude, Wisdom, Determination, and Belief.  All three are excerpted from my poetry book, ‘Early Music’ (Many Rivers Press). The first poem, Turas d’Anam, means ‘journey of your soul’ in the Irish language. This piece is an invitation to grant permission to yourself. To experience a deeper sense of meaning in this life. It reimagines set backs, or conscious retreat, as a strengthening tool. This poem is an invitation to... posted on Dec 16 2021 (7,123 reads)

is my ordinary dissatisfaction with myself. 5. Would I have more sex or less? It would be hard to have less sex than I have now, so quite possibly I’d have more sex, though it’s truly hard to say, since sex seems like something you’d wish you’d done more of when you reached the end of your life, wishing to be free from the pinned to the mattress of your own failing body, the turning of the nurses to avoid the bed sores, the chucks and the cheeks spreading by gloved hands. But maybe not. 6. I think I would go to the places where things are disappearing so that I could kiss them all good-bye before we both go, the barrier reefs of Australia, the polar... posted on Mar 21 2022 (20,123 reads)

to a recording of Chelan Harkin’s poem, called “I no longer pray” the words "I no longer sing with only my voice…” flashed into my head like a stroke of lightning. The qualities in the poem are like the seven synonyms for God, (Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Truth, Life, Principle) I learned about in Sunday School, except I only used six of them. I no longer sing with only my voice. I sing with my heart, my love. I no longer sing with only my voice. I sing with my mind, my thought. I no longer sing with only my voice. I sing with my soul, my conscience. I no longer sing with only my voice.... posted on Apr 20 2022 (5,940 reads)

and lateral thinking. As a lamp designer and maker, my approach leans towards the natural, frugal, and functional. I try to use each piece of wood entirely, to avoid or minimize wastage. I enjoy developing new designs within self-imposed constraints, such as making a lamp using just a single strip of wood. I am also frugal with respect to my tools and workspace, choosing to work with only a few essential hand tools and not acquiring a new tool until I absolutely cannot do without it. I love the challenge of using less to do more – less wood, fewer joints, fewer tools - favoring the frugal and functional over the ornamental. The lamps I make aren’t what most people wou... posted on Jul 13 2022 (3,824 reads)

you can’t seduce it in, but you can let it know that you see it, and there’s a very subtle connection that begins. The other is to sense this something as a child who doesn’t have words, or as an animal that you’re holding that can’t communicate through words, but you can tune into it through a feeling tone. That’s kind of a primary way of coming into contact with that which is below the line and wanting to come up to the surface. TS: I’d also love if you could make explicit the connection between what’s below the line, what we’re not aware of, and our body itself. I mean, this phrase that you started off with, you know, “... posted on Aug 1 2022 (4,238 reads)

would have been Jamie Showkeir's 70th birthday. The music video and conversation below was inspired by his unflinching and curious walk with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). That walk ended on his 63rd birthday seven years ago today. The conversation below is between his beloved wife, Maren Showkeir, and his friend, Barbara McAfee. MAREN SHOWKEIR: I really love the way we can have these rich conversations about death. So many people tend to shy away from that topic. What led you to that place where talking about death feels both natural and interesting? BARBARA MCAFEE: I was 31 when my dad died in my arms from pancreatic cancer. I had a very short hospice ti... posted on Aug 16 2022 (6,140 reads)

a print.) Nearly two centuries after Goethe contemplated the psychology of color and emotion, Ruefle’s chromatic taxonomy of sadness cracks open the eggshell of our fragility to reveal within it a kaleidoscope coruscating with irrepressible aliveness. What emerges is the feeling — something beyond the reasoned understanding — that sadness is not the tip of the Atlantis-sized iceberg of our hard-wired grief for life, but the blazing fire of life itself, of the love of life, burning with the elemental fact that there is no disappointment without hope, no heartbreak without love; in the shadows that sadness casts on the cave walls of our being is the deliciou... posted on Aug 21 2022 (5,629 reads)

follows is the transcript of an interview between Tami Simon of SoundsTrue and James Hollis. You can listen to the audio version of the interview here. Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge produced by Sounds True. My name is Tami Simon, I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges... posted on Oct 1 2022 (4,229 reads)

abject and rank—a sign of decay, death, rot, the feminine; indeed, Sartre famously despised it—but on the other, we find it exciting and amusing. When I was growing up in the ’90s, children could buy little pots of pink or green goo with their pocket money; game shows ended with people being gunked with slime; and films and TV shows inspired by The Blob, like Ghostbusters and The Secret World of Alex Mack, were popular. Certainly, there is a growing love and interest in slime molds—a more palatable form of slime, perhaps, even though they are strictly viscous—and they have inspired poetry, art, music, queer studies, and literature, in... posted on Feb 5 2023 (3,433 reads)

her friendship with Fannie Lou Hamer, the great civil rights leader who put her body on the line to register Black folks to vote throughout the South. June at the time had a deep aversion to all white people—a hatred, even. Hamer apparently said to Jordan, “Ain’t no way, no how you can hate anyone and hope to see the face of God.” That shifted her. She realized it was that bedrock belief that enabled Hamer to face vicious threats and murderous hate and respond with love—first and foremost for her own salvation.  June recounted her experience with the acclaimed writer Ralph Ellison when she was in her 20s. Ellison had become disenchanted with the po... posted on Feb 14 2023 (2,726 reads)

flow of moments and events. We have little relationship to the seasons of the land or even the seasons of our own life—the Seven Ages of Man, from infancy to old age, which Shakespeare describes as lived upon the stage of life1, and which was founded upon medieval philosophy and astronomy. For the ancients the planets were called chronocrators, or markers of time. It was presumed that different periods of life are ruled by different planets. For example, while Venus ruled the age of the lover, from fifteen to twenty-two, the final stage from seventy years on belonged to Saturn. But today time is no longer a natural unfolding, connecting us to the land and the cosmos, or the cycles of... posted on May 2 2023 (3,299 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 (4,724 reads)

“the gift that a blessing can be, the doors it can open, the healing and transfiguration it can bring” and inviting us to “rediscover our power to bless one another.” Art by Coralie Bickford Smith from The Fox and the Star He writes: There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is we... posted on Dec 11 2023 (5,639 reads)

was against an inner awareness guided by other intelligences. And I prepared a couple of hours before school every day to communicate with that and then allow teachers in the invisible realm to guide me through the rest of the day. That is such a beautiful formation story. And it’s fascinating to me that you were also drawn to science. A lot of people think science is a black-and-white discipline. But it’s a juicy, beautiful space of human curiosity and experimentation, which I love. I feel like we’re in an age that wants to have both, that it’s a coming together. How do we develop that capacity in ourselves, to trust and belong to that deep spiritual, intuitive ... posted on Dec 31 1969 (11 reads)