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 (3,826 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 (4,244 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 (6,146 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 (5,635 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 (4,238 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 (3,447 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 (2,729 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 (3,304 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 (4,739 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 (5,667 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 Apr 30 2024 (1,253 reads)

angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.” Then, when you’ve done this, try one of the practices below. Empathy Practice. The first step in cultivating compassion is to develop empathy for your fellow human beings. Many of us believe that we have empathy, and on some level nearly all of us do. But many times we are centered on ourselves (I’m no exception) and we let our sense of empathy get rusty. Try this practice: Imagine that a loved one is suffering. Something terrible has happened to him or her. Now try to imagine the pain they are going through. Imagine the suffering in as much detail as possible. After doing this practic... posted on Aug 2 2011 (48,844 reads)

perspective we have inherited—the zero sum game that ensures someone loses and that locks us in defensive and assertive postures. Let’s cultivate tales that celebrate reconciliation, integration and interdependence instead. Let’s compost the myths that the shortest distance between two points is a line and that our brains alone can think our way through—the myth that being busy is better or necessary or makes us more valuable or trumps self-care or being with those we love. Let’s shed the notion that the sole options for addressing conflict are fight or flight. Cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien suggests we’re shifting from an either/or to a both/a... posted on Oct 2 2011 (11,908 reads)

murals that are just that — absolutely wonderful. Today, these inspired murals can be found in more than 60 libraries across the five boroughs, featuring the work of designers and illustrators cherry-picked by the Pentagram team — from a series of photographic portraits by Dorothy Kresz, to a visual interpretation of words through silhouettes by Rafael Esquer, to books hidden in images in the iconic illustration style of Christoph Niemann. Needless to say, we love the idea. Design is only as valuable as the change it ignites — in our understanding of beauty and truth, our conceptual and aesthetic literacy, yes, but also in our greater social sensibil... posted on Dec 11 2011 (8,689 reads)

thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an "actual" experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing experience allowed Walt Disney to ... posted on Jan 18 2012 (60,137 reads)

he says. “I had the feeling in my gut that I had to go see this dog.”   The whole family made the two-hour trip to meet Juno, who was being held at an east Tennessee shelter. “She was emaciated, and was days away from being euthanized,” Chester says. “She had been surrendered to the shelter because her previous owners didn’t understand the Belgian Malinois.”   Fortunately, Chester did. He’d gotten to know and love the breed while working as a law enforcement officer years earlier.   “I used to help with the training of police K-9s, and our dogs were Belgian Malinoises,” he says. &l... posted on Feb 8 2012 (47,938 reads)

regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying. It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationship... posted on Feb 23 2012 (260,488 reads)

for food — whether it's ferreting rare mushrooms in the woods,picking abundant lemons from an overlooked tree, or gathering berries from an abandoned lot — is all the rage among the culinary crowd and the D.I.Y. set, who share their finds with fellow food lovers in fancy restaurant meals or humble home suppers. But an old-fashioned concept — gleaning for the greater good by harvesting unwanted or leftover produce from farms or family gardens — is also making a comeback during these continued lean economic times. In cities, rural communities, and suburbs across the country, volunteer pickers join forces to collect bags a... posted on May 12 2012 (11,932 reads)

from a 10-year-old boy born to a drug-addicted mother, with an Individualized Education Plan thicker than an encyclopedia—a boy with permanent scars along the side of his left arm from a beating with an extension cord when he was three. Kyle [*name changed] taught me the one and only thing I really needed to know about loving a child through the challenges of life. This is my story …   It had been a difficult move. I left my family and friends and the beloved mid-western state where I’d lived most of my life. My new home was thousands of miles away from anything I knew. It was hot—all the time. There were no seasons and teaching jobs were... posted on Sep 5 2012 (47,629 reads)

the anger will stop controlling you.   3. Perfectionists are angry.   Are you a perfectionist? Then take an honest look at what you are saying to yourself. You will undoubtedly find a repetitive loop playing in your mind that is harsher than you might imagine.   Don’t kid yourself – this is anger. If you don’t want to be a slave to your perfectionist tendencies, then go to the root of the problem and learn to meet your anger with love.   4. Stories sustain anger.   Angry stories barrel through our minds like an out-of-control train careening down the tracks. To find freedom from anger, you must recogn... posted on Feb 16 2022 (205,006 reads)