The Capacity for Successful Solitude
"The capacity to be alone is the capacity to know enough about yourself and who you are, and be comfortable enough with that. That way, when you are with another person, youre not trying to make that...
View ArticleFrom Emergency to Emergence
"Discussions now underway in many community, national, and global forums suggest a significant widening of what is known as the Overton Window: the range of public policies that the mainstream...
View ArticleA Geometry of the Heart
At 16 she lay down in the middle of a busy two-way street. Then she heard an inner voice say, "Do you want to be a drunk, or do you want to be an artist?" She got up and never forgot the clarity of...
View ArticleTogether Apart: Letters from Isolation
Together Apart is a new Orion web series of letters from isolation. Every week under lockdown, they eavesdrop on curious pairs of authors, scientists, and artists, listening in on their emails, texts,...
View ArticleThe Little Priestess: Listen with the Ear of the Heart
Noirin Ni Riain is an Irish spiritual singer, theologian, teacher, author and Interfaith minister. Known as the High Priestess of Gregorian Chan, Noirin has released sixteen albums since 1978,...
View ArticleLife Itself May Be A Koan
"Consider the Zen practice of the koan, the question or problem proposed by Zen masters to each other or by masters to students. The koan is a dilemma, a mystery which the rational mind cannot solve....
View ArticleCOVID Era Shows Gandhi's Ideal of Practical Idealism is Possible
A new society can be developed from the inspiring ways people around the world are responding to this unprecedented disaster, and this is what we should be planning right now in the spirit of Gandhi's...
View ArticleGoing Into the Hospital: COVID 19 (Poem)
"When I walk out the door these days For a shift in the hospital Two small people cry at the door My daughter and son. 4 and 1 1/2 Tears fall big drops against their full brown cheeks" So begins this...
View ArticleDiana Beresford-Kroeger: The Call of the Trees
Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a world-recognized botanist, medical biochemist and author (and now filmmaker). She is known for her extraordinary ability to translate scientific complexities of nature for...
View ArticleSUPERHERO: A Music Video for Our Times
In times of global crises, it becomes increasingly clear that our lives are sustained by millions of gestures, big and small made by everyday people who simply show up to do their little bit, day after...
View ArticleGreg Tehven: Business, Local Community and Love
"I think we have to love our sense of place, and champion the heck out of it", says Greg Tehven, who is turning the world of economic development on its head, and inviting people to build the...
View ArticleGathering Gratefully in the Time of Coronavirus
"The hardships we face may feel amplified by our increasing need to stay home, isolating ourselves from others in service of the common good. Discovering ways to foster ease, belonging, kindness, and...
View ArticleViews on a Pandemic
"I write to you now from my home in Seattle, former ground zero of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic, on the fifty-fifth day of our isolation. I write to you nine months pregnant, from the attic bedroom...
View ArticleHealth for All: The Journey of Dr. Abhay Bhang
In 1986, when Dr Abhay and Dr Rani Bang decided to adopt Gadchiroli, a tribal village in Maharashtra, India as their home and workplace, the district was infamous for Naxalism, abject poverty, poor...
View ArticleThe Value of Being Uncomfortable
"'Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least,' Georgia O'Keeffe, impoverished and solitary in the desert, wrote in...
View ArticleAppalachia's Front Porch Network Is A Lifeline
"On any day in Appalachia, you can find gifts in front of houses, left on porches for the people inside: mushrooms just foraged, cookies freshly baked. The porch is an extension of the home in...
View ArticleBeyond Overwhelm into Refuge
"We are in the midst of an emergency that is forcing us into varying states of economic distress, isolation and anxiety. We are united in our vulnerability and our courageous attempts to think and live...
View ArticleResilient Threads: Weaving Joy and Meaning into Well-Being
Physician burnout, depression, and suicide are tearing at the fabric of our health care system, which Dr. Mukta Panda has witnessed firsthand, written about, and sought to address for years. She is a...
View ArticleEducate the Heart
Poet and author Shane Koyczan narrates this poignant short video on the importance of educating children's hearts as well as their minds. While children need knowledge to prepare them for life, those...
View Article5 Poems to Celebrate National Poetry Month
"I write this at the end of what seems like the longest month of my life. For a poet here in the United States, April is almost always the loudest, stormiest, busiest month--filled with readings to...
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