On This Our World Turns
"Imagine that you are born into poverty.Imagine that, during your grade school years, a teacher recognizes your artistic talent. Imagine that the teacher enrolls you in a government-funded art class,...
View ArticleReclaiming Our Common Home
"The path to an ecological civilization is paved by reclaiming the commons--our common home, the Earth, and the commons of the Earth family, of which we are a part. Through reclaiming the commons, we...
View ArticleMotherhood: Facing & Finding Yourself
"Bestselling author and psychologist James Hillman proposed what he called the acorn theory of psychological development. He contended that we each enter the world carrying something unique that asks...
View ArticleMelting Away: A Conversation with Camille Seaman
Camille Seaman's journey to becoming a pre-eminent photographer and environmental activist is remarkable and inspiring in equal parts. "Why is my picture of an iceberg resonating with you in a way that...
View ArticleThe Voice of the River
In 1973, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepared to open a new dam project, flooding miles of the Stanislaus River Canyon, a beautiful, pristine river valley flowing from the western Sierra Nevada...
View ArticleFriend of the Water
"Above a clear, rocky stream, a tiny green tree frog perches on the belly of a leaf. Turning its minute snout toward the water, the frog lets out three chirps in the dark, struggling to make itself...
View ArticleGardening as Resistance: Notes on Building Paradise
"The gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end...Here is the Amen beyond the prayer," Derek Jarman wrote as he grieved his dying friends, faced his own death, and...
View ArticleThey Sang with a Thousand Tongues
"Might I venture to say that our most compelling imperative today--if one is permitted to speak in those ways--is to reclaim the thickness of our tongues and learn the names and faces of our...
View ArticleRadical Joy For Hard Times
"Radical Joy for Hard Times is a worldwide community of people dedicated to bringing meaning, beauty, and value to places that have been damaged by human or natural acts. Through its online community...
View ArticleThe Body's Grace: A Paralyzed Yoga Teacher's Insights
"Matthew Sanford says he's never seen anyone live more deeply in their body -- in all its grace and all its flaws -- without becoming more compassionate toward all of life. He's a renowned teacher of...
View ArticleAn Illustrated Poster for People Who Love Their Work
'Arbejdsglaede' is a wonderful Scandinavian word that literally means 'work-love' or 'work-glad'. There is no direct translation for this word in the English language, so Maptia decided to use...
View ArticleKarma Quilts: One Woman's Labor of Love Offering
"In her heartwarming book, My Grandfather's Blessings, Rachel Remen says, "You do not need money to be a philanthropist. We all have assets. You can befriend life with your bare hands." I am grateful...
View ArticleImagine a World Without Prisons
Deanna Van Buren designs restorative justice centers that, instead of taking the punitive approach used by a system focused on mass incarceration, treat crime as a breach of relationships and justice...
View ArticleA Day with the Langs
For over twenty years artists Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang have been collecting plastic trash washed up on a pristine beach in Point Reyes National Seashore. Their meditative practice, and the...
View ArticleWaiting for the Elvers
"I'm not sure who first saw the wriggly, almost see-through, three-inch bodies of the elvers, or baby eels. But I think it was my energetic five-year-old because I remember his face. When he told me,...
View ArticleSix Habits of Hope
Hope is often viewed as the anticipation of circumstances being better in the future, but in this article environmentalist and social activist Kate Davies suggests that intrinsic hope is based in the...
View ArticleNature and the Serious Work of Joy
"'Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity," Rachel Carson wrote in reflecting on our spiritual bond with...
View ArticleFor Small Creatures Such as We
In "For Small Creatures Such as We" Sasha Sagan, daughter of astronomer Carl Sagan, "explores the worlds of ritual and tradition from a scientific viewpoint. Sagan is non-religious, much like her...
View ArticleMercy Needs to Be Where the Need is Greatest
For decades, Sister Marilyn Lacey has aligned her energies and aspirations with refugee communities in the United States, as well as in some of the most ravaged pockets of our world. She describes her...
View ArticleA Seed of Freedom
Actor Jeremy Irons narrates this landmark film by The Gaia Foundation and the African Biodiversity Network, in collaboration with MELCA Ethiopia, Navdanya International and GRAIN. In it, we learn how...
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