The seeker is constantly challenged. Enlightenment and evolution are what our souls long for. Our hearts cry out for clarity and discernment in search of our spiritual path and self realization. There are no solid or easy answers. It is our shared experience and compassion that sustain and support us through life.
It's not surprising that more urban trees lower the levels of heat and pollution. Although many cities maintain tree-planting programs, not all canopies have equivalent value.
A new analysis from the American Forests conservation organization states that the US needs to plant more than half a billion trees across 500 metropolitan areas and 150,000 local communities.
“Whatever you’re looking for is just beyond yourself.” ~ David Whyte
David Whyte is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, where he works with many European, American and international companies.
The author of eight books of poetry and four books of prose, he holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, Amazon, and Himalayas.
He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures and workshops.
One of the things we almost always have is a sense of heartbrokenness about the world. And certainly that's a collective experience at the moment.
Around our climate, around Afghanistan, around Israel, Palestine, around so many dynamics in the world. And the temptation is to turn away - one of the great central invitations of poetry is to say no.
Actually this doorway of difficulty, this vulnerability, this axis of heartbreak, is exactly the road that you'd be invited along. You could don't get to start from anywhere except this place of collective sorrow.
Sweet balm for our troubled times and aching soulfulness.
For Filipino Americans who survived the yoke of the Marcoses' conjugal kleptocracy and dictatorship, September 11 dredges up too many dark and devastating horrors.
On his 104th birth anniversary, the scourge that is Ferdinand Marcos may be long dead. Yet his wife and spawn remain a Philippine treat and bleeding canker. Living on to perpetuate their entitled fantasies, empowered by all their ill-gotten wealth and boundless greed.
Even now, the Marcos minions are relentless in their fanatic frenzy to rewrite history in the name of their doomed dictator.
The failed and current president of the Philippines is one of them and with their money and support has grown into another horrible political figure. One that is bleeding our county's coffers dry as its citizenry die in droves due to the world's worst disastrously mismanaged COVID administration.
This is the typical US news headline that causes people all over the world to love hating on Americans. Perpetuating the image of cluelessness sadly all too true of folks that fly by and think they know better.
Good God! What makes America think that just because they pulled out of a 20 year war they created that they can announce the war is over and it will be so? Not by a long shot buddy!
When a full moon takes place, we experience revelations and clarity, we reap the rewards of our efforts, and we witness the maturation of a cycle.
With the sun and moon in opposition, the Leo-Aquarius polarity is activated. The light of the sun sheds awareness on our inner world and our subconscious emotional dynamics.
full moon over the Hudson River
The blue full moon in Aquarius brings a strong desire to make radical changes and reclaim our freedom and sovereignty. It is an invitation to make radically different choices to reshape the future and our reality.
The world is full of pageantry - beauty in infinite forms, outrageously generous gifts - pouring out of the Earth. The planet's bounty and harvest are our best gifts - its canopy of trees, the richness of our soils, the wilderness, its oceans - all creatures and elements of nature.
The human species is a part of all this, connected and never separate - even if we managed to have grown apart. The separateness, however real it feels - in our concrete cities and boxed up domiciles of convenience and comfort - is a manmade delusion.
Every soul longs for peace yet we are all meant to live a revolutionary life. Not only lives in revolution or revolt, though for too many that has been their all too sad and sorry fact.
Revolutionary in the true sense of the word: constituting or bringing about a major or fundamental change. Be an agent of change.
Many cultures celebrate Midsummer on August 2 and this week is the peak. We are halfway through the summer in all its joy and glory and danger, with its COVID-sharing county fairs, political rodeos, and Olympic upsets.
Image by Jade Brookbank/Image Source/Getty Images
August begins with Lammas, Loaf Mass Day, Lughnasadh - the day in the Book of Common Prayer calendar when a loaf baked with flour from newly harvested grain is brought to church and blessed, God's blessing is sought for the growing crops.
