There’s a new mental disorder stalking the western world: Nature Deficit Disorder. Our widespread disconnection from the natural world—most of us can’t distinguish one tree from another, don’t walk in the woods, don’t look at the stars, rarely stand in an unaltered landscape—is making us sick. The list of effects I found in the official …
Street Walkers Ten years ago, in our lake, at the mouth of the bay where we locals swim, four young people drowned. I have not felt like I could tell this story. It is, for some families, a private and forever grief upon which I have no right to intrude. But parts of that story …
Our daughter-in-law, Jane, interpreted the saying “It takes a village to raise a child” liberally. Of course, in these days, municipal boundaries are a bit wider than they used to be. A day’s plane journey appears to mark the village limits for our family. Which is why you would have found me in Washington, D.C. a …
Songyuan asked, Why can’t clear-eyed Bodhisattvas sever the red thread? When I was in my early thirties, a ragtag group of friends and family assembled weekly in my living room to meditate. Our teacher was a recovering alcoholic and self-identified Sufi who taught us glorious chants. We’d sing and sing and sink into a silence …
When my little brother died, I found myself utterly alone. I felt like I was trapped in a transparent box, invisible to everyone but me. No matter what I said or did, I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t touch anyone. And no matter what anyone else said or did, it didn’t touch me. The senseless …
Twenty years ago, in a fit of wild openness, my husband and I decided to move. Not just to another city or state, but to another country. It didn’t happen all at once, but about three years after the initial spasm, I found myself transplanted (alone; it took him two and a half years to …
I roll over to turn off the light and address a silent prayer to my deepest part, to the Holy, to my unconscious, to whatever or whomever prescribes the nightly play that goes on when I slump into sleep: May I please have some joy in my dreams tonight? I’ve been tired, bone tired. The …
I am blind. This is legally true—without glasses, my eyes are so bad that I should only be behind the wheel if I have a guide dog on my lap who has a driving license. Fog exacerbates my vision problems. Driving Highway 6 in the dark and the fog is hard enough; when another car …
Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world, and I fold them in prayer and they draw from the heavens light. St. Francis of Assisi, as interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky This is not a sound bite about how to reduce anxiety. This is not a short course …
“Our fingers imbibe like roots,” begins a prayer by Francis of Assisi, “So I place them on what is beautiful in this world.” Beauty may feel like a shaky reed these days, nothing much to hang our hat on. Most of us are more inclined to attend to what’s ugly: environmental degradation, wars, famines, loss …
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