Share Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and won Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the first Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives. The depths of all this experience and more come through in her poetry. Her poem at t...

Share “Journey is an ideal metaphor for the spiritual life. It encourages us to see our experiences as a movement toward wholeness, meaning, and purpose. Every step counts because it gets us further along the path. “All of the larger-than-life questions about our presence here on earth and what gifts we have to offer are spiritual questions. To seek answers to these questions is to seek a sacred path.”— Lauren Artress in The Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron Barbie is a playful, sassy, funny, and robust comedy filled with complicated characters, ro...

Share Gloria (America Ferrera – pictured above with Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ariana Greenblatt as her daughter Sasha) lives in the Real World. Surprised to discover that even Stereotypical Barbie), a gorgeous blonde, can feel insecure, she explains why contemporary society is so difficult for women. Have you found this portrait to be true? “It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doi...

Artwork by: Emilia Melville, age 13Written by: Kavya Shah Time is the answer to most questions. Just broke up with your boyfriend? Time will heal you. Feeling anxious? The passing of time will help you focus. Unable to make people hear you? Time and growing up will add merit to your personality, hence giving you a platform for your voice. Most cultures, including mine, accentuate the power of time and give it a godly placement in society. It becomes the center of existence, facilitates the self-worth of individuals, emphasizes the need for the ...

Share Back-to-school might as well be a holiday. Like Christmas, it invites families to consume heavily. Like Rosh Hashanah, it is a season of anticipation. And like Valentine’s day, it can evoke strong and opposite emotions. There are as many ways to feel about the first day of school as there are students, teachers, and parents preparing for it. I admit to being a total nerd in my student days. I loved everything about the first day of school: the opportunity to organize and personalize subject binders, the thrill of meeting new teachers, and...

Share This little book offers an encounter between Celtic Christian spirituality and three religions born in the East: Hinduism (chapter 2), Buddhism (chapter 3), and Taoism (chapter 4). The author is a U.S.-based Protestant pastor by profession, but an interspiritual scholar and seeker by vocation. His book opens with a beautiful quotation from the English writer, Eden Phillpotts: “The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” This spirit informs all that follows. This is a book for wandering, for awe...

Share “What things have you unwittingly invested with power to make you happy or sad by their presence or absence? Remember, you can (and should) love people and enjoy things — and that will be even more rewarding on a nonattachment basis. Spend time considering that your happiness comes from within. Say to each attachment, 'I have cheated myself by believing that without you I cannot be happy.' “

The idea of foraging—whether for flowers, dye plants, or just decorative ones—has had a resurgence in recent years. But what is it? Isn’t it just a funny excuse for stealing your neighbor’s flowers? Foraging is, at its essence, about searching. Searching for herbs, berries, blossoms, and fruit for decorating or eating. Perhaps it is the search that makes this practice so intriguing in our modern world, forcing us to slow down and notice every nook and cranny as we scour the landscape for ingredients. Searching was exactly what I was doing when ...

Share Many people, coming upon a beach covered in plastic trash, either shake their heads sadly and walk away or pick up a few pieces and feel they have done their part for now to stem the tide of pollution. In this book, young Juma and his elder friend Babu Ali, see what looks like "a million different colored fish have washed up on the beach." Realizing that they're seeing flip-flops, they take a novel approach. Juma notices that one of the floating flip-flops looks like a boat, and Babu Ali is a master boat builder. Together, they hatch a pl...

Share “Our culture provides us with lenses that we see the world through. These lenses can be wide-angle or narrow, sharply focused or hazy, microscopic or telescopic, thus reducing, enlarging, obscuring, or clarifying our perceptions. Although we cannot function without these lenses, they are unavoidably clouded by preconceptions and prejudices, inhibitions, and the many limitations imposed on us by our cultural conditioning. If we are to develop our awareness more clearly, accurately, and fully, we must try to recognize and transcend these sc...

Share After a multimillion copy bestseller and a blockbuster movie starring Jack Lemmon, is there anyone who doesn’t know the name of Morrie Schwartz? Mitch Albom’s beautiful book, Tuesdays with Morrie, made the retired professor of sociology at Brandeis University famous. In this thick, engaging collection of Morrie’s own writings, compiled by his son, Rob Schwartz, Morrie’s wisdom comes alive once again. Rob explains in the opening paragraph of his foreword: “I rediscovered this manuscript … well after my dad has passed away. It was tucked in...

Share English writer Joan Aiken could have been describing Folktales for a Better World when she wrote that "from the beginning of the human race stories have been used ... as magic instruments of healing, of teaching, as a means of helping people come to terms with the fact that they continually have to face insoluble problems and unbearable realities." In these seven stories from Ethiopia, Sudan, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and China, readers come face-to-face with greed, cruelty, and seeds of violence, but only to show that generos...

Share This imminently practical book is designed to be a guide that you then discard or give away along with most of your other things. Except that author Light Watkins, also known for his work as a meditation instructor, asks the reader not to start by cleaning out closets or getting rid of the second car, but on the interior life. Exercises focusing on interior minimalism are offered inspirationally and often with detailed instructions. For example, “You are Spirit,” Watkins explains, explaining how this simple teaching allows you to “make im...

Share English writer Joan Aiken could have been describing Folktales for a Better World when she wrote that "from the beginning of the human race stories have been used ... as magic instruments of healing, of teaching, as a means of helping people come to terms with the fact that they continually have to face insoluble problems and unbearable realities." In these seven stories from Ethiopia, Sudan, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and China, readers come face-to-face with greed, cruelty, and seeds of violence, but only to show that generos...

Share “Hope is only a half-remembered dream behind a closed door. “All is lost. “God, this reality is a current so strong I feel certain, at least for now, that it will sweep us all away. “Could you bless this honesty that feels like despair? “Can we whisper that, somehow, blessed are we, with spirits starved for what is good? “Allow our eyes to see the small, sealed space where pain has isolated us. “We cry: God, help me. I can’t break out of this. So please, break in. Cut through the walls of this hard prison, and flood it with the light of y...

Share This is a book tailor-made for people seeking a daily spiritual practice. To glance at the table of contents is to see how one might put this book to practical use. 100 blessings, each two pages in length, are organized within ten categories. Here is a sampling from all of those categories. A blessing… For feeling like your work matters.For when you can’t sleep.For a little boost in the morning.For when disaster strikes.For this overwhelming day.For when you’ve been hurt by the church.For when you are afraid.For the givers who need to rec...

Let this darkness be a bell towerand you the bell. As you ring,what batters you becomes your strength.Move back and forth into the change.What is it like, such intensity of pain?If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.— Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus II On my last Sunday as a working minister, the choir in our congregation sang the soulful Irish hymn Be Thou My Vision. I sat rapt behind the pulpit, deeply moved, juxtaposing my own struggles with advanced glaucoma with this spiritual invitation to a wider vision. For the truth...

Mindfulness is, in short, the practice of being aware of what’s happening or what you’re experiencing in the present moment. It’s being here and now without judgment. This is a capacity that all human beings possess. Whenever you bring awareness to what you’re directly experiencing via your senses, or to your state of mind via your thoughts and emotions, you’re being mindful. Although more research is needed to illuminate the mechanisms at work, it’s clear that mindfulness allows us to interrupt automatic, reflexive fight, flight, or freeze rea...

Share “In order to live by your core principles and values, you have to know what they are. So here’s a quick thought experiment that will help you identify them: imagine that you are witnessing your own memorial service. Your family and friends are going up to the podium to offer reflections about your life. What would you want them to say about you? Would you want them to remark about how generous you were? How you found the humor in everyday situations? How you would often go out of your way to help those in need? How you always honored your...

Share Anger is a serious problem for all of us, no matter what we do or where we live. It is behind the violent behavior we hear about on the news; it is one of the causes of self-destructive addictions; it wrecks many intimate relationships; it animates the harm we do through gossip and negative talk about others; and it has been directly linked to heart attacks and high blood pressure. Anger is a multi-purpose emotion that attacks the body, mind, and soul. Anger is one letter short of "danger." Most likely you know the explosive power of ange...