We live in a time of great uncertainty, with the triple threat of increasingly volatile climate change, political polarization, and income inequality. It feels like the political, economic, and governance systems of our civilization are not only unequal to these challenges, but being fractured by them. In times of great uncertainty, people tend to grasp at leaders with views they…
Joan Borysenko, author of Pocketful of Miracles, writes of December: [It is]. . ‘the month in which all the forces of nature are aligned to help us give birth to the light within. Midwinter has cast a spell over the land and all of nature sleeps. Members of the human tribe gather by the fire to hear the old stories…
Think about your local walk to the park. You head down that shady street, turn left at the corner store, cut up that little alleyway, and – voila! – you are surrounded by bounding dogs, trees, and giggling children. Or maybe not. Maybe you have to navigate an urban obstacle course littered with poorly thought out street crossings, concrete corridors,…
This past weekend I was at a wedding in Vermont. The groom has been a friend for over two decades. And like all the rest of his friends, I was so happy that he had found love, especially after the pain and loss of his first wife’s illness and passing. It was bittersweet; the ache and grief were still there,…
As I write this, another holiday season is passing into memory while the current year expires and a new one waits to be born. With the Winter Solstice just past, the days are once again lengthening even as they turn colder in the long months before the green pulse of spring quickens and growth returns to the land. This particular…
The trail through the snow was easy enough to follow at night, without a flashlight to show the way. Pausing occasionally, I’d wait until my eyes could discern the subtly darker shadow that snaked through a stand of fir and pine: a trail carved by my boots and supplemented by occasional moose, maybe elk or coyote. On the blackest nights,…
Humankind’s ability to thrive in a changing world depends on a major overhaul of the way cities are built and organized, and a dramatic increase in the amount of land protected for the sake of biodiversity. Those were key components of the Garrison’s Institute’s recent symposium, Pathways to Planetary Health (April 17-19, 2018), along with regenerative economics and pervasive altruism.…
It is a beautiful, sunny day not long before the summer solstice and I am hiking once again in the mountains near my home in western North Carolina. For weeks before this, the late spring sky has been overcast, or it has rained – seemingly non-stop in dismal and uncharacteristic bouts of oppressively tropical humidity followed by sudden and torrential…