I still remember the event that made me into an environmentalist. I was seven or eight years old, standing outside with my father watching a large flock of starlings fly past. “That’s a big flock of birds,” I said. My father told me then about the passenger pigeon, whose flocks once filled the skies, so vast that they stretched from…
We know only too well the story that defines our world today. It is a tale of consumerism and greed, sustained by the empty but enticing promise of an endless stream of “stuff” as the source of our happiness and well-being. Some of us are finally coming to recognize the self-destructive madness of this myth, how we are ravaging our…
Organizations struggle with constant change. Or, rather, it’s the employees who struggle with the relentless changes that disrupts their lives and mounts their stress. The problem is there is never enough change management resource to truly help our employees. The responsibility of helping people through change, or ‘change management’ tends to fall upon leaders, change managers, project managers or human…
“Only the contemplative mind has the ability to hold the reality of what is and the possibility of what could be.” -Richard Rohr Reading the headlines these days is a sure way to experience fear and despair. This is especially true about climate change and the environment. After all, what good news is there when Scott Pruitt is finally forced…
A recent New York Times article entitled “Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?” discussed the phenomenon of “going gray”: purposefully changing one’s phone screen from color to grayscale in order to make it a less alluring and addicting object. After a few days of going gray, the author notes, “It’s remarkable how well it has eased my…
“Drowning in information, starving in wisdom,” E.O. Wilson remarked at the turn of the century. Today, thanks to the stream of news and notifications we get through our smartphones and other devices, our mental lives are more fragmented than ever. In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, it has never been easier to run away from ourselves. The “attention economy”…
An inch of water wobbles in the handmade bowl cupped between my hands. I raise the clay vessel to the cloudless sky, praising rains long past for nourishing the land, for allowing streams to flow, for recharging the subterranean aquifer whose miracle waters runs through my household tap. Although right now no water comes through the tap; something has gone…
When you were a child, did you ever chant words to yourself, over and over? Did you love the way that made you feel? I don’t think I’ve ever met a young child who isn’t entranced by the way a word or phrase can turn to magic through rhythm and chant. As we grow, we tend to suppress our love…