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…
What were you doing 11 years ago? Do you remember? I remember very well what I was doing in spring of 2008—looking for a new job. I was looking for a new job because it had become clear to me then that the job I had would be gone by the end of the year. As it turned out, many…
Mary Pipher is the bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia and other books and her latest, Women Rowing North, is a contemplative guide, womanifesto, and reframing of our idea of aging. She is a therapist and writer based in Nebraska, straddling several political, professional, spiritual, and generational circles in her community. We talked about what it means to age, the importance…
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…
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…
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…