A World of Sound, by Kyle Holton
Men gather for annual dances during harvest season. Photograph by Kyle Holton Listening to the Yao of Mozambique For eight years, I lived in a village…
Inanna: Relevance and Return
The Sumerian Goddess Inanna came to the notice of modern women in 1983 when Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Kramer published Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth. But she first appeared…
Driving Lessons, by Snigdha Manickavel
Chennai, India. Photograph by aotaro Snigdha Manickavel spent part of her childhood in Edmonton, Canada, before moving with her family to the temple town of Chidambaram…
Maidens & Monsters, Betsy Cornwell
The Deeper Meaning of Fairy Tales “Little Red Riding Hood”, Jessie Willcox Smith, 1911 Don’t stray from the path. Don’t disobey. Don’t eat the apple, the…
Paths are Made by Walking, by Nipun Mehta
Nipun Mehta Walking, in our high-speed world, has fallen out of favor. The word “pedestrian” itself is used to describe something ordinary and commonplace. Yet, walking…
Love and Compassion in Meditation and Action, by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi
Photo by Chris Ensey from Unsplash.com THE NEED FOR LOVE AND COMPASSION Love and compassion are qualities essential to our stature as true human beings, and…
Meeting Remarkable Trees
Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.John Muir I would often engage my secondary school students in the childhood art of…
Arrernte Land
A jumble of buildings squatted some distance away, dark, and low. Not a sight I, at my age of eight, imagined part of Dad’s homeland. Funny how things stick in…
Prophets without Robes or Staffs
Greta Thunberg was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean on a rough day—high winds, high waves. She was traveling from Europe to North America by the only means she could accept,…
The Compassionate Warrior, by Elsa Marston
Abd el-Kader protecting Christians in 1860 Damascus Abd el-Kader (1808-1883) was an Algerian religious and military leader, a sharif (noble) and Sufi, elected Emir, or Commander…
Awakened Awareness
Awakened awareness practices focus on dis-identifying with the conceptual mind, specifically the false self or ego that we imagine ourselves to be. To call the ego a “false self” is…
Love and Money, by Richard Smoley
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS,” TWELFTH CENTURY, FRESCO, CASTELLO, APPIANO, ITALY Although love has existed as long as the human race itself, it was Jesus Christ…
Making God Necessary, by Deepak Chopra
Ritual offering of arghya at the Ganges. Varanasi, India, 2006. Photograph by J Duval Why God is a verb, not a noun The practice of medicine,…
In the Hands of the Sea
I went out into the garden, to the crag, and I sat on the bench and watched the light change in the sea; looking over the fields, the holy well, the…