The concept of “composting grief’’ resonates as a way of transforming energy into a renewed sense of purpose and growth. I think of this as transmutation or snake medicine: sound, meditation, selfless service, praying, nature, movement. I propose that we explore the concept of a symbiotic relationship between human grief and its impact on the underground microbial life—the microbiome
"As I watch the full moon rise above the dark skies of Gaza, all I can think of is the state of moral bankruptcy in the world that has allowed this genocide to go on for more than a year. Amid all of this, how do we – Palestinians still surviving in Gaza – preserve our humanity? How do we maintain our moral compass when everything around us is urging us to let it go?"
"Numerous reports and pictures of what’s happening in Haiti would have one believe that the Haitian people are incapable of running their own country and that an intervention from the “international community” is necessary. However, clarity comes by way of understanding history; history explains why, as Frederick Douglass said, Haiti has not yet been forgiven."
Like hospice for people, Earth Hospice is a way of saying goodbye to what we are losing in the natural world with the same mindfulness we would wish to bring to the bedside of a dying person. We bear witness to what is passing—from our lawns, our riverbanks, our bird feeders, our winters and summers, our livelihoods and our expectations of the future, as we declare over and over again: I will not turn away.
In December 2007, I was asked to participate in, Pulling Down, an exhibition and performances about the Holocaust, honoring the Day of Memory, held at the auditorium in Rome, Italy in January 2008. I was staying in the neighborhood of the Jewish Ghetto…
...The car is now standing still. I smell the disaster before I see it. A smell of fuel and burnt steel. Where are the kids? Not in the car. I look for them on the highway. I find their bodies. I take care of them until ambulances arrive. While running from one child to another, I discover strength in me.
Each quilt represents countless lives lost on border ground, a hundred-mile strip of geography spanning two countries. The interstitial border region has morphed into a distinct culture of its own and the quilts, with their binational contributors, fly its flag.
A candidate for soul initiation knows what she has taken on. She’s preparing to die in order to be reborn. She must abandon her old home to set out for her new home. She longs for the journey but is understandably terrified by the prospect.
As a spirit traveling through matter on a journey towards an unknown event horizon, poetry has been a record and exploration of the inner experience, thoughts, and feelings of this human voyage in a world that is beautiful, mysterious, radiant, and at times terrifying.
