Michael Gray

Michael Gray is the author of The Flying Caterpillar, a memoir, and the novels Asleep at the Wheel of Time, about whales, aliens, and humans, and Falling on the Bright Side, about his experience working with the disabled, and Winter Came Early: Reflections on outliving my son“, about his beloved son Jon who ended his life in 2019 at the age of 27. He is the cofounder of Friends in Time (a nonprofit he founded with a friend who has ALS), and past board president of New Mexico Parkinson’s Coalition and Pathways Academy (a school for kids with autism and other learning issues). A regular contributor to various journals, Gray also writes a weekly blog on www.michaelgrayauthor.com.

Michael Gray in Kosmos

The Unbroken Field

A contemplative essay weaving Tarthang Tulku’s Time–Space–Knowledge vision with quantum theory, grief, and the longing for coherence in a fractured world. Through personal loss, philosophical inquiry, and a search for belonging, the author explores how openness, interconnection, and spacious awareness may form a field large enough to hold human suffering and renewal.

Published in Volume 25 Issue 6

Gaia Within | Choosing Care in an Unraveling World

Time might bring back the coral reefs and provide space for species that are not yet extinct to rebuild their populations. Forests could reclaim hillsides while birds, butterflies, and bees construct their nests and hives in their shade. But how can our species survive when we choose leaders who are blind to the living intelligence that created us?

Published in Volume 25 Issue 1

Between the Inner and Outer Worlds

Perhaps the living pulse that runs through the network of connections which makes up our life on Earth, and which allows us to fathom a greater, unifying wholeness, is gratitude for what already is.

Published in Volume 18 Issue 2

A Cry for Help

I like to consider myself a helper, but when our son, Jon, took his life on Easter weekend of 2019, I could no longer think of myself as a successful helper. In my own eyes, I instantly became a failed one.

Published in Volume 19 Issue 4

Reflections on Outliving My Son

“My own life now lies scattered across the floor. But I know that the bridge between the breakdown of everything I thought I knew and the other shore that waits for me can only be crossed with a willingness to see Jon and myself anew.“

Published in Volume 22 Issue 1

Searching for What We Already Know

I suspect that we can only find our way in the openness of space when we realize that we are already flying in it. It is the very openness of space, surrounding and filling us, that holds us aloft.

Published in Volume 21 Issue 4

Listening to our Hearts

Since the death of my son two years ago, and in the ways that I have tried to fill the emptiness he left behind, I have encountered a yearning to discover a soul inside me; since only then can I believe that my son, Jon, sailed away safely in his.

Published in Volume 21 Issue 1

Five Centuries of Self-Quarantine

I recently attended a talk by a Mamo of the Arhuaco—a teacher-priest charged with "maintaining the natural order of the world." His people have lived on the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountain in Colombia, isolated from the industrial world for centuries.

Published in Volume 20 Issue 3

Coming Soon

The Village Way

Practices for Belonging in a Fragmented World

For thousands of years, we lived according to the principles of village life. Then, around the 14th Century, our lives were reorganized by rulers around growth and accumulation – often at the cost of community, equity, and the living Earth. What would it mean to return to simplicity, and mutual care?

Join us for a 9-month inquiry into this question, exploring how we participate together in a time that calls us back to community, resilience, and shared life,