Our globalized world lures us to crave more. The culture of “more” is a culture of not enough, accumulation and conquest, and sought but constantly deferred satiety. Every time we text message or update Instagram, researchers tell us that our brains loop in a dopamine cycle of neurological yearning.
...witnessing brave communities who have managed to hold onto Indigenous language and ways, and continue their advocacy for the Earth, is important. We can appreciate the Indigenous experience unfolding today as a model for what is happening to all of us.
Of course, the question was—after a century and a half of “Social Darwinism” claiming that it was all about competition, from the lowest to the highest—could our world now dominated by the shark-tank rubrics of business, economics, and politics adjust to this astounding news? Could it realize that because of this basic blunder about Darwin’s message, we had, in fact, ended up with dystopia instead of utopia?
The nomads and other Tibetans hold a reverence for the natural world, which ensures that they remain stewards of the land they have lived with for thousands of years. Small pockets of awareness of the land's magic, its sacredness, its deep inner value, still remain.
What I love in the world is asking something of me—not only to reflect its beauty, but also to express its vulnerability, its potential demise. I notice fewer songbirds returning to my water fountain each season. I am observing an absence. How do I articulate the hole in the picture, the silenced voice?
The gift hidden in our unprecedented world crisis is an equally unprecedented opportunity. My vision of the world? My hope for the future? This topic sounds a bit big. Allow me to start small—say, with crows. They are my special friends.
[Greta Thunberg's words] brought tears to my eyes, as my soul heard her speak about real care for the Earth—for this living, beautiful being who has given us life, who has nourished us with Her endless generosity, even as we have abused and desecrated Her, raped and pillaged Her body, which our culture regards greedily as just a “resource” for our endless use and abuse.
...this apparently material world is only the phenomenal representation of a much deeper universal reality. Such an assertion is not easily understood, but it does suggest that, if we accept the notion of a cosmic ecosystem, stewardship is not merely related to the material world of people and planet, but indeed is spiritual stewardship.
By Thomas Moore A dark night of the soul is a kind of initiation, taking you from one phase of life into another. You may have several dark nights in the course of your life because you are always becoming more of a person and entering life more fully.
