Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world

How can we solve the problem of greed? Most people think we can’t; it’s just human nature. But being pessimistic about human nature is just a choice—and a choice that won’t help us build the world we want. Today, we look at how we learned to think poorly of ourselves, how we built it into the social systems we live by, and what we can do to change it. We look for inspiration at two Indigenous traditions, who solve the problem of greed in creative ways.

Did you know the Earth has a hum? It's way too low to hear with our physical ears, but there are ways to enjoy it anyway, and today we explore one of them: a guided meditation to hear the ultra-low humming of the Earth. This meditation will take us into the ocean, which is the actual source of most of the hum—because visiting the ocean, even in our imaginations, is deeply soothing and refreshing. So here is a guided meditation for experiencing the power and gentle support of the Earth. (The meditation itself begins in the audio at 11:44.)

Why does wealth have such a tight hold on people’s imaginations? Today we look at the origins of inequality in Western cultures, going back 5000 years to the carvings on an alabaster vase from Mesopotamia. The show a harvest ritual that was also a wedding, a culminating event that brought together heaven and earth. Looking closely at the images on the vase shows how hierarchy, when it gives a few people permission to control others, damages the whole society’s connection with nature.

People often think nature spirituality is about love and inspiration, and politics is something else entirely. So today we explore how connecting with nature means connecting with nature’s ways—aligning our lives, including our social and political lives, with the natural world. And how this means honoring and respecting the spirit in each person so that they may live as sovereign beings, free of repressive authority. We take a brief look at the authoritarian history in Europe, the land of my ancestors, and how I was introduced to a different model of community—a different kind of politics—by two people of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso.

The bougainvillea around my kitchen window many years ago showed me something so precious that it changed me for good. It helped me work my slow way beyond the dualistic world of Descartes and toward a world of kinship. Today, some reflections on the decades it can take to step into a relational worldview, a world where every being and element in nature is alive, everyone is speaking, and everyone has wisdom to share.

A morning filled with hope and joy on Maui as volunteers gather at a greenhouse to care for the plants who will help to restore the native dryland forest at the top of Haleakalã. Reflecting on what it means to live in a sacred way.

Wading into the troubled waters of election integrity. There's a new field of study called election forensics that applies statistical analysis to public election data. Careful analysis of the 2024 election is raising some serious questions.

To stand up to fascism, the most important thing we can do, every day, is to plant ourselves firmly in the truth. We talk today about how we recognize what is true—by finding the place of the heart. Guided by Ilarion Merculieff of the Unangan people of the Pribilof Islands and by my own teacher, we reflect on the differences between linear thinking and the awareness arising in the heart. We talk about how finding the heart means taking a vacation from the thinking mind and entering a place of greater ease and spaciousness, where we can lead with empathy and letting-be. Centering oneself in the heart, every day, leads to clear perception and wiser, humbler ways of living.

Third in a series on living in authoritarian times. Today: staying seated in the firmness of our own knowing, our own heart. We look at three daily practices for support: Touching silence, touching joy, and touching Earth. Each of them helps us declare daily independence from those who would try to control us, building a foundation of resistance from the inside out. And a close look at my own daily practice combining all three: waking up with the birds and enjoying the dawn chorus.

Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, grabs me hard because her story resonates so deeply with mine. So today I use both of our stories to explore mental abuse or epistemic abuse—attacking the mind of another, trying to control how and what they think. It’s key to authoritarianism. And we explore the 2000-year-old form of authoritarianism in Western history and how it rests on a religious idea that took hold as Rome was crumbling. The fixes we need today run even deeper than education because the academy too is rooted in authoritarian patterns, as Indigenous thinkers such as Daniel Wildcat (Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma) and Ilarion Merculieff (Unangan) remind us. We need a new worldview—one that begins with the knowing inside us, honoring the waters of life within each one.