Just as there are darkened seasons in human history—times when the structures sustaining civilization collapse in on themselves and humanity finds itself stiff-fisted, grasping at brittle branches, slipping between worlds—so too is every individual subject to phases of undoing in the metamorphosis of a lifetime.

Entering the chrysalis is rarely a matter of choice. We would resist if we could. One morning, we awaken with a pit in the stomach, a visceral unease that signals change even before we can name its source. Quite all of a sudden, we find we have entered a dream with no solid ground and no turning back. Loss feels imminent, along with the uncertainty of what comes next or how we will get there. We try to keep moving, mistaking busyness for control of circumstance. We hoist the blueprints of our former lives above our heads to keep them dry, trying to shore up what is already dissolving.

We try very hard, as all creatures do, not to die. Yet for the caterpillar, entering the chrysalis is a form of programmed death—a gruesome act of self-digestion. What can the larva comprehend of its own metamorphosis as it surrenders to darkness and enzymatic dissolution? Before it can be reconstituted, the caterpillar’s whole body must pupate—which is to say liquify. Epithelial cells breaking down, muscles and mandibles lysed by their own enzymes, the entire body reduced to a nutrient slurry.

Every winter, nature takes this serious turn. Fallen leaves coil in on themselves, roots retreat, seeds release, and stillness wraps the living world. Here’s orientation from a recent column in our cherished local magazine, the Santa Fe New Mexican —

“In winter, our arid steppe climate shows us the value of leaving things alone. Grasses left standing become shelter. Seed heads become sustenance. Evergreen shrubs offer cover from wind and predators when the world feels most exposed. What looks untidy to us is, in fact, a carefully balanced system of protection and patience. The garden does not ask us to fix it in January—only to witness it.”

The winter gardener knows not to try to fix such depression, but instead to witness and accompany the world beyond control. For the winter gardener recognizes the fallows as sanctuary, the outer casings of seed heads and pale grasses as fortresses of transformation, and death as a passage between birthing seasons. This is the winter gardener’s regenerative faith.

Similarly, with respect to human development, Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman called the chrysalis “a twilight between past, present, and future,” a place where the psyche must “tolerate annihilation—just long enough for the new form to begin assembling itself.” She described the sojourn of life as a series of “border crossings between what we were and what we cannot yet imagine.”

For the caterpillar, the dream of the butterfly is carried by imaginal cells—tiny, sac-like clusters that, through the primordial twilight of metamorphosis, give rise at last to compound eyes, scaled wings—a new and elegant anatomy. This is how a creature built for crawling holds within its body the imagination of flight.

In his 1910 Oxford lecture, The Birth of Humility, anthropologist Robert Ranulph Marett described metamorphic thresholds as “psycho-physical,” when body and mind falter so that “latent energies [may] gather strength for activity on a fresh plane.”

The most courageous way we can enter the chrysalis is with attunement. “Pause,” Marett wrote, “is the necessary condition of the development of all those higher purposes which make up the rational being.” James Baldwin attested that the darkest hour can “force a reconciliation between oneself and all one’s pain and error.” We cannot will ourselves to grow, for transformation is an act of presence, not power. But within the privacy of our consciousness, with patience and attention, we can rediscover the forces shaping our evolution and develop faith in what is becoming.

In Jungian terms, the collective mirrors the individual psyche: what deconstructs in the outer world—painfully, though necessarily—reflects what must be reimagined from within. Today, democratic principles and ecological balance are slipping from their axes. But, as Marett observed, “Not until the days of this period of chrysalis life have been painfully accomplished can [a person] emerge a new and glorified creature.”

Some silent, imaginal knowledge within us already knows the way. Here in the high desert, the earliest bloomers will soon appear: proof that the intelligence of life has been preparing the ground, all along, for the resurrection of some new and common beauty.

Together, we’re making sense of what it means to be human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Thank you for reading, sharing, ‘heart’ing, commenting, and subscribing to The Guest House.

+ Join next month’s yoga & meditation class on Thursday, Mar 12, at 9 am MT / 11 am ET. A replay will be shared via email shortly thereafter.

+ Find me at YogaSource in Santa Fe every Wednesday morning, 9-10:15 am MT / 11 am-12:15 pm ET for Dynamic Practice. This class is fully analog—live and in person. Register through the studio here.

+ I’ll be returning to two beloved places to offer retreats with friends in the coming year: Beyul Retreat, in the pristine wilderness surrounding Aspen, Colorado, May 21-25, 2026, with Wendelin Scott; AND world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland, Sept 20-26, 2026, with Erin Doerwald. Each retreat will feature yoga, meditation, farm-to-table meals, and curated outings—plus rest, nurturance, and imagination. Just a few spots left. Check out all the details here.

Nearing the end of January, I’m only beginning to feel the sinew of this new year. Here in the United States, we’re reckoning with what seems like a sudden surge of authoritarianism—though, as Hemingway reminds us in The Sun Also Rises, collapse happens “two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The hubris we’ve unleashed from within now sends shockwaves through the world, unmooring the institutions we’ve depended on and unsettling the nervous system of our species.

Staying human amidst the swirl has become a practice unto itself. We must maintain the pleasantries of our daily lives, yoke ourselves to the people and practices that organize and buoy the mind, and make actionable the indignance of our deeper values—all while sifting through the muck and shimmer of the collective unconscious.

Of those in privileged circumstances, many are divesting themselves of accountability or arming up for an uncertain future. Even a question like “How’s it going?” can land strangely if it feels insulated from the existential tremors of the moment.

Winter, of course, is the barest season. It’s a time when thin, long-shadowed light clarifies sight and stillness disciplines attention, when branches shiver as the wind exposes the decorative notions of warmer seasons.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with two friends, David Keplinger and Lindsay Whalen, whose companionship is like wool wrapped around the cold turnings of life. Our purpose was to interview Lindsay about the poet Mary Oliver—the subject of her forthcoming biography from Penguin Press—and to trace the threads of synchronicity and coherence among us.

I imagine that rendering anyone’s soul requires discipline and sustained concentration. But Mary’s life, as her poetry reflects, was singular, cloistered, and prolific, demanding of her biographer an uncommon devotion. In our conversation, Lindsay explained that she misses Mary less than she might another deceased friend, given that she remains in constant contact with her. Yet there’s one quality of Mary’s presence she said she misses: “When she looked at you, she really looked at you. It was a sustained gaze.” David, whose friendship with Mary spanned decades, smiled in agreement: “In her life, as in her work, she looked longer instead of looking away.”

The word concentration derives from the Latin concentrātiō, meaning “the action or act of coming together at a single place.” It breaks down to con- (“together, with”) + centrum (“center”)—literally “bringing to a common center.” Originally, it described physical gathering, such as converging on a single point, and later evolved to refer to mental focus.

In the prose collection Winter Hours, Mary distinguishes faith—“tensile, and cool, and [having] no need of words”—from hope, which she portrays more vigorously as “a fighter and a screamer.” And in her poem “The Clam,” we see how even a lowly, languageless creature is granted “a muscle that loves being alive.”

Winter, too, does this work, sucking vital force inward to the quick. Every living thing must concentrate to survive. Trees shunt sap to heartwood and root; slow-breathing bears dream of thaw; squirrels make their caloric calculations. Even seeds, dark-bound beneath frozen ground, aspire toward germination.

Hope, in this sense, is muscular. It is the fight to make the world a place we can live in. Not mere optimism, but the tender refusal to shut down in the face of suffering. It is the muscle that strengthens our will, linking imagination to endurance and promise to conviction.

I have attempted several commentaries on this deranged geopolitical moment, wishing to say to friends around the world that we have a long history of abusive power dynamics to reckon with in the U.S.—which is no excuse. But we also have citizens like Renée Good, whose last words were “I’m not mad at you.”

So, don’t give up on us.

Even winter seems uncertain now, bringing tepid temperatures and pallid light where once it cut clean. So we train our gaze on what’s alive and here. We look closer, we grope for strength, for the sinews of our common sense—those cords that connect fibrous muscle to bare bone. A blackbird’s caw splits a sodden field. Hope does not flinch; it fastens.

Together, we are making sense of being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Thank you for reading, sharing, ‘heart’ing, commenting, and subscribing to The Guest House.

Seven years after Mary Oliver’s death, her work feels even more vital, showing us how to love the world with its myriad faces.

In this episode, we have the sincere honor of speaking with biographer Lindsay Whalen, whose forthcoming book from Penguin Press explores the life behind the beloved poet. Our conversation ranges from the poet’s focus on real life and her famous anonymity to David’s and Lindsay’s shared experiences with Mary in the years they knew her.

Gathering these voices who represent the small group of surviving friends of the poet, the conversation goes deep into the links between Mary’s influence on Shawn’s practice as a yogi and therapist, David’s poetry, and Lindsay’s much-anticipated account of this singular human life.

Lindsay Whalen is writing the first biography of the poet Mary Oliver, forthcoming from The Penguin Press. She is the recipient of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowship and is a graduate of Brooklyn College’s MFA in Fiction. She began her career in publishing, and continues to work with authors as an independent editor.

Resource Links:

Learn more about Lindsay and her work:

Upcoming Seminar: Lindsay Whalen on Mary Oliver and “The Human Seasons” *Begins Jan 20, 2026. Scholarship applications due by Friday, Jan 16, 2026.

Instagram: @lwhalen13

NYMag Article: How Mary Oliver’s Biographer Finally Met the Legendary Poet

More from David - book releases, workshops, mindfulness talks, upcoming events, and more:

Website: Davidkeplingerpoetry.com

Instagram: @DavidKeplingerPoetry

Substack: Another Shore with David Keplinger

Substack Author Page: https://substack.com/@davidkeplinger

More from Shawn - free audio meditations, upcoming events, retreats, monthly essays, yoga classes, and music alchemy:

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Substack Author Page: https://substack.com/@shawnparell

Together, we’re being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Bless our work algorithmically with your <3s and comments, and share this post with a loved one. Paid subscriptions make this offering possible. Thank you!

You’re invited next September 20-26, 2026, to The Tender Harvest, a week-long retreat amidst the golden hues and organic bounty of the world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland. Each day will feature yoga, meditation, farm-to-table meals, and curated excursions—plus ample time for rest, self-nurturance, and imagination.

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I awake to the murmur of a boy speaking to his slumbering father. All night long, the darkening stillness of December had settled over the house, and, as usual, our son had scampered down the hall just before dawn, burrowed under a breathing mound of blankets, and reached toward whichever one of us was nearest. “I love you so much,” I hear my child sigh as he tucks himself beneath the warm weight of his father’s arm.

I have no language to measure such a moment, ordinary though it may seem. I have only an attention born of it, a residue of tenderness reminding me that somehow –however improbable, fleeting, and marvelous – we are here together, and here at all.

Later, diagonal rays of winter sunlight beam across the sky, a fact bright enough to leave an afterimage seared on the inside of my eyelids. Of this event, too, I keep only what impression remains: a momentary flash that lingers and softens.

Which brings me to the medicine of tenderness—our capacity not just to intellectualize or conceptualize, but to feel the invisible textures of this living world. The word “tender” shares its etymological parent, the Latin word tendere–meaning “to extend outward or upward, to stretch toward or hold out, to offer; to direct toward, to aim toward”–with the verb “to tend,” in the sense of caring for, but also with “intention,” “attention,” and “tenders,” the small boats that carry people or goods from larger vessels to shore.

A thruline here links the practices of intention and attention, guiding our consciousness toward what we care about, with a whole-bodied suppleness of presence. The metaphor of tender boats bridges the mutual nature of tenderness. How can one person’s practice of tenderness bring another to shore in a gradual and reciprocal softening of nervous systems? How is it that when one person rests with awareness in the tender weight of their body, heart, and mind, it can signal to another that their bruises are safe from further harm?

Ezra Klein recently shared an interview with Patti Smith, the iconic musician, writer, and visual artist—sometimes called the “godmother of punk”—who rejects those labels wholesale. With a shrug that suggests the humbler, deeper values of her practice, she says, “call me a worker.” I love her for that.

Many moments resonate in their conversation, but none so much as when she likens a good poem to a teardrop: “If you’re thirsty and you get that drop of water, it suddenly becomes the most welcome thing in the world.” My mind catches on what kind of thirst—what invisible needfulness—a good poem can satisfy. This is not the thirst of the yarrow or migrating whitethroat, not even the thirst of the bear in autumn. It seems a uniquely human thirst that calls out for the sincerity of real art.

On the subject of death and spiritual thirst, Mary Oliver wrote: “Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.”

I believe this kind of thirst, of the nature of wanting to understand and be nourished by the mystery of our existence—by the grace of what it means that we are alive and able to wonder at the circumstances of our aliveness—dwells somewhere beneath the surface of every human being. This thirst lives in the unseen currents of heartache, uncertainty, and longing that flow like water beneath a frozen river.

According to fellow poet Jane Hirshfield, Galway Kinnell once called “Tenderness” “the secret title of every good poem.” That line, for me, speaks to the particular mechanism within poetry that can meet such thirst. Tenderness is the dynamic tension between bearing witness to our shared fragility and strengthening our capacity for wholehearted presence and connection with ourselves and each other. It is the alchemy of kindness that can distill cold facts into feelings, thaw a hardened heart, and show us how we’re not alone. Like a teardrop, a gesture of tenderness can be small and exact, yet it can quench us with vital sustenance and healing.

Strangely, the image of a teardrop has seeped into my morning practice like a quiet teaching. As I reach for some nearby poem, my mind skidding over the uneven terrain of the hours ahead, I pause to take a breath, and it occurs to me: I can carry a teardrop inside this day. Most authentic mindfulness practices seem strange to the outer gaze, but their effectiveness lies in the specificity and earnestness with which we orient toward them. So, here it is: a useful practice, an invisible resource to mind my life. One way I am learning to soften.

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+ Join me every month for movement + meditation exclusively for paid supporters of The Guest House. Our next practice will be live on Thursday, December 18, at 9 am MT / 11 am ET, and will be shared via replay soon thereafter.

+ Back to a regular studio class! Join me at YogaSource in Santa Fe every Wednesday morning, 9-10:15 am MT / 11 am-12:15 pm ET for Dynamic Practice. This class is live and not recorded. Join in-person or virtually from home. Register directly through the studio here.

+ Two deeply envisioned retreats in the year to come: first at Beyul Retreat in the pristine wilderness surrounding Aspen, Colorado, for an extended Memorial Day weekend, May 21-25, 2026; then at world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland, September 20-26, 2026. All the details here.

Together, we are making sense of being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Thank you for reading, sharing, ‘heart’ing, commenting, and subscribing to The Guest House.

In conversation with poet Parker Palmer, we trace the quiet art of listening for one’s true vocation, the solace of circles where no one is fixed or saved, and the long, harrowed path toward a wholeness that does not deny its own fractures.

Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He is founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal, which supports people in every walk of life in nurturing deep integrity and relational trust for the sake of personal and social transformation.

Palmer holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, fourteen honorary doctorates, and two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association. Among his honors, he is a recipient of the William Rainey Harper Award, previously given to Margaret Mead, Elie Wiesel, and Paolo Freire. In 2021, the Freedom of Spirit Fund, a UK-based foundation, gave him their Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of work that promotes and protects spiritual freedom.

Palmer is the author of ten books—including several award-winning titles—that have sold over two and a half million copies and been translated into twenty languages. Anniversary editions of three of his books were issued in 2024: Healing the Heart of Democracy, A Hidden Wholeness, and Let Your Life Speak. An updated edition of On the Brink of Everything and a 30th anniversary edition of The Courage to Teach are due in late 2026.

Resource Links:

Learn more about Parker and his work:

Website: Center for Courage & Renewal

Substack: Living the Questions with Parker J. Palmer

Substack Author Page: https://substack.com/@parkerjpalmer861952

Facebook: Facebook Author Page

More from David - book releases, workshops, mindfulness talks, upcoming events, and more:

Website: Davidkeplingerpoetry.com

Instagram: @DavidKeplingerPoetry

Substack: Another Shore with David Keplinger

Substack Author Page: https://substack.com/@davidkeplinger

More from Shawn - free audio meditations, upcoming events, retreats, monthly essays, yoga classes, and music alchemy:

Website: Shawnparell.com

Instagram: @ShawnParell

Substack: The Guest House

Substack Author Page: https://substack.com/@shawnparell

Together, we’re being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Bless our work algorithmically with your <3s and comments, and share this post with a loved one. Paid subscriptions make this offering possible. Thank you!

You’re invited next September 20-26, 2026, to The Tender Harvest, a week-long retreat amidst the golden hues and organic bounty of the world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland. Each day will feature yoga, meditation, farm-to-table meals, and curated excursions—plus ample time for rest, self-nurturance, and imagination.

...

Hordur is a descendent of Vikings. To arrive at his farm—4,000 windswept acres in Iceland’s storied BrennuNjáls Saga—is to step into an atmosphere rich with the scent of sulfur and soil, into a dramatic expanse of earth blanketed under heavy, silver-wrapped clouds.

The light here is diffuse yet piercing, the landscape at once strange and wondrous—alive with an elemental force that reshapes the breath in our bodies as we ride through quick-watered rivers and cold, lush fields. I find my mind traversing the natural observations and human meanings of Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters:

“We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.”

Around a rustic dinner table of slow-cooked lamb and homegrown potatoes, Hordur shares some of his story with us. He recounts having lived abroad for decades, mastering the language of markets and margins in glass atriums of international finance—until, at fifty, an inexplicable, tectonic force called him home to the basalt and moss-softened fields that have cradled his lineage for a millennium.

He explains simply: “I wanted to raise Icelandic children.”“But what does that mean to you?” we press.

Hordur pauses briefly, then recalls the day his youngest, seven years old, began hitchhiking the thirty-minute ride from school. Through valleys quilted with lupine and sheep, she returned home each afternoon this way for a decade, delivered safely again and again by a series of outstretched hands.

To absolutely trust one’s human surroundings is unfathomable to most parents. It points to an agreement not imposed by law, but woven into the fabric of society over generations, more gradually grown than moss over volcanic rock.

It’s good to know communities on earth still exist where children are this safe. It’s good to know that somewhere, the fabled qualities of the village are alive and well.

In a climate forged by fire and ice, tenderness is a currency of survival. Iceland has no standing military and virtually no violent crime. Babies nap outside in woolen blankets. Winter’s deep darkness—which consumes all but three hours of each day—is not dulled by drinking at bars but thawed and warmed in local geothermal pools. And, in the northern town of Akureyri, stoplights shaped like glowing red hearts—signaling people to stop in the name of love—began appearing during the 2008 economic collapse as emblems of support and resilience.

One might be tempted to dismiss these signs of communal health as the baked-in benefits of a homogeneous culture, but the science and art of the commonweal warrant a deeper look.

With what conditions can safety pattern itself into a nervous system? How can our collective nervous system down-regulate from its ratcheting mistrust? These are the questions of our times if we are ever to find our way back to ourselves and each other. They have no right to go away when our mutual keeping hangs in the balance.

In the poem Small Kindnesses, Danusha Laméris writes:

“What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, ‘Here, have my seat,’ ‘Go ahead—you first,’ ‘I like your hat.’”

Years of teaching retreats in far-flung destination have sensitized me to Laméris’s notion of the “fleeting temples” we create. Strangers arrive without their creature comforts or daily certainties, often hesitant, eyeing each other warily, clutching their schedules and habits. Yet, by stepping into the strangeness of a new landscape and the invisible contours of each other’s lives, an organic, humanizing process begins to take shape. Stories and tinctures are exchanged; borrowed layers keep folks warm; adapters connect devices and new friends. Laughter begins to roll across the table. And then, on a long bus ride at day’s end, a head finds another’s shoulder to rest on: nascent, ephemeral, yes—but a temple nonetheless.

“We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange,” Laméris’ poem admits. Trust is woven where human beings sew threads of kindness, respect, generosity, and mutual accountability. Intrinsic to our nature is this capacity to lean in, but our dignified work is to thread and re-thread our humanity, even in a darkening season.

Stripped of the luxury of self-isolation, we confront what Annie Dillard refers to as “our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here.” This is our human weave, complex and inexplicable: the mycelium of our mutual existence.

The famous children’s book asks, “Do you like my hat?” “I like your hat.” A benign, basic affirmation—just enough to signal safety to a nervous system. But out of these small kindnesses—a compliment, a door held open, a gentle word—the labor of civilization can begin anew.

The day we return from Iceland, a vignette in juxtaposition: a grandmotherly figure spits an insult out the window of her car in our direction. My children freeze in the backseat, stunned by the woman’s venomous words and their unsparing ordinariness.

Laméris’ poem laments this modern ache:“Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other… We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back.”

When kindness is withheld, when someone’s pain is weaponized, some small but vital part in the mycelium tears. We feel the acute loneliness of being “far from tribe and fire,” and understand how the agitation that surrounds us gives tenderness more weight.

Years have passed since Hordur returned to Iceland. He spends his days farming garlic, carrots, and potatoes in coarse soil, raising lamb on mountain herbs. His horses belong to one of the world’s oldest breeds—descendants of ninth-century stock. They graze in grassy fields through every season, their manes wind-whipped and their temperaments famously resilient.

When asked how their nervous systems have evolved to be so even-keeled through the centuries, Hordur points out that Icelandic horses have no natural predators. They are exposed to the elements, he explains, and they prefer to weather Iceland’s brutal winters not alone in barn stalls, not in “an empty house” of creation, but with their fellow horses in an open field.

Together, we are making sense of being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Thank you for reading, sharing, ‘heart’ing, commenting, and subscribing to The Guest House.

In this conversation with Meditation teacher Nolitha Tsengiwe, we explore how silence, presence, and practice can help us meet the joy and impermanence of life.

Nolitha Tsengiwe is a Dharma teacher and board member at Dharmagiri Retreat Center in South Africa, which was founded by Kittisaro and Thanissara Weinberg. She has practiced since 1997 under Kittisaro and Thanissara, who are of Ajahn Chah’s lineage. In her first retreat with these beloved teachers, she discovered silence as a refuge and has never looked back. Nolitha completed the Community Dharma Leadership Program (CDL4) at Spirit Rock in 2014 and is a graduate of the IMS teacher training program from 2017 to 2021. Nolitha is a Psychologist and is trained in Karuna (Core process psychotherapy based on Buddhist principles) and Somatic Experiencing (SE). Has been a leadership development consultant and executive coach for over 20 years. She is a mother and teaches Biodanza (dance originated by Rolando Toro)

Resource Links:

Learn more about Nolitha and her work:

Website: couragetolead.co.za

More from David - book releases, workshops, mindfulness talks, upcoming events, and more:

Website: Davidkeplingerpoetry.com

Instagram: @DavidKeplingerPoetry

Substack: Another Shore with David Keplinger

Substack Author Page: https://substack.com/@davidkeplinger

More from Shawn - free audio meditations, upcoming events, retreats, monthly essays, yoga classes, and music alchemy:

Website: Shawnparell.com

Instagram: @ShawnParell

Substack: The Guest House

Substack Author Page: https://substack.com/@shawnparell

Together, we’re being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Bless our work algorithmically with your <3s and comments, and share this post with a loved one. Paid subscriptions make this offering possible. Thank you!

Adulthood has long been overlooked as a phase in human development. This is, in part, due to its implicit assumption of steadiness. Its shifting hues tend to be less dramatic than those of adolescence and elderhood, its moods less pronounced. Much of the time, we do the work of our lives, showing up for our common refrain while quietly learning to cultivate fulfillment on our own terms; our creative pursuits and revelatory practices often relegated to the margins of our daily lives.

We are exceptionally connected, balancing our digital and analog lives. We are so busy. There is so much to do. Who has time? Adults say these things in exasperation, grasping for affirmation or companionship in the midst of their grievances. But it’s true—to be in the human world today is to drink from a firehose of information. Plus, what depths are safe to plumb outside the sanctuary of a therapist’s office or a park bench with a trusted friend? The stakes of vulnerability are high. So high, in fact, that Brené Brown describes judgment as “the currency of the midlife realm.” By midlife, we are expected to have brought to fruition the aspirations of our earlier selves—to have reached a plateau of practicality and resolve. Cruising altitude, as they say.

Of course, we who inhabit or have inhabited the realm of adulthood know better. Inside the cornucopia of being human, spiraling inward from its bright surface, exist multitudes. Much like the tonal expressions of early autumn, the richer pigments of our psyche—previously concealed behind summer’s green façade—gradually reveal their layers to those who pay attention: ripening, sweetening, scenting the air with integration and maturation.

~

Today, I am writing from the belly of a meditation retreat at Vallecitos, among the ancient, indiscreet ponderosas of Northern New Mexico. Belly is a phrase I favor mid-retreat because it refers to the tender middle, the bellows, the digestive center. For five days, however brief an expanse of unclaimed hours, I have sat with myself in a wooden casita outfitted with a kerosene heater, a writing desk, and a chipmunk who makes neighborly visits to the stoop.

There is a shimmer to this mountain valley nestled deep in the Carson National Forest—a million-acre, many-voiced wilderness. Everything breathes here. Cold morning dew washes the meadows; afternoon shadows sweep the valley. Here, the pines thicken into themselves, aspens become jittery and luminous as they dry in the breeze, and just beneath my feet, lichen and mycelium weave their storied logic.

Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish neuroscientist who pioneered studies of the central nervous system at the turn of the 20th century, referred to neurons as “butterflies of the soul”—tender, erratic, natural, and necessary.

Most days, I am like most adults. I move through a slurry of data and directives, my nervous system siphoning thoughts, words, plans, and presences. Most days, my neurons do not feel like butterflies. But the land’s knack is to shed and replenish, to dwell and allow and transform. A stone stays in place while the river glides over its surface, gradually polishing its form. I recall a beloved teacher once describing enlightenment simply as no more raw edges.

There is a choreography to these days of sitting, walking, sweeping, sleeping; the routine is a slow, scaffolded unraveling. Contingent parts within me make themselves more visible to the naked eye: the part seeking a reprieve from boredom—hello, gorgeous organic berries at breakfast!—and the part that feels alive with fright on an unlit walk at night. The part that is slavish to comfort and sensitive to nonverbal exchanges in the lunch queue. The chronic clock-watcher who would count the hours until I see my family again…

But also, there is a solitude I am befriending in my adult years—a creative and patient companion self. My nervous system grows almost amphibious here: reflective, tremulous, equilibrating like the surface of the alpine ponds of this valley. I imagine myself like the ancient city of Venice, which, during its pandemic-mandated reprieve from the normal throngs of tourists, welcomed dolphins back to its capillaried canals.

I move through the forest, only to discover the strange phenomenon of the forest moving through me. The trees pass sideways; sunlight pitches down in mosaics, glancing off the backs of leaves. I rest on the round body of a pine, and the sound of critters, once a polite backdrop, sidles forward: bluebird, fox, nondescript scuttle from the bushes. The entire canopy hums—at me, through me—a polyphony the writer Amy Leach might call everybodyism, an ensemble of selfhoods.

It is, if anything, a kind of organization I find myself settling into: organism, order—these words sharing root and logic. The fractal arrangements of life in the forest transmit glimpses of my body’s own sophisticated animal intelligence. Each muscle adjusts moment by moment to the terrain, dynamic and improvisational. The mind may imagine it stands apart—thank you, Descartes, for teaching us to narrate ourselves from above—but the world refuses such neat separations. Artificial intelligence, with its disembodied schemes, cannot meet moss or kneel to converse with mushrooms as we can.

In her evening talk, Erin Treat, guiding teacher at Vallecitos, serendipitously shares the opening line from The Famished Road, a 1991 novel by Nigerian author Ben Okri that won the Booker Prize: “In the beginning, there was a river. The river became a road, and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river, it was always hungry.” I think of this teaching as I move between stone and stream, insights replenishing from nowhere I can name. Dusk gathers, cliff shadows lengthen, and a presence stirs the forest, calling wandering creatures home.

Together, we are making sense of being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Thank you for reading, sharing, ‘heart’ing, commenting, and subscribing to The Guest House.

In this episode, we talk with poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer about the grief that carries love through unimaginable loss—the death of a child—and of the daily practice of writing and mindful observation that dig the groundwork for self-forgiveness, compassion, and revelation.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her recent collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding. In 2024, she became poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief and love through poetry. Since 2006, she’s written a poem a day, sharing them on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. One-word mantra: Adjust.

Resource Links:

* Explore these paths into Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s work for poems that fall daily, books that gather what cannot be held, albums that sing through the dark, and talks that change the way we see.

Website: wordwoman.com

Daily poetry blog: A Hundred Falling Veils

Daily poetry app for your phone: The Poetic Path

Podcast on creative process: Emerging Form

Newest Books: The Unfolding, All the Honey

TEDx: The Art of Changing Metaphors

Poetry album on “Endarkenment”: Dark Praise

Poetry album on love in difficult times: Risking Love

* More from David - book releases, workshops, mindfulness talks, upcoming events, and more.

Website: Davidkeplingerpoetry.com

Instagram: @DavidKeplingerPoetry

Substack: Another Shore with David Keplinger

* More from Shawn - free audio meditations, upcoming events, retreats, monthly essays, yoga classes, and music alchemy.

Website: Shawnparell.com

Instagram: Shawn Parell

Substack: The Guest House

Together, we’re being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Bless our work algorithmically with your <3s and comments, and share this post with a loved one. Paid subscriptions make this offering possible. Thank you!

Welcome to The Guest House, a commonweal meditation on the complexities and creative potential of being human in an era of radical change. In Season Two, cohosts Shawn Parell and David Keplinger are exploring what Emily Dickinson called "Gem Tactics," the practices by which we polish our creative engagement with life.

These conversations and contemplative writings are offered freely, but subscriptions make our work possible. Bless us algorithmically by rating, reviewing, and sharing these episodes with friends—and please become a paid subscriber if you’re able. Thank you!

Poet David Keplinger joins The Guest House, and together we hold the doorway open to Gem Tactics—this season’s title—a term borrowed from a lesser-known Dickinson poem that refers to those small, faceted moves of inner cultivation that reveal the shape of a life.

In the first episode of our second season, we trace the filament between practice and mystery. Our talk initiates an exploration of how we live, why we listen, and what it means to accompany and be accompanied in a time when so much is unraveling. This is the scaffolding of what’s to come: a season shaped less by expertise than by earnest inquiry, less by answers than by wholehearted questions.

Resource Links

* Check out David’s meditation and essay on our season title - Gem Tactics: Why We Practice.

* More from David - book releases, workshops, mindfulness talks, upcoming events, and more.

Website: Davidkeplingerpoetry.com

Instagram: @DavidKeplingerPoetry

Substack: Another Shore with David Keplinger

* More from Shawn - free audio meditations, upcoming events, retreats, monthly essays, yoga classes, and music alchemy.

Website: Shawnparell.com

Instagram: @ShawnParell

Substack: The Guest House

Together, we are making sense of being human in an era of radical change. Your presence here matters. Bless our work algorithmically with your hearts and comments, and by sharing this post with a loved one. Paid subscriptions make this work possible. Thank you!