Nature Spirit

Toddling toward the center

August 9, 2016 Leave a Comment

Let yourself be silently drawn by the pull of what you really love. —Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks Three years ago I entered a period of transformation. Live long enough, and a few such times of change will catch up with you—often after a life loss, such as a death or divorce. This time transformation took… Read More…

Spirit and nature at Serpent Mound

August 2, 2016 2 Comments

I went on a pilgrimage a while back, revisiting my home state of Ohio. I say “revisiting” because on that trip I saw a side of Ohio I had never seen before: sacred sites built by the first people of the land. The highlight was an enormous earthen effigy mound in southern Ohio called Serpent… Read More…

Snuggle for survival

July 25, 2016 5 Comments

The phrase leaped out at me—from the pages of Scientific American, no less. Martin Nowak, a mathematician, biologist, and director of a program in evolutionary theory at Harvard, was arguing that cooperation, not just competition, advances evolution. In Nowak’s words: Life is therefore not just a struggle for survival—it is also, one might say, a… Read More…

Natural spirits

July 18, 2016 4 Comments

In a recent interview on 13.7, NPR’s opinion blog about “Cosmos and Culture,” theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser says, Spirituality is a word that has been kidnapped by religion and that invokes the existence of supernatural spirits and the like. He sees things differently: I use the word in a very different way, as an expression… Read More…

The terror of letting go

July 11, 2016 Leave a Comment

A reader, Gwen, commented about the terror that arises when a person gives up old certainties. Here’s how I felt that fear in a new way. A few months ago I received an email from a friend I’ve known for decades. I’ll fuzz the details here to blur her identity. Recently, after raising a family,… Read More…

What Is natural? What Is supernatural?

July 4, 2016 Leave a Comment

“Natural” and “supernatural” used to be easy to tell apart. The natural world followed laws of nature—in short, anything we can see and touch. The supernatural did not. Mind-body split The division makes sense if you accept the idea of Descartes (borrowed from Plato and the Greeks) that mind and body are separate. After Descartes,… Read More…

Nature :: Spirit

the blog of Priscilla Stuckey