Nature :: Spirit
Exploring kinship in a living, animate world
Showing 12 essays tagged connecting with nature
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61. The Language of Nonspeaking Beings
And what a bougainvillea taught me about how long it can take to step into a kinship world
Dec 16, 2025
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54. Seeing Each Leaf as a Separate Thing
And why talking with trees is the start of real learning
Jan 17, 2025
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49. Just Listening
As if the surest foundation for life is none at all, just listening. Simply listening.
Apr 13, 2024
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33. Being Autistic
On getting diagnosed in my 60s, reviewing life in light of new self-knowledge, and cutting through old stereotypes
May 15, 2022
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32. Kissed by a Fox: From the Audiobook Coming Soon!
Did I really get kissed by a fox? Yes, many times! How I got to know Rudy, the red fox at the wildlife rehab center
Apr 16, 2022
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28. Seeing Each Leaf
Insights from a Yurok man, shared with an anthropologist, for learning from the spirit of a tree
Oct 29, 2021
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16. Loving the Earth: A New Traditional Value
Choosing different values, with Xiye Bastida (Otomi-Toltec) of the climate movement; Nemonte Nenquimo (Waorani) of the Amazon rainforest; and Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi), a Great Lakes writer of 1893
Oct 16, 2020
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14. Everything Is Alive and We Are All Relatives
On the philosophy shared by Indigenous people around the world; some wise words from Hawaiian philosopher Manulani Aluli Meyer; and how to open your heart to the land-community where you live
Sep 18, 2020
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13. Finding Beauty in Tough Times
On enjoying beauty even when the world is burning, inspired by the pianist of Theresienstadt, Alice Herz-Sommer; and how to find our own place in the beauty and Great Becoming of nature
Sep 4, 2020
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12. Love in a Time of Catastrophe
How connecting with nature opens the flow of love in the heart, inspired by an essay by Barry Lopez; plus, a few everyday practices for connecting with nature from home
Aug 21, 2020
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6. Finding the Way of the Heart
In a society that follows the mind—thinking and planning and goal setting—what does it look like to follow the heart?
Jul 10, 2020
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We have to put the health of the Earth absolutely first. It will mean listening with humility to what the animals and plants and trees and insects need to thrive. It will mean putting their needs first, for they were here first; they prepared the Earth to be friendly to human evolution. Our lives depend on their lives, our health on their health. It will mean loving the Earth, the body of us all. Transforming the law to value ownership less, and health and life more.