Discover, Find, and Gather

In Qi Gong, at least in the ad hoc mongrel form I practice, there are three opening phases in our relationship to Qi, to the life force. I do not approach Qi Gong, or anything in life, from within whatever might pass for a mystical view. I do not willingly bring beliefs to any confrontation

Imagination’s Roots

Imagination is a garbled concept today. We tie it into our obsessions with desire and wish fulfillment. In this way we see imagination as synonymous with fantasy – again in its current accepted meaning, as related to pleasant wishes. When we discover a failure of imagination we are looking at something else entirely. It’s not

Rivers of Blood

Listening to much of the conversation between Paul Kingsnorth, Leire Keith, and David Abram in this podcast from Orion Magazine, I am left with a snippet, I’ve used as a title for this post. Rivers of Blood. I must admit, I can only intuit the context. After listening to most of the first half, I

What is

Listening to, or reading Krishnamurti, as he gives a talk, has been something I’ve had to ease myself into. It’s funny, the same has been true of David Bohm, of John Berger, of David Abram – my first reading of the Dark Mountain Manifesto! There is a floodgate of excitement that threatens to over power

Fighting Injustice/Confronting Abuse, part I

I was recently reminded of the “value of anger.” “How else can we motivate ourselves to fight injustice?” How can anyone be against such a notion! And then to go on and actually question not just the role of anger, but fighting injustice itself? Inconceivable! Yet, that’s exactly where I find myself. I’ve written on

Craft’s Collision with Civilization, a starting point

Andrew Taggart recently asked me to clarify how I see the deterioration and loss of Craft resulting from its confrontation with civilization. This is a big question! Let’s begin with a few definitions. I’m beginning to see Craft as a central focal point in examining how our confrontation with civilization has led us to where

Crafting Awareness

Skeins of various threads spiral around me. Their common center may be craft. Craft. It’s an interesting word. It seems straightforward enough at first glance but once we start to look more closely it expands. There’s a broadness to it. It means making. It also means a vessel that transports us. It denotes a variety

On Conservatism

Humans have been profoundly conservative for most of our existence. That statement is rendered meaningless if we take conservatism to mean what is sold in its name today, or believe in what passes for the span of human existence as our self-professed conservatives would insist it to have been. Let’s pry the term away from

Dark Mountain 2

The Dark Mountain 2 anthology is out! Follow the link to the announcement on their site. I’m deeply honored to have a chapter from my novel, Something for Nothing included along with this incredible list of poets, writers, and thinkers. Naomi Klein, David Abram, Vinay Gupta, Paul Kingsnorth, Glyn Hughes, Luanne Armstrong, Charles Hugh Smith,

The World, or the world…

I’ve attempted to carve out distinctions and definitions on a regular basis here. Then I’ve backslid and muddied the waters again and again by letting ambiguity and habit blur these distinctions. Maintaining a vocabulary requires the patience of an archeologist, wiping away the dust of the millennia as a current erupting volcano sifts down a

Action without Striving

This concept appears to be the most difficult to comprehend. It’s also the one I’ve had the greatest difficulty discussing. We tie our notions of action so tightly to the process of striving. We cannot seem to imagine one without the other. We tend to fall back on rationalizations that to reject striving is to

“Movement” toward Dialogue

Along with other actions in which we allow a switch from striving-to-become to simply manifesting an experience of Being, this form of dialogue nurtures the conditions that help us get out of the illusions of Ego and the habits of our brains. Beyond that, it is a fulfillment of our interconnectedness and a refusal to treat the “other” as a commodity, or a means to an end.