Sangha of Auspicious Companions

July 15, 2023

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Carrie Newcomer: Asking the Right Questions in Song

Carrie Newcomer is an American performer, singer, songwriter, recording artist, author and educator. The Boston Globe described her as a “prairie mystic” and Rolling Stone wrote that she is one who “asks all the right questions.” According to a 2014 PBS “Religion and Ethics” interview, Newcomer is a conversational, introspective songwriter who “celebrates and savors the ordinary sacred moments of life and champions interfaith dialogue and progressive spiritualty.” Krista Tippett notes that Carrie is “best known for her story-songs that get at the raw and redemptive edges of human reality.” In this interview that took place in the early days of the pandemic, Carrie shares beautiful musings, music and more. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out this recording of Carrie Newcomer’s song, “Holy as the Day is Spent.” { more }

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July 14, 2023

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Love’s Work: Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting it Wrong

“”There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love,” the humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in his classic on the art of loving. In some sense, no love ever fails, for no experience is ever wasted — even the most harrowing becomes compost for our growth, fodder for our combinatorial creativity. But in another, it is indeed astonishing how often we get love wrong — how, over and over, it stokes our hopes and breaks our hearts and hurls us onto the cold hard baseboards of our being, flattened by defeat and despair, and how, over and over, we rise again and hurl ourselves back at the dream of it, the delirium of it, the everlasting wonder of it. How to go on doing it undefeated is what British philosopher Gillian Rose examines in her part-memoir, part-reckoning Love’s Work (public library), written in the final years of her prolific and passionate life, and published just before her untimely death of ovarian cancer.” Maria Popova shares more. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out “Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss.” { more }

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The Danger of Silence

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July 13, 2023

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Never the Same River Twice

“”Before I arrived in Japan, I was intoxicated by its tradition of wandering poets. They weren’t roaming around lakes and hills like Wordsworth, but proceeding along a rough, pointed path, in the way of Matsuo Basho. His most famous work–Narrow Road to the Interior–could suggest both the remote areas of northern Japan through which he was walking, and the inner terrain that the act of walking would awaken. Monks in the Zen tradition are called unsui–“drifting like clouds, flowing like water”–to enforce the sense that they follow Buddha on his daily path, sometimes quite literally as they walk around each morning with begging bowls, collecting food. The destination is never the thing; some temples in Kyoto, twenty miles away, greet me at the entrance with Japanese characters on the ground that mean, “Look beneath your feet.” Everything you need is here, in other words, if only you’re wide-awake enough to see it.”” Pico Iyer shares more in this meditative piece. { read more }

Be The Change

Take the path you took yesterday– and see what forms of newness shimmer forth.

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July 12, 2023

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Murmurations: Breaking is Part of Healing

“The material world is necessarily temporary, and it is only a matter of how deep we are willing to look, how far into the past and future we are willing to consider, to understand this. If you don’t believe me, look at the ruins of every society that has predated us on this planet. Remember that the matter that makes up our moon and planet is the dust of stars exploding in other galaxies. Remember that we can be partially made of stardust only because stars die. Death is a non-negotiable aspect of the pattern of life for most creatures we are aware of. (With the exception of immortal jellyfish, tardigrades, and turtles who don’t come across humans.) For humans and most species we have encountered on Earth–and even for most celestial bodies–there is a life cycle that includes death.” { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out Krista Tippett’s interview with adrienne maree brown here, “We are in a time of new suns.” { more }

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July 11, 2023

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A Prickly Pear History Lesson

“Summer monsoons in the Southwestern Sonoran Desert produce a wild bounty of crimson fruit. Rising from Engelmann’s prickly pear cacti (Opuntia engelmannii), these fruits, or tuna in Spanish, perch atop Mickey Mouse-shaped pads like ruby crowns. Against muted browns and greens of the desert, the tuna are eye-popping. When I landed in Tucson for graduate school more than thirty years ago, I was amazed to learn the spine-covered fruits were edible. I sent store-bought prickly pear jelly back home to midwestern friends for the holidays, its dazzling pink hue a cheeky reminder of the deserts December sunshine. I knew, though, that with enough determination, I could put up my own preserves from foraged fruit just as my Kansas grandmother had canned foods from her garden. When I realized I wasn’t moving after a decade of desert living, I decided to see if harvesting prickly pear fruit could connect me to the native foodways of my adopted home.” More in this essay by Lisa K. Harris. { read more }

Be The Change

Reflect on a plant or tree that connects you to the place you grew up in. What does it signify to you?

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Inspiring Links of the Week

July 10, 2023

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Giving Up on Your Dreams

“Perhaps being prudent in dreams also comes down to having a sound sense of self. By rejecting the expectations imposed by others, you can devote time and effort towards what truly works for you, such as growing stout and taking up track and field. Such is the case for the Somali ostrich, soundest and heaviest of all living birds. Not needing to train his pecs for flight means that every day becomes leg day, as the ostrich might disclose during one of his rare, non-ditzy moments, when he isnt strutting around showing off his dressy ruffled feathers and blue-hued gams or boasting his half-marathon times against any four-legged creature under the African sun. When pressed for secrets on his terrestrial lifestyle, he may choose to respond in his own peculiar way, by unsquiggling his seventeen-vertebrae rubberneck to stare through you with billiard ball-sized eyes before bouncing off like a shot! Sprinting past in a blur! Thus you will receive a living reminder that dreams are not mere ends to aspire towards, but acts to be enacted and embodied, and here one is, on full display by one with a heart thrice your size, and with such spring in each two-toed, tendon-taut step. Exercising the right dream to its fullest extent can encompass ones whole body, ones whole being, an entire life. And it can be complete. And it can be enough.” In an essay that is by quick turns playful, informative, philosophical, and wonder-full, Issac Yuen explores the teeming diversity of Earth’s non-human dreamers and their gloriously ungovernable dreams. { read more }

Be The Change

What kind of a dreamer are you? Daunted? Incorrigible? Modest? Obsessed? Embodied? Practical? Enigmatic– or–? How is your own nature reflected in the nature of your dreams?

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July 9, 2023

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Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

“In fact, human beings do not see very well. The brain itself makes assumptions about what it is seeing, and can actually can change perceptions to fit its assumptions. You may be familiar with the so-called constancies, perceptual constancy, form constancy, and concept constancy. This means that the brain, which is always looking for easy ways to do things, makes quick assumptions about perceptions based on its previous knowledge. And often these assumptions are wrong. Learning to draw can help to make one’s perceptions fit more closely with reality. First of all, drawing teaches accurate perception–how to see what is really out there. Second, perceptual skills learned through drawing can transfer usefully to other fields…” More in this fascinating interview with Betty Edwards, author of, the best-selling book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” First published in 1979, it has inspired millions of people around the world to hone their perception, and discover their inner artist. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out this interview with Betty on, “Learning to Draw for Thinking’s Sake.” { more }

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