Sangha of Auspicious Companions

July 18, 2023

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The Medicine of Memory

“Every life is like a day. We begin the night before and, in the darkness, we are formed as a word that strikes a spark. This spark lands like a seed coming to the ground in the soul of the womb. Then miraculous growth pulses like wildfirean unstoppable explosion of unimaginable geniusthe exponential roar of universal proportion. Every life well-lived holds in its hearts core the knowing that all life is formed from the dust and back to dust disintegrates. We wake up from the sleep of the cosmos and, in the evening, we prepare to return to that great, mysterious darkness once more. The trinity of dying, death, and grief is part of one great movement, each a particular primary color on the spectrum of passing back into the night from where we came.” Singer, composer and leadership coach Owen O’Suilleabhain shares more in this moving meditation on memory, grief, healing and regeneration. { read more }

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Learn more about Owen’s work and journey here. { more }

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Inspiring Links of the Week

July 17, 2023

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Honey Church

“Our first summer in Baltimore. The first year of our marriage–your only marriage, my second one–when my kid became our kid. This house, our home. We watched the parade of ants–polite little soldiers marching single file along the kitchen baseboards in a thin and steady stream. You took a white sheet of paper from the printer, slipped it under their quick feet, then whoosh, like a magician and his tablecloth, you scooped them off the floor and out the door. Scoop and flick, scoop and flick, like magic, they were gone. Until they weren’t.” Angela Pelster shares more in this moving piece on how to love an (ant) invasion, and one another. { read more }

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For more inspiration, check out, “The Gentle Art of Blessing,” by Pierre Pradervand. { more }

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July 16, 2023

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Mark Nepo: The Half Life of Angels

“How do we know our own authenticity? How can we return to our hearts when we find we’ve left them? As we evolve and change along our journey, how do we relate to the ‘former selves’ in our past? Tami Simon and poet-philosopher Mark Nepo address these questions and more, as they discuss his creative process; his new book, The Half-Life of Angels; and how we can each touch the ever-present and wholly miraculous spark of becoming waiting to guide our lives.” { read more }

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For more inspiration, check out a selection of Mark Nepo’s poems here. { more }

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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 }

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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 }

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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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