Sangha of Auspicious Companions

May 22, 2023

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The Most Tender Gaze I Have Ever Beheld

“As I was facing into the slope and digging, I became aware of a presence behind me. I quickly looked over my left shoulder and saw a deer quietly standing about 4 feet behind me. Knowing it was hunting season, I ignored the deer not wanting to familiarize it to people and make it easier to hunt and kill. I continued working for another ten minutes but kept feeling the presence of the deer. I finally looked over my shoulder again and found the deer in the same spot as before. This time it occurred to me that possibly the deer might be hurt. I turned around and sat on the slope facing the deer. The deer was perpendicular to me so I had a good view of it. It was a female, a doe, fully grown but still young maybe about 3 to 5 years old…” Read on for a real-life story of profound connection and insight by Catherine Carney-Feldman . { read more }

Be The Change

Take a few minutes each day to listen to the “huge universe speaking.” To read more by Carney-Feldman, and to learn about her vibrant life and work, visit her website Shamrock Acres. { more }

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May 21, 2023

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Make Good Art

“I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I’d become the writer I wanted to be was stifling. I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them. Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, were cured of long ago. Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who… and so on. I didn’t have a career. I just did the next thing on the list. So I thought I’d tell you everything I wish I’d known starting out, and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know. And that I would also give you the best piece of advice I’d ever got, which I completely failed to follow…” Neil Gaiman shares more in this 2012 commencement speech at the University of the Arts. { read more }

Be The Change

For more check out this lovely reading featured on The Marginalian, “Neil Gaiman Reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s Ode to Timelessness to His 100-Year-Old Cousin.” { more }

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May 20, 2023

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The Secret of Blooming

“The sun’s setting fast. You hurry, wanting to get home before dark. But as you stroll past a humble house fringed by lush flowerbeds, you glimpse a line of people in the backyard, facing a privacy fence. With their backs to you, they’re ranked like a row of tin soldiers, socially distanced; seven or eight of them, standing at attention. What are they up to? you wonder, slowing your steps. A masked man crossing the yard notices you on the sidewalk. “Come, join us!” he calls with a wave. You hesitate. It’s late, and you’re not keen on mixing with strangers, especially during a pandemic. But you don’t know how to decline the invitation without seeming rude. He beckons again. “You’re just in time!” In time for what? you ask yourself. Now you’re hooked. You keep your distance as you follow him, adjusting your mask over your nose. The toy soldiers are focused on some weedy plants growing along the wood fence. “Look!” exclaims a girl, no more than a kindergartener. She’s pointing at a flower bud. “This ones getting all trembly!” “Maybe it will be the first!” says a woman, probably the girl’s mother, or she wouldnt be standing so close. An old lady stretches the tip of her cane toward another bud. “I’m betting on this one,” she says. “How about you?” Yes, she means you. Surprised by her question, you lean in to study the bud, perched on a swaying stem as tall as your thigh. Its green sheath is quivering. “Watch now,” the old lady says…” Phyllis Cole-Dai shares more in this entrancing real-life Spring tale. { read more }

Be The Change

Learn more about Phyllis, her life journey and life’s work here. { more }

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May 19, 2023

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Diana Carr: Shepherds of the Dawn

Diana Carr’s song, Shepherds of the Dawn, sung by Bird Tribe, is an uplifting and motivational call to each and every one of us to let the light inside of us reach out to our families and beyond. We are called to join in unison to be peaceful warriors that break barriers and the more the merrier, because each person’s voice is needed and valued. Reminiscent of the words from a June Jordan poem, “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” it emphasizes that we are the ones, we are the shepherds of the dawn. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out Meg Wheatley’s piece on, “Warriors for the Human Spirit.” { more }

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Diana Carr – Shepherds of the Dawn

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May 18, 2023

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The Alphabet Rockers

“Based in Oakland, California, Alphabet Rockers is unlike other bands that make music primarily for children, and over the last several years, Grammy voters have noticed. The hip-hop collective–which weaves the stories, spirit, and voices of a widely diverse group of young people into their work has earned a total of four nominations for Best Children’s Album. This year, they took home their first Grammy award. I spoke with Alphabet Rockers’ Tommy Shepherd and Kaitlin McGaw (my old friend and former bandmate) about the group’s win and what it means for their creativity and careers…” { read more }

Be The Change

Learn more about the Alphabet Rockers and their music here. { more }

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May 17, 2023

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Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic

Dr Paul Conti is the author of ‘Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic: How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It’ In the following interview he speaks with Tami Simon “about healing the unresolved trauma we hold inside both individually and collectively. They also discuss how trauma operates differently in different people, overcoming “reflexive shame,” self-inquiry and the embrace of a “true life narrative,” perseverance and self-compassion, strategies for dealing with traumatic triggers, resolving our grief, how trauma affects the map of our inner landscape, inherited trauma, become a healing resource for others, and much more.” …

May 16, 2023

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Among the Trees

“Ive had a love of trees all my life. Throughout high school, I lived in a house in the woods in Massachusetts, and even on the darker mornings of winter what kept me from being frightened was the trees themselvesmostly scrub pines, as we called them there, with struggling oaks scattered among them. Unlike the kids at school, the trees remained silent as I passed, and I took this as a sign of acceptance. Irrational, surebut in my feeling so unlike everyone else at school, in my confused wrestling with what I felt was real but I couldnt name precisely, why not take silence for acceptance? Among the trees loneliness could be itself, in the openso could strangenesseven as both remained hidden from the rest of the world for the time it took me to pass through the woods to the bus stop. As I walked, Id sing to the trees, loudly at first, then more and more softly the closer I got to where the woods gave out, until all I could hear was whatever wind there was through the leaves and needles. A sound like the trees unable to sing back, but trying to.”In this extended meditation on the relationship between place and intimacy, the body and the word, Carl Phillips walks among trees to explore what can and cannot be known. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out this essay by David George Haskell, “Eleven Ways of Smelling a Tree.” { more }

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Inspiring Links of the Week

May 15, 2023

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Transforming Food

“Weaving webs around the highways of northeast England, the REfUSE van was collectively funded by 315 people. They gave amounts ranging from fifty-pence pieces to four-digit sums until the great day when we could finally drive it off the lot and park it next to its newly installed electric charger. Each month it intercepts around thirteen tons of in-date food, otherwise destined for the dumpster, from retailers and food manufacturers. Then the food can make its way toward dinner tables through our caf, restaurant, school projects, pay what you can shelves, and delivery boxes. When we first started gathering food and people, those road webs were spun by our feet and a sagging green 2004 Golf. Before we had a five-thousand-square-foot, temperature-controlled warehouse, we had a lounge crammed with boxes and piled high with pumpkins. Before we had partnership agreements with large retail firms, we walked to and from any produce sellers we could find, and hoisted one another into supermarket dumpsters after dark.” Read on to learn more about how a small band of dumpster divers has become a driving force for food rescue and redistribution. { read more }

Submitted by: Jane Jackson

Be The Change

Learn more about RefUSE’s work here. { more }

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