These gorgeous seeds and their vast number of relations are the foundation of life. For the plants that grow from them and for the entire animal kingdom, which is completely dependent on them for food. Herbivores eat their plants and the seeds themselves. Carnivores eat animals that eat plants. We human animals have a special […]
The brilliance of seeds Read More »
From its earliest years, the cosmos has been turning in on itself in an ever-evolving process of centration. The early clustering of the original elements into stars. Swirling arms of galaxies gathering them together and creating more centers as new stars form. The dust of the universe collecting itself into planets around those stars, pulling
Centration: the universe and the doughnut Read More »
For the past two years, I’ve celebrated September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, with a collection of quotes from Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si. It was he who launched the day in 2016, joining a tradition started by the Orthodox Church in 1989. This has grown into the
The season of creation Read More »
To love plants is to be in awe of photosynthesis. Even when you know how it works, it’s still a miracle. And a crucial, we-wouldn’t-be-here-without-it miracle. Its ramifications are so vast that once it showed up, it dictated all the evolution that followed. It’s also complicated. There is, for example, a catalyzing enzyme involved called
Living light: the crucial miracle of photosynthesis Read More »
We humans have brought ourselves to a challenging point. By our numbers and choices, we’ve become equal to the geological forces that shaped our planet for 4.5 billion years. Our impact on the thin layer of atmosphere blanketing Earth means we can alter the ability of every living thing to prosper, or even exist. Our
The power of radiance Read More »
For 150 years lichen has been known to be a combination of two life forms. The outside is a fungal matrix, rather like the crust of a baguette, which gives structure and protection to the softer, more filamentous inside, formed by one of the algae family, or occasionally a cyanobacteria. These latter two provide nutrients
Pursuing mystery: how we found out lichen has a third partner and is saving the earth Read More »
This is a photo of my refrigerator, filled with its usual groceries, though much more attractively arranged than usual. It represents some of the best and most exciting news I’ve ever heard. It goes back to a question environmentalist Paul Hawken posed: what can we do to reverse global warming? Standard research focuses on ways
Project Drawdown: breakthrough solutions for climate change Read More »
Humans are story-making animals. We have a story for everything, and many, many stories for the same things, depending on where and with whom we found ourselves when we arrived in this life. Our tales explain where we came from, how we got here, why we’re here at all, how to behave now that we
Eostre and the Universe Story Read More »
The lines showed up one morning, on a section of my walk where the sand, driven over by a tractor, is unusually soft and easily shows imprints of desert wildlife. Lizard tails, I thought. I checked carefully for signs of tiny lizard feet but didn’t see any indentations along the lines. About a mile on,
Mysteries at my feet Read More »
The dream shapes the world, the Achuar people told John Perkins on his visits to the Ecuadorian rainforest that forms the headwaters of the great Amazon River. They asked for his help to protect their sacred land — the heart and lungs of the planet — from the dream of the west, with its insatiable
Blessed Unrest: the Pachamama Alliance Read More »