But initiation can also be a social phenomenon, in which the initiate is welcomed and recognized as a member of a group or class of people by the members of that group. In this respect, only men can initiate a man. And through that initiation a boy can be allowed and encouraged to adopt behaviors and attitudes of the mature masculine. Read more
That moment was in November 2005, over a few days during my second trip to Japan, staying with my friend Robin Gunkel. Here it is ten years later, some misspellings and obvious typos fixed but other errors of grammar, history, and thought preserved. Some of these ideas and sentences made it into to final version...some didn't. Read more
Maybe I left that coat in the closet because I had to grow into it. Read more
And so our friend is living what Thoreau called a life of quiet desperation. Do you see the vicious circle here? Each part of the problem supports the others. But the good news is that a circle has an infinite number of points where you can cut it and destroy it. When all the problems depend on each other, you don't have to fix them all at once -- knock one down one part and, boom, you're out of the trap. Read more
With the leaves falling from the trees and skittering about in the wind, with the bones of trees showing through where lush greenery prevailed just weeks ago, with the first coming of frost, Samhain competes with the blooming May flowers of Beltane, the start of summer, for being the time of most dramatic change. We don't need supernaturalism to see that this is a liminal time, a time of transition between the way we lived and worked in the warm, active time and the way we must live and work to survive the cold dark time. Read more
I forget again and again and that's difficult but each time I remember I learn more and that's the reward to not knowing Read more
The mystic sense is the perception of the beauty of the interconnected and transpersonal. To see in that apple the seasons, the sun and the earth; to see, as Blake said, the whole world in a grain of sand; to look at a passing stranger, a tree in the median strip, the starry heavens, and see one's own self there. Not just in an intellectual sense, but on the gut emotional and spiritual level, a glimpse past the useful fiction of separateness that the mind spins. Read more
Walker recently spoke with BBC News environment correspondent Matt McGrath, and had this brilliant plan for funding his state's response to the disasters created by climate change: drill for more oil. Read more
some days are good some days you've done your work and you're reading a good book about Thoreau and it's a warm day and you had a good salad for lunch with a good cold-brew coffee and you take the dog for a walk and there's a slightly warm breeze Read more
Thank you for starting off honestly with a declaration that you do not believe in the value of free speech. It puts the rest of our dialog in a clear focus: you have taken a stance in opposition to one of my own core values, something for which I might be willing to give my life. Read more
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