home: month 5

home: month 5

Read the whole series on home here. When I have been home What can home be to those who are weary? I write this particular writing in the wake of multiple mass shootings that have taken place in vastly different cities, neighborhoods, and locations. I write this in the wake of aggression that has been on the rise. I write this thinking so agonizingly over Ralph Yarl and Jordan Neely. My aches ache at this point. Do Black boys deserve the right to live and flourish in this nation that has been dubbed the “land of the free and the home of the brave?" I write this knowing that covid has taken...

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An interview with ada vargas

An interview with ada vargas

share your spiritual biography in 10 words, or less: turn towards that which nourishes you again and again where are you turning for soul nourishment / joy / aliveness? listening to the seemingly hundreds of birds that live on my busy city street provides instant grounding and transport to nature despite the context. a special delight comes if i can spot a specific little bird who is chirping near me and I can see their beak opening and their chest puffing up to send out their song. and the music of beautiful chorus, toni jones, and chris-n-teeb almost every day! what is a text you hold...

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Uprooting and planting anew

Uprooting and planting anew

I spent an hour or so yesterday afternoon in the woods I frequent most often, pulling garlic mustard from the rain-softened earth. Garlic mustard can be medicine, but it is also invasive, and destroys biodiversity. The roots release chemicals that alter mycelial networks connecting native plants, and passing nourishment between trees. Garlic mustard emerges early in the spring and grows fast; the heart shaped leaves take up too much space, too quickly, at the cost of other forms of aliveness. And yet, garlic mustard has its own offerings, and I tucked a handful of leaves into my pocket to...

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home: month 5

home: month 4

Read the full series on home here. month 4 - by M Jade Kaiser Every year, thousands of species of animals migrate in order to survive. Conditions in one place become unlivable and a journey must be made – permanently or for a season – to a place where they will be safer, better resourced, and more nourished. The Artic Tern, a small species (3.5 ounces) of bird, is known as the lengthiest of migrating travelers – flying a lofty 44,000 miles each year from the Artic to Antarctica. As for mammals, the humpback whale makes the longest annual journey at over 5000 miles each direction. Insects,...

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On joy and sorrows entangled

On joy and sorrows entangled

“Dead Stars” – by Ada Limón Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing. Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us. Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels so mute it’s almost in another year. I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying. We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder. It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn some new constellations. And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus, Draco,...

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home: month 5

home: month 3

Read the whole series on home here. There are so many ways to share where we’re from, to tell the stories of who we are, and where and how and when we are home. I came into this world cradled in the Colorado Rockies, was baptized in a tiny papermill town in Louisiana, spent my childhood years in Fayetteville, NC and San Antonio, TX. We moved every few years, and I remember well the familiarity of packing and unpacking, saying goodbyes and preparing for hellos, anticipating the adventure of exploring new places and friendships while grieving beloved places and people left behind. Encountering...

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