An equinoctial night in 2016. It’s raining. The injured raptor birds, often used in educational programs, sleep in little wooden houses on the hillside. Community gardens and orchards await spring, leaves poised to unfurl and earth to be turned. It is the night of the salamander survey at Black Pond Woods.
Posts filed under Spirituality
What Propels a Journey? The Peripatetic Career of Kate Soper
Kate Soper came of age in the early 1960s. She is part of the generation that ushered in a new wave of women. She is a quiet but active feminist.
Members of the Zen Community on Zen Meditation and Daily Life
To gain insight into how Zen practice impacts daily life, we asked eight Zen Temple practitioners, each in different stages of his or her meditation practice, the following questions: 1) How long have you been practicing Zen Meditation? 2) How does your involvement or meditation practice at the Zen Temple show up in your daily life?
Haju Sunim: A Patchwork Life
Reverend Haju Sunim has been at the Ann Arbor Zen Buddhist Temple since 1982. She was ordained as a Dharma teacher in l984 and as a Buddhist priest in l993. She hails from Vancouver, British Columbia, where she was born in 1944. In her early 30’s, she lived in Toronto, where she unwittingly joined the avant-garde of her generation, taking yoga classes and seeking new paths.
Cantor Annie Rose, A Jewish Seeker
By Rachel Urist | Photos by Susan Ayer
Cantor Annie Rose will retire in July 2014. By then, she will have been the cantor at Temple Beth Emeth (TBE) for twenty years. She has trained countless bar and bat mitzvah students and created and conducted the Temple’s adult and youth choirs, Kol Halev (Voice of the Heart) and Shir Chadash (New Song).
Esalen at 50: A Memoir about America's Spiritual Reformation
By Richard Gull
Fifty years ago the human potential movement started at Esalen. That same year, 1962, The Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society appeared, a political manifesto challenging a new generation to live authentic lives in a participatory democracy. I attended both 50th anniversary celebrations in October 2012. I had taken a class on memoir writing at Esalen two years earlier, in 2010, six months after my wife, Sara, died of cancer.
Swaying in the Sangha of Trees: The "Tree"-Quel
By Lenny Bass
For those of you who are ardent readers of The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal, you will recall an article published a couple years back written by a mad man who talked with a tree while sitting in a hot tub outside a cabin built by his wife’s family in the shadows of the Alleghany Mountains in upstate New York. Well, that mad man is back at it again. The gift of one week of solitude my wife and I afford to one another as our one and only holiday gift has come to pass, and once again I come to rest in this mystical spruce grove.
Ann Arbor’s Interfaith Center for Spiritual Growth
By Rachel Urist | Photography by Maureen McMahon and Joni Strickfaden
Over the past seven years the Interfaith Center for Spiritual Growth has emerged on the Ann Arbor scene as a vibrant place for community events and a dynamic alternative to Sunday worship. Many have discovered the Center by attending one of their public music events, such as engagements with Kirtan singers Shantala or their Café 704 concert series featuring some of the area’s finest musicians. Others may have visited because of their calendar of speaking engagements with popular authors like Judith Coates or Rev. John Mundy.
Why I Teach Meditation
In the wonderful Dr. Seuss books that narrate the adventures of The Cat in the Hat, we are introduced to the Cat’s helpers named “Thing One” and “Thing Two.” When he wants to create maximum mischief, the Cat brings out these two little guys. And do they know how to party! Their antics can go on for numerous pages, involving all sorts of outrageous projects, which always lead nowhere.
