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Lesson 2: Killing and eating

 In this lesson, Daniel talked about the reality of believing that the category of non-human person encompasses plants and fungi. His voice is so soft and manner so gentle that it cushions the impact of his words which are: to live is to kill. We eat the bodies of other beings in order to power our life. So, in a way, it does not matter if you are eating cousin Rabbit or cousin Kale - they are both people and both give their lives for your sustenance. To presume to create hierarchies of worthiness (eating animals is killing but eating plants is not) is a mental dodge to escape the uncomfortable truth that we live because others die. He also invited us to understand that our relationship with our food is not a one way street and the fact that the plant and animal others die for us to consume is a fact without moral judgement inherent in it. It is human-centered thinking to assume that humans are always the ones choosing the relationship and that the relationship is always us exploiting
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Lesson 1: Non-Human Persons

This week’s lesson was a fairly low key entry into the new practice I’m hoping to build. Basically, the instruction was to start talking out loud more regularly to the non human people in our lives. So, as I’ve been going around my house taking care of my house plants, I’ve been trying to more consciously greet them. This is something that I think a lot of people do, at least some of the time, especially if they have plants in their home so it wasn’t so difficult to begin. I started something like this a couple of months ago when I resolved to try and connect with a tree in the park. That experience inspired a poem; my houseplants don’t seem to be quite that communicative but it certainly makes me more mindful of their health if I think of them as tiny beings who work with me to provide beauty and clean air in exchange for a kind word and some water.  In trying to more regularly talk to the plants in my home, I realized that I have a lot of resistance to the idea of talking to my plant
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Reflections on Animism - Why did I choose it and what it means to me

 Several years ago, I had an intense experience while on my honeymoon in Bali. I visited a traditional Balinese healer and had what can only be described as an energetic cleansing that I believe changed the course of my life. The healer told me that I must “have passion for life, not just sex, but life”. Put this baldly, it is advice that seems banal and possibly sexist. However, I believe that his instruction had a deeper spiritual meaning. What has crystallized for me over the past five years is a very urgent sense that the world is alive and that humans are meant to be a part of the great web that sustains us but that we have forgotten the ways to be in respectful relationship with the world. Plants, animals, all of life is in communication around us and we have ignored and denigrated this complex, mysterious web of interactions, rivalries, and reciprocities as resources to be exploited, extracted, and disrespected. Our illusion of separateness - our failure to embrace and interroga
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Meditating on creativity

I started meditating three days ago. I've always dabbled somewhat in it and been fascinated by it when I didn't meditate. Somehow I never made the time but I'm hopeful that this time, it will stick. I decided to make this change because recently, I've started realizing that somewhere along the way of life I lost the connection to my creative self. I'm hopeful that sitting quietly in meditation is at least part of the way back to wholeness. Since having my daughter a year and a half ago, the question of HOW to be in the world have become more urgent. Because, as I'm sure most people with children have discovered, being a parent is not just a one way transmission of knowledge from me to my child but it is a conversation between the two of us. While I am setting boundaries, giving her love, and teaching her about some concrete aspects of the world, she is simultaneously showing me new ways of seeing the world I had forgotten about or had never observed before. In
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