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Patience
Assuming nothing fatal befalls me, this year I will hit the half-century mark. To honor that milestone and lean fully into the richness of my second half of life, I made a resolution to visit an old-growth forest this year. I got my chance a few weeks ago, when I traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee to lead a retreat. After it concluded, I hiked about seven miles through Albright Grove, one of the finest stands of old-growth cove hardwood forest in the Eastern US.
 
As a rural person, I’ve always loved trees and forests, but Albright Grove felt like another world entirely, and I am struggling to find words for how powerfully moved I was to be among such massive, ancient creatures. At one point I took a break in the shelter of a tulip poplar that was at least seven feet thick and I would guess to be older than the founding of our country (that’s it in the photo).
 
Albright Grove made real for me a quote from Lao Tzu that I keep taped to my computer monitor: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” These trees and this forest had patience on a scale that I aspire to fathom, much less emulate. Whether as a tree or a person (take note, busy-busy self!), there is such immense power in standing still and waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more.
 
But when you stand still over a long period of time, $h!@ happens. “Virgin” old-growth forest might mean untouched by human destructiveness, but Mother Nature deals plenty of disaster in her own right, and almost all of the oldest trees have blown-out limbs, lightning scars, and other signs of damage and decay. They are beautiful, but theirs is a beauty that includes much brokenness. What a reassuring example for those of us fortunate enough to have many decades on our odometer.
 
There is less than 5% of the original old-growth forest still standing in this country – and less than 2 or 3% in the Eastern US.  We humans are, at this adolescent stage of our evolution, a terrifyingly ravenous species. And yet despite the carnage we have inflicted on this land, the trees of Albright Grove gave me hope that they, and their other sylvan relations, will be able to wait us out. When we finally learn to live peaceably among our non-human kin, or when we finally extinguish ourselves because we fail in that learning, the trees will flourish. In time, cut-over lands will become old-growth forest once again, and the broken and damaged webs of life will reweave themselves. They will not hurry, yet they will accomplish everything.
 
Take care,
Kyle Kramer, CEO
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Dr. Tony Zipple on Positive Psychology, Mindfulness, and Flourishing for Individuals and Organizations

Dr. Tony Zipple is an expert in behavioral health and rehabilitation counseling, in both clinical and academic settings, with extensive background in executive leadership of large organizations. In this episode, we reflect on Tony’s experience with positive psychology, mindful self-awareness, and how individuals and organizations can flourish, especially amidst change.

RESOURCES:

Donate to support this podcast: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

Earth & Spirit Center homepage: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Tony Zipple’s website: https://tonyzipple.com/

Incite Consulting Solutions: https://inciteconsultingsolutions.com/

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Phil Lloyd-Sidle on Mindfulness and the Marginalized

Phil Lloyd-Sidle is an Earth and Spirit Center instructor who sees the linkage between mindfulness and social justice, including issues of incarceration, race, gender identity and sexual orientation, and the patriarchy.  In this episode, Phil shares how mindfulness can help those on the margins – and all people – to embrace their own worth and value, navigate suffering, and cultivate compassion for themselves and others in our deeply interdependent world. 

RESOURCES:

Donate to support this podcast: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

Earth and Spirit Center homepage: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Louisville Vipassana Community: http://www.louisville-vipassana-community.org/

Dharma Seed: https://dharmaseed.org/

Insight Meditation Society: https://www.dharma.org/

Plum Village: https://plumvillage.org/

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Day Schildkret on Ritual and Radical Amazement

Day Schildkret uses found natural materials in outdoor settings to create Earth-based art whose beauty is utterly impermanent. He’s also the author, most recently, of Hello, Goodbye: 75 Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration, and Change. In this episode, Day and I reflect on how nature, creativity, and ritual help us navigate change, make meaning, and remember our true wholeness and belonging.

RESOURCES:

Please support this podcast at https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

Earth & Spirit Center website: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Day’s new book, Hello, Goodbye: 75 Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration, and Change: https://www.dayschildkret.com/books

Day’s websites:

https://www.dayschildkret.com/

https://www.morningaltars.com/

Day on Instagram: http://instagram.com/morningaltars

Day on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/morningaltars

 

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Future-Driven or Future-Drawn?
At the Earth and Spirit Center, our staff and board just concluded a new strategic planning process that provides an exciting, actionable vision for growing our programs in meditation, compassionate social justice, and Earth care, our retreats and summer camps, and our emerging mindful leadership work with non-profit and for-profit organizations.
 
Being a driven, type-A personality, I have a tendency to get pretty fanatical about strategic plans – just ask the rest of the ESC staff! Plans and goals are certainly essential for a multi-faceted, impactful organization like the Earth & Spirit Center: they help keep us focused, effective, and accountable. But of course there are at least two problems with being plan-driven. Sometimes your plans run roughshod over reality – such as ignoring the people and needs that present themselves but that don’t fit neatly into the plan. And sometimes reality runs roughshod over your plans – as we learned when COVID-19 disrupted pretty much everything. Either way, holding onto the plans too tightly causes some sort of damage.
 
I’m starting to play with a new approach to making and following plans, which is informed by my reading in evolutionary cosmology and spirituality: What if we went from being future-driven to being future-drawn? In other words, what if – instead of treating the future as something we charge toward by making a battering ram out of our goals and plans – we imagine that the future is actually drawing us toward something bigger and more wonderful than we even have capacity to imagine? That’s certainly how folks like Thomas Berry and the paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin saw it: the journey of the Universe is one in which we’re all being pulled toward greater, more beautiful diversity and a deeper, more interconnected communion, in which all creatures – animal, vegetable, mineral creatures – have intrinsic value. For me, the name of both that drawing power and that relational communion is simple: Love, writ large and writ long.
 
We need our plans, just as a ship needs charts, a compass, and a rudder. But we also need to bracket our goal- and plan-driven egos (Self, I’m talking to you!) enough that we can be responsive to the more beautiful world that keeps calling to us from the future. And staying open to that future, ironically, can help us keep our hearts open to the gifts and needs of the present.
 
As always, the Earth & Spirit Center provides both the tools and the communal support to help you be drawn by the future and mindfully present in the present. We hope you’ll make some plans to get involved this Spring!
 
Take care,
Kyle Kramer, CEO
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Dr. Broderick Sawyer on Using Mindfulness to Overcome Duality and Division

Dr. Broderick Sawyer is a clinical psychologist who integrates mindfulness and compassion practices into his work with organizations and individual clients. This episode explores how mindfulness can inform psychological wholeness, promote healing from racial stress and trauma, and help overcome mind-states that perpetuate division.

NOTES AND RESOURCES:

Donate to support this podcast: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

Earth & Spirit Center website: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Broderick Sawyer’s website: https://www.brodericksawyer.com/

Broderick’s bio on the Earth & Spirit Center faculty page: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/about-us/our-team/broderick-sawyer/

 

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Life is Risky
As 2022 drew to a close, the Earth & Spirit Center board and staff concluded a months-long strategic planning process to help us chart our course for the next several years. One of the more mundane –though important! – administrative items that came up in conversation was the need to create transition plans for key staff members in the case of planned or unplanned departures. It’s something we’ve been meaning to do for years but not gotten around to. When I tried to reassure the board that I have no plans to leave my role, it was pointed out to me, only half-jokingly, that I do have some risky hobbies, namely rock climbing and mountain biking, that could put me out of commission pretty easily.
 
I don’t see myself as a middle-aged adrenaline junky, and the heart-racing activities I love are a paradoxical counterpoint to a lot of calm time spent on a meditation cushion. What I do know, and what we recognized in our strategic planning process, is that life is risky, and to be fully alive means to take reasonable risks. 
 
That’s what the Earth & Spirit Center has done and continues to do: take careful but bold, calculated but courageous risks in the service of life and our organizational mission. We continue to invest in new staff, new programs, new infrastructure and new ideas. Not everything works out perfectly, but the overall outcome has been growth and innovation that I don’t think could have happened any other way.
 
As we being a new year, none of us has a clear picture of what may await us, individually and collectively. So the best we can do is walk forward together into the risks of the unknown future, hopefully with some forethought and hopefully from a clear, non-reactive stillness that meditation can provide. In that calm courage, we can trust Thomas Berry’s wise counsel: “In the immense story of the universe, that so many of these dangerous moments have been navigated successfully is some indication that the universe is for us rather than against us. We need only summon these forces to our support in order to succeed.”
 
Take care,
Kyle Kramer, CEO
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Deborah Eden Tull: Luminous Darkness as a Path of Spiritual Authenticity and Wholeness

Deborah Eden Tull is a Buddhist teacher, activist, author, and sustainability educator. In this conversation, we dive into her latest book, Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown. We reflect on how darkness is an invitation to open-hearted, full-spectrum living, fierce compassion, relational mindfulness, and hopeful, courageous dreaming in the service of life.

RESOURCES:

Please donate to support this podcast and the Earth & Spirit Center nonprofit organization: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/donate/

Earth & Spirit Center website: https://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/

Eden’s website: https://www.deborahedentull.com/

Eden’s new book, Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown: https://www.deborahedentull.com/luminous-darkness

Eden’s nonprofit, Mindful Living Revolution: https://www.deborahedentull.com/non-profit

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