This is both an account of events as well as a story. It is a story of humans reaching out to the world of spirits for help for the Earth and beings of the Earth. This is a story of human and spirit compassion, of intense need and help ultimately received. It is a...
A new translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet has been released in a world in which his voice and vision feel as resonant as ever before. In ten letters to a young person in 1903, Rilke touched on the enduring dramas of creating our lives —...
This interview originally appeared: https://bowerypoetry.podbean.com/Three poems by Rumi translated by Haleh Liza GaforiLet’s love each other, let’s cherish each other, my friend, before we lose each other. You’ll long for me when I’m gone. You’ll make a truce with...
Crete, Greece’s largest and southernmost island, sits in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. It is halfway between Europe and Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Middle East. It has been occupied since Neolithic Times and, due to its unique and sensitive...
For years at the meditation center I rushed through my morning coffee. After all, if I did not drink it fast enough, I would be late for meditation. And that was important—to get to meditation on time. Otherwise I had to endure the social stigma of “being late,” as...
Once Katagiri Roshi told us, “Practicing Zen is not like training your dog: ‘Sit.’ ‘Heel.’ ‘Fetch.’ We are not training ourselves to be obedient and just follow the rules. We are training ourselves to wake up.” When a teacher says this, you know he’s seen a lot of...
In Celtic tradition there are many moments considered to be a “thin time” which means that heaven and earth feel closer and we might experience moments of connection to those who have gone before us in ways that we don’t usually. These moments are the daily portals of...
I recently came upon an essay of Mary Oliver’s written near the end of her life. In it, she writes of her longing in the Spring to discover what she describes as “the desire to be lost again, as long ago” in childhood. “Now in the spring I kneel,” she writes, “I put...
Two days after I was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church, I had an abortion. I went looking for one spiritual initiation and got another. I was crossing campus on a spring morning, headed to my class on Dante’s Divine Comedy, when the smell of wet dirt...
It was a blessing and privilege to have Joanna come to Rowe to teach for three decades, including a program on Rilke in 2015. Polly has been with us several times and is a frequent contributor to the Center Post. In this extraordinary conversation, they talk about her...