WINN – What is Needed Now

Awe and The Awful

By Celia Coates I’ve been having a difficult time writing this week’s post. It’s about a large topic – mysticism – that’s hard to say much about in just a few words. Mysticism also ties in to the core idea in WINN (What Is Needed Now). Our society has a limited and destructive system of…

When Everything Is Spiritual

By Celia Coates Rob Bell’s book, EVERYTHING IS SPIRITUAL, has the subtitle: “Who We Are and What We’re Doing Here.” That subtitle made it the kind of book I’m really interested in reading. It turned out to be a wise and iconoclastic page-turner, an unusual book for a Christian pastor to have written. His ideas…

Breaking the Rules

By Celia Coates How can we know what is true and real these days? What is being hidden or masked or maneuvered? When did cheating to get what you want become so common? As I was puzzling over these questions, I remembered a post from 2018 that had surprised me. It had shown me something…

To See and To Care

By Celia Coates 100-year-old Hugh Van Ellis was in the news this past week. He’s the Tulsa Massacre survivor who said, “We are all one. We are all one.” Those are shining words from someone who was alive when white townspeople killed hundreds of African Americans and destroyed their homes and businesses. Peaceful unity certainly…

Lessons from Whales

by Celia Coates I don’t usually read books about animals, but recently I’ve been fascinated by BECOMING WILD by Carl Safina. He writes about two mammals and one bird with several separate chapters each for sperm whales, chimpanzees, and scarlet macaws. The whole book is delightful, but this post will look only at what he…

What To Get Done in ’21

By Paul Jackson After the pandemic shutdown, I took a walk most days near Sligo Creek Park in Silver Spring, Maryland. In front of a bridge crossing the creek, I could see a quote on the pavement from the @chalkladies: “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” The line is from Mary Oliver’s…

Reflections on Forgiveness

By Brian Luke Seaward When the phone rings after midnight, the call is rarely about good news. That was when Rose, a good friend of mine, learned that her teenage son, Benjamin, had been killed after his car was hit head-on by a drunk driver. Rose was overwhelmed by shock, pain, and grief, and then…

Reading WINN

By Celia Coates A few people in my family were concerned that I was addled in my thinking and had a foolish view of reality so, one reason I created WINN in 2016 was to set my views before them in a non-argumentative way. I’m not alone in my take on life. And, I believe…

Alan Arkin’s Mind

By Celia Coates March 26th is Alan Arkin’s birthday and this year he will turn 87. It’s a wonderful chance to celebrate the book he published in 2018: OUT OF MY MIND (Not Quite a Memoir). He has lived a life filled with creativity as an actor and director. It is easy to remember the…

A Boffin and Subtle Energies

By Garvin McCurdy I was finishing up the day’s paperwork in the small Reiki office at the Portsmouth Regional Hospital when the phone rang. It was from the Ob/Gyn unit on the top floor (the ‘happy floor’ where new people still arrive) and the Pediatrics unit which had recently been moved up there. They had…

About Empathy

By Celia Coates Recently, “empathy” has often been in the news. In the January 19th Washington Post, Katherine Ellison wrote, “… scientists churn out volumes of work on the subject, with more than 2,000 scientific papers published in 2019 alone. For all its popularity, empathy isn’t nearly as simple as so many blogs and books…

Still the Mind, Fill the Heart

By Brian Luke Seaward You must remain very still to get a hummingbird to perch on your hand as you hold a small bowl of sweet nectar in your palm. The slightest movement signals these tiny birds that it is not safe to land, let alone feed. Last summer I taught my wife’s grandson how…